HOME BOUND
Noon witnessed a strange scene in the Straits of Motomolo, a scene of
agony and death.
Over the surface of the strait, inborne by the tide, extended a broad
field of débris, of shattered planks, bamboos, platted sails.
In mid-scene, sunk on Ulu Salama bar only a few fathoms from where
the _Silver Fleece_ had lain, rested the dismantled wreck of the
proa. The unpitying sun flooded that wreck—what was left of it after
a powder-cask, fitted with fuse, had been hurled aboard by Captain
Briggs himself. No living man remained aboard. On the high stern still
projecting from the sea—the stern whence a thin waft of smoke still
rose against the sky—a few broken, yellow bodies lay half consumed by
fire, twisted and hideous.
Of the small canoes, not one remained. Such as had not been capsized
and broken up, had lamely paddled back to shore with the few Malays who
had survived the guns and cutlasses and brimming kettles of seething
water. Corpses lay awash. The sharks no longer quarreled for them.
Full-fed on the finest of eating, they hardly snouted at the remnants
of the feast.
So much, then, for the enemy. And the _Silver Fleece_—what of her?
A mile to seaward flying a few rags of canvas, the wounded clipper
was limping on, under a little slant of wind that gave her hardly
steerageway. Her kedge cable had been chopped, her mizzen-topmast was
down, and a raffle of spars, ropes and canvas littered her decks or
had brought down the awnings, that smoldered where the fire-arrows had
ignited them.
Her deck-houses showed the splintering effects of rifle and
cannon-fire. Here, there, lay empty pails and coppers that had held
boiling water. Along the rails and lying distorted on deck, dead men
and wounded—white, brown and yellow—were sprawling. And there were
wounds and mutilations and dead men still locked in grapples eloquent
of fury—a red shambles on the planks once so whitely holystoned.
The litter of knives, krises, cutlasses and firearms told the story;
told that some of the Malays had boarded the _Silver Fleece_ and that
none of these had got away.
The brassy noonday fervor, blazing from an unclouded sky, starkly
revealed every detail. On the heavy air a mingled odor of smoke and
blood drifted upward, as from a barbaric pyre to some unpitying and
sanguinary god—perhaps already to the avenging god that old Dengan
Jouga had called upon to curse the captain and his ship, “the Eyeless
Face that waits above and laughs.”
A doleful sound of groaning and cursing arose. Beside the
windlass—deserted now, with part of the Malays dead and part under
hatches—Gascar was feebly raising a hand to his bandaged head, as he
lay there on his back. His eyes, open and staring, seemed to question
the sun that cooked his bloodied face. A brown man, blind and aimless,
was crawling on slippery red hands and knees, amidships; and as he
crawled, he moaned monotonously. Two more, both white, were sitting
with their backs against the deck-house. Neither spoke. One was past
speech; the other, badly slashed about the shoulders, was groping in
his pockets for tobacco; and, finding none, was feebly cursing.
Bevans, leaning against the taffrail, was binding his right forearm
with strips torn from the shirt that hung on him in tatters. He was
swearing mechanically, in a sing-song voice, as the blood seeped
through each fresh turn of cotton.
From the fo’c’s’le was issuing a confused sound. At the wheel stood a
sailor, beside whom knelt the doctor. As this sailor grimly held the
wheel, Filhiol was bandaging his thigh.
“It’s the best I can do for you now, my man,” the doctor was saying.
“Others need me worse than you do.”
A laugh from the companionway jangled on this scene of agony. There
stood Alpheus Briggs, smearing his bearded lips with his hirsute
paw—for once again he had been at the liquor below. He blinked
about him, set both fists on his hips, and then flung an oath of
all-comprehensive execration at sea and sky and ship.
“Well, anyhow, by the holy Jeremiah,” he cried, with another laugh of
barbaric merriment, “I’ve taught those yellow devils one good lesson!”
A shocking figure the captain made. All at once Prass came up from
below and stood beside him. Mauled as Prass was, he seemed untouched
by comparison with Briggs. The captain’s presence affronted heaven and
earth, with its gross ugliness of rags and dirt and wounds, above which
his savage spirit seemed to rise indifferent, as if such trifles as
mutilations lay beneath notice.
Across the captain’s brow a gash oozed redly into his eye, puffy,
discolored. As he smeared his forehead, his arm knotted into hard
bunches. His hairy breast was slit with slashes, too; his mop of beard
had stiffened from a wound across his cheek. Nothing of his shirt
remained, save a few tatters dangling from his tightly-drawn belt. His
magnificent torso, muscled like an Atlas, was all grimed with sweat,
blood, dirt. Save for his boots, nothing of his clothing remained
intact; and the boots were sodden red.
Now as he stood there, peering out with his one serviceable eye under a
heavy, bushy brow, and chewing curses to himself, he looked a man, if
one ever breathed, unbeaten and unbeatable.
The captain’s voice gusted out raw and brutelike, along the shambles of
the deck.
“Hell of a thing, this is! And all along of a yellow wench. Devil roast
all women! An’ devil take the rotten, cowardly crew! If I’d had that
crew I went black-birding with up the Gold Coast, not one o’ those
hounds would have boarded us. But they didn’t get the she-dog back, did
they? It’s bad, bad, but might be worse, so help me!”
Again he laughed, with white teeth gleaming in his reddened beard, and
lurched out on deck. He peered about him. A brown body lay before him,
face upward, with grinning teeth. Briggs recognized the turtle-egg
seller, who had thrown the kris. With a foul oath he kicked the body.
“_You_ got paid off, anyhow,” he growled. “Now you and Scurlock can
fight it out together, in hell!”
He turned to the doctor, and limped along the deck.
“Doctor Filhiol!”
“Yes, sir?” answered the doctor, still busy with the man at the wheel.
“Make a short job o’ that, and get to work on those two by the
deck-house. We’ve got to muster all hands as quick as the Lord’ll let
us—got to get sail on her, an’ away. These damned Malays will be
worryin’ at our heels again, if we don’t.”
“Yes, sir,” said Filhiol, curtly. He made the bandage fast, took his
kit, and started forward. Briggs laid a detaining hand on his arm—a
hand that left a broad red stain on the rolled-up sleeve.
“Doctor,” said he, thickly, “we’ve got to stand together, now. There’s
a scant half-dozen men, here, able to pull a rope; and with them we’ve
got to make Singapore. Do your best, doctor—do your best!”
“I will, sir. But that includes cutting off your rum!”
The captain roared into boisterous laughter and slapped Filhiol on the
back.
“You’ll have to cut my throat first!” he ejaculated. “No, no; as long
as I’ve got a gullet to swallow with, and the rum lasts, I’ll lay to
it. Patch ’em up, doctor, an’ then—”
“You could do with a bit of patching, yourself.”
The captain waved him away.
“Scratches!” he cried. “Let the sun dry ’em up!” He shoved the doctor
forward, and followed him, kicking to right and left a ruck of weapons
and débris. Together the men advanced, stumbling over bodies.
“Patch those fellows up the best you can,” directed Briggs, gesturing
at the pair by the deck-house. “One of ’em, anyhow, may be some good.
We’ve got to save every man possible, now. Not that I love ’em,
God knows,” he added, swaying slightly as he stood there, with his
blood-stained hand upon the rail. “The yellow-bellied pups! We’ve
got to save ’em. Though if this was Singapore, I’d let ’em rot. At
Singapore, Lascars are plenty, and beach-combers you can get for a song
a dozen. Get to work now, sir, get to work!”
Life resumed something of order aboard the _Silver Fleece_, as she
wore slowly down Motomolo Strait. The few Malays of the crew, who
had survived the fight and had failed to make their escape with the
retreating forces, were for the present kept locked in the deck-house.
Briggs was taking no chances with another of the yellow dogs running
_amok_.
The number of hands who mustered for service, including Briggs, Wansley
and the doctor, was only nine. This remnant of a crew, as rapidly as
weak and wounded flesh could compass it, spread canvas and cleaned
ship. A grisly task that was, of sliding the remaining bodies over
the rail and of sluicing down the reddened decks with buckets of warm
seawater. More and more canvas filled—canvas cut and burned, yet still
holding wind enough to drive the clipper. The _Silver Fleece_ heeled
gracefully and gathered way.
Slowly the scene of battle drew astern, marked by the thin smoke still
rising from the wreckage of the proa. Slowly the haze-shrouded line of
shore grew dim. A crippled ship, bearing the dregs of a mutilated crew,
she left the vague, blue headland of Columpo Point to starboard, and
so—sorely broken but still alive—passed beyond all danger of pursuit.
And as land faded, Captain Alpheus Briggs, drunk, blood-stained,
swollen with malice and evil triumph, stood by the shattered taffrail,
peering back at the vanishing scene of one more battle in a life that
had been little save violence and sin. Freighted with fresh and heavy
crimes he exulted, laughing in his blood-thick beard. The tropic sun
beat down upon his face, bringing each wicked line to strong relief.
“Score one more for me,” he sneered, his hairy fists clenched hard.
“Hell’s got you now, witch-woman, an’ Scurlock an’ all the rest that
went against me. But I’m still on deck! They don’t stick on _me_,
curses don’t. And I’ll outlaugh that Eyeless Face—outlaugh it, by
God, and come again. And so to hell with that, too!”
He folded steel-muscled arms across his bleeding, sweating chest,
heaved a deep breath and gloried in his lawless strength.
“To hell with that!” he spat, once more. “I win—I always win! To hell
with everything that crosses me!”