The Captain was bowing to me with the easy impressiveness of the man
to whom ceremonial is no novelty. He was smiling. There was in his
smile the good humor of an adult toward a half-grown child. He stood
up very straight and precise, his shoulders at exact right angles to
his thick neck, his out-thrust chest almost pompous in its roundness.
He was, I judged, exactly my own height, which was five feet nine, but
so thick was he in every portion of his anatomy that the physical
impression which he made was overpowering. His head and face were
large and, thanks to a closely cropped pompadour, gave, in spite of
considerable fat, the impression of being square. The eyes were out of
place in his head. Hidden under half-closed, fat lids they were mere
specks in size, yet when I had once looked into them I stared in
fascination.
The head, and the fat, square face with its brutalized lines were
frankly, flauntingly animal. The eyes betrayed a great mind. In that
gross, brutal countenance the gleam of such an intellect seemed a
shocking accident, one of those perversions of Nature’s plans which
result in the production of abnormalities. What was this man? Was he
the common creature of his thick jowls? or was he the developed man to
whom belonged those eyes? Was that animal countenance but a mask? Or
did the low instincts, which its lines betrayed, dominate, while the
mind struggled in vain beneath such a handicap?
Those tiny eyes held mine and studied me cruelly. Before them I felt
stripped to the marrow of my soul. My dreams, my weaknesses, my
failures seemed to stand out like print for Brack to read. His
superior smile indicated that he had read, that he had appraised me
for a weakling; and for the life of me I could not control the
resentment that leaped within me.
I looked him as steadily in the eyes as I could. He saw the resentment
that lay there; for an instant there flickered a new look in his eyes;
then they were bland and smiling again. But that instant was enough
for each of us to know that one could never be aught but the other’s
enemy.
“I am glad to see you on board, Mr. Pitt, as they say in the navy,”
said Captain Brack with deepest courtesy.
“I am glad to be on board, Captain Brack,” I replied steadfastly.
“It is a pleasure to have for shipmate a literary man like Mr. Pitt.”
“It is a pleasure to contemplate a voyage in such company as Captain
Brack’s.”
“We shall strive to make the voyage as interesting as possible, for
you, Mr. Pitt,” said he.
“I am sure of that,” said I, “and I will do my poor best to
reciprocate.”
“In a rough seaman’s way I have studied a little—enough to be
interested in books. So we have, in a way, a bond of interest to begin
with.”
“Mr. Chanler has told me something of your achievements, Captain
Brack; I am sure you belittle them.”
It was very ridiculous. Brack had put me on my mettle; so there we
stood and slavered each other with fine speeches, each knowing well
that the other meant not a word of the esteem that he uttered. Yet as
the luncheon progressed I was inclined to agree with George: Brack was
a wonderful chap. The man’s mind seemed to be a great, well-ordered
storehouse of facts and impressions which he had collected in his
travels. Sitting back in his chair he dominated the company, led the
talk whither he willed, and having said his say, beamed contentedly.
And before the meal was over I had a distinct impression that Brack
not Chanler, was master on the yacht.
Chanler, Brack, Riordan and Dr. Olson drank steadily throughout the
luncheon. Mr. Wilson and myself drank not at all. As the luncheon
neared its end, Chanler, his eyes steady but his under lip hanging
drunkenly, broke out:
“Well, how about it, cappy? Did you land your two bad men?”
“Yes,” said Brack. “After luncheon I can promise you a little sport.”
Chanler laughed a dreary, half-drunken laugh.
“Gardy, we’ve fixed up a little sport. Awf’lly dull lying here. Have
to pass the time some way.”
“If I may make the suggestion,” said Brack courteously, “perhaps Mr.
Pitt has duties or wishes which will prevent him from viewing our
little sport.”
“Not ’tall, not ’tall,” said Chanler.
“Perhaps it would be well for Mr. Pitt to wait a few days until—shall
we say until he has become more accustomed to our ways—before treating
himself to a sight of our little amusements?”
“Why so?” I demanded.
“Oh, it is merely a suggestion. Our sport is rather primitive—the
bare, crawling stuff of life without the perfumery, wrappings, or
other fanciful hypocrisies of civilization. Mr. Pitt does not look
like a man who would admit that life so exists, and therefore must
refuse to behold it.”
Chanler turned from Brack to me, his teeth showing in a pleased smile.
“Ha! Hot shot for you, that, Gardy. What say, old peg; where’s your
comeback—repartee, and all that?”
As I hesitated for a reply, he tapped the table impatiently.
“Come, come, Gardy! A little brilliance, please. We don’t let him
touch us and get away without a counter, do we? Ha! At ’im, boy; at
’im!”
“As Mr. Brack——”
“Ha! Mister Brack! Well, struck, Gardy; go on.”
“As Captain Brack has failed to inform me what it is we are about to
see I, of course, can not be expected to express any opinion on it,” I
said. “But as concerns ‘the bare, crawling stuff of life,’ I will
reply that Life no longer crawls, nor is it bare.”
Chanler turned his eyes upon Brack.
“Your shot, cappy. What say to that?”
Brack bowed.
“I will reply by asking Mr. Pitt why he thinks life no longer is bare
and crawling?”
“Because,” said I, “the mind of man has decreed that it should not be
so. Because mas has erected a civilization in order to insure that
life shall not be bare and crawling.”
“Civilization is not the point,” said Brack. “We spoke of Life. We, as
we stand here, clothed, barbered, wearing the products of machinery to
hide our bodies, we are Civilization. We, as we enter the bathtub in
the morning, are Life—forked radishes.” He rolled his great head far
back and looked down his thick cheeks at me appraisingly. “Some are
small radishes; others are large.”
“Ha! Rather raw on you with that last one, Gardy. Small and large
ones. You are small, you know, Gardy, compared to me or the captain.”
“Size can scarcely matter to radishes,” I said.
“Cappy, cappy! He scored on you there. What say to that?”
“I will say—” began Captain Brack, but Chanler had tired of his sport
as suddenly as he had become interested.
“Rot, rot!” he said, tapping on the table. “You were going to amuse us
with your new finds. Let’s have it.”
“Very well,” said the captain, arising. “It will be ready in fifteen
minutes.”
I was glad of that respite of fifteen minutes. It gave me an
opportunity to slip into my stateroom and pull myself together. Brack
had shaken and stirred me as I had not thought possible. His terrific
personality had exerted upon me the effects of a powerful stimulant.
Once or twice in my life I had taken whisky in sufficient quantity to
cause me to experience thoughts, emotions, elations which did not
properly belong in the normal, self-controlled Me. Now I experienced
something of the same sensation. My mind was buzzing with a hundred
swift impressions and conjectures upon Brack.
The picture I had beheld and the words I had heard through the
swinging doors of Billy Taylor’s repeated themselves to me, and I felt
the same sensation of a chill that I had felt upon recognizing in
Brack the big man from the saloon. The words which the small man had
uttered were fraught with sinister suggestion. From them it was
apparent that he recognized in the captain a man who was known as
“Laughing Devil,” whose reputation, if the seaman’s words might be
taken for truth, was not of the sort that one would care to have in
the captain of the yacht on which one was sailing into far seas. Also
it was apparent from the man’s words that Brack had made some sort of
proposition: “a rich sucker,” had been mentioned.
My course was plain before me: to go to Chanler’s state-room, tell him
what I had seen and heard, and demand that he investigate Brack’s
actions or permit me to resign my position. I had no definite idea of
what the words between Brack and Madigan might portend, but there was
no doubt that they established faithfully the captain’s character. In
my depressed condition I shuddered at the idea of putting to sea with
such a man.
But—Captain Brack had smiled. That smile stopped me. The appalling
brutality of the captain’s mental processes had started within me a
slow, steady flame. It was ghastly; the man’s expression had shown
that he considered me a thing to play with! The brute had looked in my
eyes, had stripped me to the marrow, read me for a weakling, and
smiled, so that I might know that he had seen all! And the worst of it
was that he was doing it with a mind which weighed me calmly, without
prejudice, with scientific calmness.
It was not fair, it was not human. The man should at least have
refrained from forcing me to see how weak he considered me. And was I
so weak? Was I the worm he thought me to be?
“No!” I cried aloud; and I was pacing the floor when Simmons knocked
on my door.