Up on the roomy bridge of the yacht I found Chanler and Brack seated
on deck stools drawn close to the rail, looking down upon the
immaculate fore-deck. As I followed their example I saw near the port
side two seamen holding a squat, heavy negro by a rope passed under
his arms. The man was trembling and moaning.
“He’s a bad man and near the snakes from gin,” laughed Chanler. “Over
there’s Garvin, who fought Sharkey a couple of times.”
The pugilist, a large, young man, flashily dressed, though miserably
bedraggled, was leaning against the starboard rail, scowling darkly at
the negro.
“Give you gin?” he was saying to the negro. “Give you gin? What yah
talkin’ about, Smoke? Give you gin? Nix. I’m the guy who gets the gin.
I’m Bill Garvin. That’s why I get the gin and you get hell.”
As the negro broke out into his terrible moaning, the pugilist’s
debauched nerves seemed to snap.
“Stop him! —— you! You lousy ——! Stop him! If you don’t I’ll kick his
head off—I’ll kick your black head off, Smoke; I’ll kick your head
off.”
His mad wandering eyes caught sight of Brack on the bridge.
“How ’bout that, pal? Won’t I kick his —— black head off. I’m Bill
Garvin.”
He took a step forward and stood staring at Brack. “Say, you’re the
guy who was going to gimme booze, ain’t you? Billy wouldn’t let me run
my face any more; you said, ‘Come on, I’ll take you where there’s lots
of it.’ Well, how ’bout it, there? Hah! How ’bout it?”
Brack smiled down upon him. And his smile was the same as he had
bestowed upon me; Garvin, too, was a thing to play with.
“Well, I don’t know, Garvin,” he replied. “I promised Black Sam the
same thing. I think I shall give him drink before you. He said he’d
kill you if you got a drink before him.”
The pugilist stared stupidly while the significance of these words
seeped into his sodden brain. A weird smile distorted one side of his
face.
“He—” pointing to the negro—“said he’d do that to me?” Thumping his
chest he roared: “Kill me! Bill Garvin? Sa-a-ay!”
He lurched over to where the negro stood. At first he seemed undecided
what to do. Then he suddenly reached forward and caught the black’s
head in chancery, and bent furiously over it. There came a horrible
growl from Garvin’s throat, a piercing scream from the negro. Garvin
had bitten deeply into the black’s ear.
I started back from the rail, every sense revolting, and found Brack
studying me, the smile with which he favored me fixed on his lips.
“So? The stomach is not strong enough, Mr. Pitt? You feel a faintness.
Yes; I have even seen delicate ladies lose consciousness under similar
circumstances.”
“I do not lose consciousness,”’ I replied, drawing a chair up to the
railing and seating myself, “but at the same time I fail to see what
amusement a civilized man can find in this spectacle.”
“So? You can not see that, Mr. Pitt? If it would not be rude I would
say that it is the truly civilized man, so highly civilized that he is
not troubled by sentimentality or humanitarian motives, who can
appreciate spectacles of this nature. The scientific type of mind is
the ultimate product of civilization, is it not, Mr. Pitt? Well, it is
only the scientist who can view properly the bare, crawling thing
called Life.”
“Rot, rot, rot!” interrupted Chanler, each word punctuated with a rap
of his cane on the deck. “Put on your show, Brack. Hope that wasn’t
all you dragged me out here for?”
“That was entirely impromptu. I had no idea Mr. Garvin was so
versatile. The show follows. Dr. Olson.”
The little doctor appeared on the deck bearing a large bottle of
whisky and a tumbler. First he filled the glass full and poured it
down the negro’s gaping mouth, then served Garvin in the same way. The
negro grew calmer as the stimulant took hold. He examined the rope
with which he was imprisoned and seemed to realize his situation.
“Say, boss, ah ain’t done nuffin. What yah got me in heah foh?” he
said in a rational tone of voice. “Lemme out, kain’t yah? Ah’m awri’.”
“Let him go,” said Brack.
The two seamen let go the rope and the black fell forward. Garvin
waved his hands at the sea.
“That’s where you’ll go, Smoke—overboard in pieces.”
The negro was crouched against the wheel-house, rubbing his hands on
his thighs, his small red eyes feasting on the pugilist, a stream of
profanity flowing in low tones from his lips.
“Dah he be, Sam, dah he be,” he whispered. “Dah deh white —— what bit
you eah. Got you eah, got you eah! What yah goin’ do ’bout it, what
yah goin’ do, what you goin’ do?” His words came swifter and swifter;
he crouched lower, his hands moved more rapidly. “Goin’ kill ’im,
goin’ kill ’im, kill ’im—kill ’im. Ow!”
With such a howl as belonged in no human throat, he launched himself,
a ball of black bounding across the deck, straight at Garvin. He came
head down, like a bull charging, and, Garvin side-stepping, he plunged
head and shoulders between two rods of the port railing, where he
stuck.
Chanler laughed drily.
“Not so bad, cappy,” he drawled. “It promises to be amusing, really.”
Garvin fell upon the negro before the latter had freed himself. He
caught one of the black’s hands, drew it upward, and bent the arm over
the rail till it threatened to snap or tear out the muscles at the
shoulders.
“No,” said Brack in the same tone he had used on Madigan in Taylor’s
saloon. “No more of that, Garvin.”
The pugilist, his brutality warming with the work in hand, looked up,
a leer of contempt on his face.
“You will let go of his arm, Garvin,” said Brack.
The fighter obeyed, releasing his hold reluctantly, but he obeyed
nevertheless. The black thrust himself free of the rail and faced his
tormentor.
“Get hold ob ’im, Sammy; get hold ob ’im!” he whispered loudly, and
moved toward Garvin with slow shuffling steps.
Garvin waited until the instant when the negro had planned the final
spring, then his fist flashed up from below his knees and the black
fell like a thrown sack of grain against the wheel-house.
“By Jove!” said Chanler. “Your man Garvin is really promising, Brack.
Ha! The nigger’s no cripple, either.”
Black Sam had come to his feet with a spring. Again began his slow,
determined advance upon Garvin, again Garvin’s fist flew out and the
negro dropped with a thud.
This happened four times, and the negro was red from the neck up. The
fifth time his small round head dropped suddenly as Garvin launched
another terrific blow. The fist and black poll met with a sharp crack.
The negro was flung back on his haunches, but Garvin grasped his right
hand and swore futilely. Garvin looked up at the bridge, holding forth
his hand.
“Hey! Call ’im off; take a look at me meathook!” he shouted.
“You still have your feet,” said Brack.
The fight raged again. Garvin was on his back now, kicking furiously.
At last a kick favored him; he knocked the negro down. But this was
his undoing, for Black Sam in falling landed full length upon Garvin,
and in an instant his short, thick fingers had closed upon the white
man’s throat.
After awhile Brack gave a signal to Mr. Riordan, the chief engineer,
who was standing below. Without any hurry or excitement, Riordan
walked over and kicked the negro in the temple. The stunned black
released his hold. With another kick Riordan lifted him clear off
Garvin.
Brack turned toward Chanler.
“Well, are they worth keeping?”
“Oh, I s’pose so,” said Chanler, yawning as he rose. “Rather amusing.
Suit yourself, cappy.”
“Come ’long, Gardy,” said Chanler, leading the way off the bridge. He
chuckled a little pointing back toward the combatants. “Conceited
scum, those. Fighting men. Bad men. Be interesting to see Brack make
’em behave.”
“Chanler,” I said, “do you mean to tell me that you found any pleasure
watching that bestial fight?”
“Pleasure? Pleasure, Gardy? Ha! It’s a long time since I’ve met the
lady, m’boy. But a chap’s got to do what he can to keep from being
bored. They did it—a little. I’m bored now. Do something, Gardy, say
something. Hang it, man; can’t you do as much for me as those two
brutes? Simmons! Some other togs, please. These I’ve got on make me
dopy.”
He strode down into the cabin, forgetting me absolutely in this new
evanescent whim.
V
I stepped to the port rail and bared my head to the young Spring
breeze. I was disgusted. The sense of something uncleanly seemed to
cling to me from the spectacle on the fore-deck and I was grateful for
the antiseptic feel of the wind with its pure odors.
“Pretty raw, wasn’t it, Mr. Pitt?”
I looked up and saw Pierce, the young wireless operator, standing
beside me.
“Yep. I feel that way about it, too,” he went on. “Not that I’ve got
anything against seeing a good battle any time, ’cause I was raised
back o’ the Yards in Chicago, and no more need be said. But that—that
go forward, that was too raw. Garvin, he’s a sure ’nough pug—he stayed
ten rounds with Sharkey once when Tom was starting, but the poor stew
was about ready to have the ‘willies’; and the poor dinge was seeing
snakes. Naw, it was too raw. Ear-eating and that kind of stuff. They
hadn’t ought to have matched ’em. They couldn’t put up half a battle,
the shape they was.”
“I didn’t object to it on those grounds,” I said, and as I looked at
his merry, freckled face I was forced to smile. “Though I can
appreciate your artistic disapproval. It disgusted me because it was
so useless and brutal.”
“That’s what I said,” he responded promptly. “It was useless, because
it wasn’t half a go, and brutal because they wasn’t in shape to stand
the punishment.”
“We are slightly apart in our view-points, I am afraid, Mr. Pierce.”
“But you’re with me that it was bum match-making?”