I climbed to the wireless house and found Freddy Pierce eagerly
looking for my appearance.
“Did you see it?” he demanded. “Did you see it?”
“Brack and Garvin? Yes, I saw it. It was horrible. Is that the way
Brack handles the men of the crew?”
“Na-ah! I should say not. That isn’t his regular system. He don’t need
to touch ’em; he laughs at ’em and scares ’em stiff. He’s got a
fighting grouch on this morning, and Garvin was just something to take
it out on. Poor Garvin! He had to come staggering up and make his play
just after the captain come out of the boss’s cabin boiling mad. Any
other time the cap’ would ’a’ laughed at him so he’d snuck back to his
bunk like a bad little boy.”
“Then what was wrong with the captain this morning?”
Freddy shrugged his shoulders.
“You notice we cut our speed down to a crawl, didn’t you? Well, it
must have been that that gave Brack his grouch. I haven’t quite got it
doped out yet. All I know is, I grab a bunch of words off the air for
the boss, I take him the message, he reads it, smiles, slips me a
double saw-buck for good luck and says: ‘Kindly tell Captain Brack to
step down here at once.’ I do. Captain Brack goes in smiling and comes
out with his eyes showing he’d been made to do something he didn’t
want to do. Bing! He gets Riordan on the engine-room phone. Zowie! He
shouts an order. And then the screw begins easing off little by
little, and pretty soon we’ve stopped running and are walking the way
we are now. Dope: the boss made cappy cut her down, and it made cappy
so sore he burnt Garvin’s face half off to blow off his grouch.”
“But why in the world should Captain Brack grow so angry over that!” I
exclaimed. “Chanler is owner. Certainly it is to be expected that he
can sail where, when and how he pleases.”
“Sure. It got cap’s goat, though.”
“By Captain Brack’s own statement we may have to wait for the Spring
drift-ice to clear when we get up north. Surely there can be no
sensible objection to slow running under the circumstances, especially
as that is the owner’s wish.”
Pierce doubled up, grasping his thin ankles and staring at the floor,
as was his custom when thinking seriously.
“Brack has been hurrying ever since we lay in ’Frisco. Hurried about
the crew; took Wilson because he couldn’t find another officer in a
hurry; and, we ran at maximum all last night after we cleared the
Sound.”
“What of that?”
“That would take us to Petroff Sound just a week before we scheduled.”
“Well?”
“On our schedule time we’d probably have to lay offshore a week before
the ice breaks up so we could go in. Then what would be the sense of
getting there a week ahead of schedule? I saw the log this morning,
too, just after Brack’d written it. He had the night’s run down at
nine knots an hour; we were going better’n twelve. Put your noodle to
working, Mr. Brains. What’s the answer?”
“Apparently Captain Brack wishes to reach Petroff Sound ahead of our
schedule.”
“Without letting the boss know we were going to do it. Yep. Go on.”
“It is impossible for me to guess at what his object may be.”
“Same here, Brains. Brack isn’t doing it just for the fast ride
though, that’s a cinch. Go on.”
“Chanler’s orders to slow down may be ascribed to one of his whims——”
“Huh!” interrupted Freddy. “I wish you were right there.”
“Why?”
“The boss didn’t play up a whim when he cut down our speed. He’d done
some close figuring before he did that.”
“How do you know?”
“I ought to know. I’m operator, ain’t I? I handle his messages, don’t
I? Well, that’s how I know.”
“Then the order to slow down was not due to a whim, but to a message?”
“To the one he got this morning in reply to the one he sent last
night. Yep.”
“There seems, then,” said I, “to be a conflict of interests on board;
Captain Brack wishes to go fast and Mr. Chanler wishes to go slow.”
“Yes,” said Freddy Pierce, scratching his red head, “and if the
captain’s reasons are anything like the boss’s I’ve got a feeling that
you’ll have some —— funny things to write about before we get back
home. What’s more, if one of ’em’s got to have his way about the speed
you can put your money on the captain and cash.”
“Nonsense! Mr. Chanler is the owner.”
“Yes, and Captain Brack is—Brack.”
I recalled what I had heard Brack called back in Billy Taylor’s in
Seattle.
“Pierce,” I said, “how much do you know about Brack?”
He cast a look of disapproval at me.
“You don’t need to ask me that, Brains,” he said. “I got eyes—I can
see you got him sized up, too.”
“You joined the _Wanderer_ in San Francisco two weeks before I did,” I
reminded him. “Surely you know more about the man than I do.”
“Well,” he said, “I know that he’s a devil with men.”
“A masterful personality,” I agreed. “Any one can see that.”
“Yep. But that ain’t what’s worrying me.”
“Worrying? Are you worrying about Brack?”
“Oh, sort of.”
“Why?”
“Why,” he said, as his instrument began to crackle. He turned to take
a message. “Brack’s a devil toward men, but that ain’t a marker to
what he is with women.”