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A MAN TO HIS MATE
[Illustration: The sea struck the opposite rail with a roar]
A Man to His Mate
_by_
J. ALLAN DUNN
AUTHOR OF
Jim Morse--Adventurer, Turquoise Canyon,
Dead Man's Gold, etc.
_Illustrated by_
STOCKTON MULFORD
INDIANAPOLIS
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
COPYRIGHT 1920
THE FRANK A. MUNSEY COMPANY
COPYRIGHT 1920
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
_Printed in the United States of America_
PRESS OF
BRAUNWORTH & CO.
BOOK MANUFACTURERS
BROOKLYN. N. Y.
_To_
J. E. DE RUYTER, ESQUIRE
this yarn is affectionately and
appreciatively dedicated
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I BLIND SAMSON 1
II A DIVIDED COMPANY 25
III TARGET PRACTISE 47
IV THE BOWHEAD 73
V RAINEY SCORES 82
VI SANDY SPEAKS 96
VII RAINEY MAKES DECISION 117
VIII TAMADA TALKS 132
IX THE POT SIMMERS 151
X THE SHOW-DOWN 163
XI HONEST SIMMS 186
XII DEMING BREAKS AN ARM 210
XIII THE RIFLE CARTRIDGES 230
XIV PEGGY SIMMS 241
XV SMOKE 266
XVI THE MIGHT OF NIPPON 277
XVII MY MATE 293
XVIII LUND'S LUCK 332
A Man to His Mate
CHAPTER I
BLIND SAMSON
It was perfect weather along the San Francisco water-front, and Rainey
reacted to the brisk touch of the trade-wind upon his cheek, the breeze
tempering the sun, bringing with it a tang of the open sea and a hint of
Oriental spices from the wharves. He whistled as he went, watching a
lumber coaster outward bound. The dull thump of a heavy cane upon the
timbered walk and the shuffle of uncertain feet warned him from
blundering into a man tapping his way along the Embarcadero, a giant who
halted abruptly and faced him, leaning on the heavy stick.
"Matey," asked the giant, "could you put a blind man in the way of
finding the sealin' schooner _Karluk_?"
The voice fitted its owner, Rainey thought--a basso voice tempered to
the occasion, a deep-sea voice that could bellow above the roar of a
gale if needed. For all his shoregoing clothes and shuffle, the man was
certainly a sailor, or had been. All the skin uncovered by cloth or hair
was weathered to leather, the great hands curled in as if they clutched
an invisible rope. He wore dark glasses with side lenses, over which
heavy brows projected in shaggy wisps of red hair.
Blind as the man proclaimed himself with voice and action, Rainey sensed
something back of those colored glasses that seemed to be appraising
him, almost as if the will of the man was peering, or listening, focused
through those listless sockets. A kind of magnetism, not at all
attractive, Rainey decided, even as he offered help and information.
"You're not fifty yards from the _Karluk_," Rainey replied. "But you're
bound in the wrong direction. Let me put you right. I'm going that way
myself."
"That's kind of ye, matey," said the other. "But I picked ye for that
sort, hearin' you whistlin' as you came swingin' along. Light-hearted, I
thinks, an' young, most likely; he'll help a stranded man. Give me the
touch of yore arm, matey, an' I'll stow this spar of mine."
He swung about, slinging the curving handle of the stick over his right
elbow as the fingers of his left hand placed themselves on Rainey's
proffered arm. Strong fingers, almost vibrant with a force manifest
through serge and linen. Fingers that could grip like steel upon
occasion.
Rainey wonderingly sized up his consort. The stranger's bulk was
enormous. Rainey was well over the average himself, but he was only a
stripling beside this hulk, this stranded hulk, of manhood. And, for all
the spectacled eyes and shuffling feet, there was a stamp of coordinated
strength about the giant that bespoke the blind Samson. Given eyes,
Rainey could imagine him agile as a panther, strong as a bear.
His weight was made up of thews and sinews, spare and solid flesh
without an ounce of waste, upon a mighty skeleton. His face was
heavy-bearded in hair of flaming, curling red, from high cheek-bones
down out of sight below the soft loose collar of his shirt. The bridge
of his glasses rested on the outcurve of a nose like the beak of an
osprey, the ends of the wires looped about ears that lay close to the
head, hairy about the inner-curves, lobeless, the tips suggesting the
ear-tips of a satyr.
Mouth and jaw were hidden, but the beard could not deny the bold
projection of the latter. About thirty, Rainey judged him. Buffeted by
time and weather, but in the prime of his strength.
"Snow-blinded, matey," said the man. "North o' Point Barrow, a year an'
more ago. Brought me up all standin'. What are you? Steamer man? Purser,
maybe?"
"Newspaperman," answered Rainey. "Water-front detail. For the _Times_."
"You don't say so, matey? A writer, eh?"
Again Rainey felt the tug of that something back of the dark lenses,
some speculation going on in the man's mind concerning him. And he felt
the firm fingers contract ever so slightly, sinking into the muscles of
his forearm for a second with a hint of how they could bruise and
paralyze at will. Once more a faint sense of revulsion fought with his
natural inclination to aid the handicapped mariner, and he shook it off.
"The _Karluk_ sails to-morrow," he said.
"Aye, so--so they told me, matey. You've bin aboard?"
"I had a short talk with Captain Simms when she docked. Not much of a
yarn. She didn't have a good trip, you know."
"Why, I didn't know. But--hold hard a minnit, will ye? You see, Simms is
an old shipmate of mine. He don't dream I'm within a hundred miles o'
here. Aye, or a thousand." He gave a deep-chested chuckle. "Now, then,
matey, look here."
Rainey was anchored by the compelling grip. They stood next to the slip
in which the sealer lay. The _Karluk's_ decks were deserted, though
there was smoke coming from the galley stovepipe.
"Simms is likely to be aboard," went on the other. "Ye see, I know his
ways. An' I've come a long trip to see him. Nigh missed him. Only got in
from Seattle this mornin'. He ain't expectin' me, an' it's in my mind to
surprise him. By way of a joke. I don't want to be announced, ye see.
Just drop in on him. How's the deck? Clear?"
"No one in sight," said Rainey.
"Fine! Mates an' crew down the Barb'ry Coast, I reckon. Sealers have
liberties last shore-day. Like whalers. I've buried a few irons myself,
matey, but I'll never sight the vapor of a right whale ag'in. Stranded,
I am. So you'll do me a favor, matey, an' pilot me down into the cabin,
if so be the skipper's there. If he ain't, I'll wait for him. I've got
the right an' run o' the _Karluk's_ cabin. I know ev'ry inch of her.
You'll see when we go aboard. Let's go."
Rainey led him down the gangway to the deck of the sealer, still
cluttered a bit with unstowed gear. Once on board, the blind man seemed
to walk with assurance, guiding himself with touches here and there that
showed his familiarity with the vessel's rig. And he no longer shuffled,
but walked lightly, grinning at Rainey through his beard, with one blunt
forefinger set to his mouth as he approached the cabin skylight, lifted
on the port side. Through it came the murmur of voices. The blind man
nodded in satisfaction and widened his grin with a warning "hush-h" to
his guide.
"We'll fool 'em proper," he lipped rather than uttered.
The companion doors were closed, but they opened noiselessly. The stairs
were carpeted with corrugated rubber that muffled all sound. Two men sat
at the cabin table, leaning forward, hands and forearms outstretched,
fingering something. One Rainey recognized as the captain, Simms--a
heavy, square-built man, gray-haired, clean-shaven, his flesh tanned,
yet somehow unhealthy, as if the bronze was close to tarnishing. There
were deep puffs under the gray tired eyes.
The other was younger, tall, nervously active, with dark eyes and a dark
mustache and beard, the latter trimmed to a Vandyke. Between them was a
long slim sack of leather, a miner's poke. It was half full of something
that stuffed its lower extremity solid, without doubt the same substance
that glistened in the mouth of the sack and the palms of the two
men--gold--coarse dust of gold!
Rainey felt himself thrust to one side as the blind man straddled across
the bottom of the companionway, towering in the cabin while he thrust
his stick with a thump on the floor and thundered, in a bellow that
seemed to fill the place and come tumbling back in deafening echo:
"_Karluk_ ahoy!"
The face of Captain Simms paled, the tan turned to a sickly gray, and
his jaw dropped. Rainey saw fear come into his eyes. His companion did
not stir a muscle except for the quick shift of his glance, but went on
sitting at the table, the gold in one palm, the fingers of his other
hand resting on the grains.
"Jim Lund!" gasped the captain hoarsely.
"That's me, you skulking sculpin? Thought I was bear meat by this,
didn't you, blast yore rotten soul to hell! But I'm back, Bill Simms.
Back, an' this time you don't slip me!"
Jim Lund's face was purple-red with rage, great veins standing out upon
it so swollen that it seemed they must surely burst and discharge their
congested contents. Out of the purpling flesh his scarlet hair curled in
diabolical effect. His teeth gleamed through his beard, strong, yellow,
far apart. He looked, Rainey thought, like a blind Berserker, restrained
only by his affliction.
"You left me blind on the floe, Bill Simms!" he roared. "Blind, in a
drivin' blizzard with the ice breakin' up! If I didn't have use for
yore carcass I'd twist yore head from yore scaly body like I'd pull up a
carrot."
Lund's fingers opened and closed convulsively. Before Rainey the vision
of the threatened crime rose clear.
"I looked for you, Jim," pleaded the captain, and to Rainey his words
lacked conviction. "I didn't know you were blind. I heard you shout just
before the blizzard broke loose."
Lund answered with an inarticulate roar.
"And there's others present, Jim. I can explain it to you when we're by
ourselves. When you're a mite calmer, Jim."
Lund banged his stick down on the table with a smashing blow that made
the man with the Vandyke beard, still silent, keenly observant, draw
back his arm with a catlike swiftness that only just evaded the stroke.
The heavy wood landed fairly on the filled half of the poke and caused
some of the gold to leap out of the mouth.
[Illustration: "What's that I hit?" asked Lund]
"What's that I hit?" asked Lund. "Soft, like a rat." He lunged forward,
felt for the poke, and found it, lifted it, hefted it, his forehead
puckered with deep seams, discovered the open end, poured out some of
the colors on one palm, and used that for a mortar, grinding at the
grains with his finger for a pestle, still weighing the stuff with a
slight up-and-down movement of his hand.
He nodded as he slipped the poke into a side pocket, and the cabin grew
very silent. Lund's face was grimly terrible. Rainey could have gone
when the blind man reached for the gold and left the ladder clear. He
had meant to go at the first opportunity, but now he was held fascinated
by what was about to happen, and Lund stepped back across the
companionway.
"So," said Lund, his deep voice muffled by some swift restraint. "You
found it. And yo're going back after more?" His forehead was still
creased with puzzlement. "Wal, I'm going with ye, eyes or no eyes, an'
I'll keep tabs on ye, Bill Simms, by day and night. You can lay to that,
you slimy-hearted swab!"
His voice had risen again. Rainey saw the sweat standing out on the
captain's forehead as he answered:
"Of course you'll come, Jim. No need for you to talk this way."
"No need to talk! By the eternal, what I've got to say's bin steamin' in
me for fourteen months o' blackness, an' it's comin' out, now it's
started! Who's this man, who was talkin' with ye when I come aboard?"
He wheeled directly toward the man with the Vandyke, who still sat
motionless, apparently calm, looking on as if at a play that might turn
out to be either comedy or tragedy.
"That's Doctor Carlsen. He's to be surgeon this trip, Jim," said Simms
deprecatingly, though he darted a look at Rainey half suspicious, half
resentful.
Rainey, on the hint, turned toward the ladder quietly enough, but Lund
had nipped him by the biceps before Rainey had taken a step.
"You'll stay right here," said Lund, "while I tell you an' this Doc
Carlsen what kind of a man Simms is, with his poke full of gold and me
with the price of my last meal spent two hours ago. I won't spin out the
yarn.
"I rescued an Aleut off a bit of a berg one time. There warn't much of
him left to rescue. Hands an' feet an' nose was frozen so he lost 'em,
but the pore devil was grateful, an' he told me something. Told about an
island north of Bering Strait, west of Kotzebue Sound, where there was
gold on the beach richer and thicker than it ever lay at Nome. I makes
for it, gits close enough for my Aleut to recognize it--it ain't an easy
place to forget for one who has eyes--an' then we're blown south, an' we
git into ice an' trouble. The Aleut dies, an' I lose my ship. But I was
close enough to get the reckonin' of that island.
"Finally I land at Seattle, broke. I meet up with the man they call
Hardluck Simms. Also they called him Honest Simms those days. Some said
his honesty accounted for his hard luck. I like him, an' I finally tell
him about my island. I put up the reckonin', an' he supplies the
_Karluk_, grub, an' crew.
"Simms' luck is still ag'in' him. The _Karluk_ gits into ice, gits
nipped an' carried north, 'way north, with wind an' current, frozen
tight in a floe. It looks like we've got to winter there. Mind ye, I've
given Honest Simms the reckonin' of the island. We go out on the ice
after bear, though the weather's threatenin', for we're short of meat.
An' we kill a Kadiak bear. Me--I'll never stand for the shootin' of
another bear if I can stop it.
"I've bin havin' trouble with my eyes. Right along. I'm on the floe not
eighty yards from Simms. No, not sixty! It was me killed the bear, an'
we're goin' back to the schooner for a sled. I stayed behind to bleed
the brute. All of a sudden, like it always hits you, snow-blindness gits
me, an' I shouts to Honest Simms. I'm blind, with my eyeballs on fire,
an' the fire burnin' back inter my brain.
"Along comes a Point Arrow blister. That's a gale that breeds an' bursts
of a second out of nowhere. It gathers up all the loose snow an' ice
crystals an' drives 'em in a whirlwind. Presently the wind starts the
ice to buckin' an' tremblin' like a jelly under you, splitting inter
lanes. You lose yore direction even when you got eyes. I'm left in it by
that bilge-blooded skunk, blind on the rockin', breakin' floe, while he
scuds back to the schooner with his men. That's Honest Simms! Jim Lund's
left behind but Honest Simms has the position of the island."
"I didn't hear you call out you were blind, Lund. The wind blew your
words away. I didn't know but what you were as right as the rest of us.
The gale shut us all out from each other. We found the schooner by sheer
luck before we perished. We looked for you--but the floe was broken up.
We looked--"
"Shut up!" bellowed Lund. "You sailed inside of twenty-four hours,
Honest Simms. The natives told me so later, when I could understand talk
ag'in. D'ye know what saved me? The bear! I stumbled over the carcass
when I was nigh spent. I ripped it up and clawed some of the warm guts,
an' climbed inside the bloody body an' stayed there till it got cold an'
clamped down over me. Waitin' for you to come an' git me, Honest Simms!
"That bear was bed and board to me until the natives found it, an' me in
it, more dead than alive. Never mind the rest. I get here the day before
you start back for more gold.
"An' I'm goin' with you. But first I'm goin' to have a full an' fair
accountin' o' what you got already. I've got this young chap with me,
an' he'll give me a hand to'ard a square deal."
Lund propelled Rainey forward a few steps and then loosened his grip.
The captain of the _Karluk_ appealed to him directly.
"You're with the _Times_," he said. All through the talk Rainey was
conscious of the gaze of Doctor Carlsen, whose dark eyes appeared to be
mocking the whole proceedings, looking on with the air of a man watching
card-play with a prevision of how the game will come out.
"Mr. Lund is unstrung," said the captain. "He is under the delusion that
we deliberately deserted him and, later, found the gold he speaks of.
The first charge is nonsense. We did all that was possible in the
frightful weather. We barely saved the ship.
"As for the gold, we touched on the island, and we did some prospecting,
a very little, before we were driven offshore. The dust in the poke is
all we secured. We are going back for more, quite naturally. I can prove
all this to you by the log. It is manifestly not doctored, for we
imagined Mr. Lund dead. If we had been able to work the beach
thoroughly, nothing would tempt me into going back again to add to even
a moderate fortune."
Lund had been standing with his great head thrust forward as if
concentrating all his remaining senses in an attempt to judge the
captain's talk. The doctor sat with one leg crossed, smoking a
cigarette, his expression sardonic, sphinxlike. To Rainey, a little
bewildered at being dragged into the affair, and annoyed at it, Captain
Simms' words rang true enough. He did not know what to say, whether to
speak at all. Lund supplied the gap.
"If that ain't the truth, you lie well, Simms," he said. "But I don't
trust ye. You lie when you say you didn't hear me call out I was blind.
Sixty yards away, I was, an' the wind hadn't started. I was afraid--yes,
afraid--an' I yelled at the top of my lungs. An' you sailed off inside
of twenty-four hours."
"Driven off."
"I don't believe ye. You deserted me--left me blind, tucked in the
bloody, freezin' carcass of a bear. Left me like the cur you are. Why,
you--"
The rising frenzy of Lund's voice was suddenly broken by the clear note
of a girl's voice. One of two doors in the after-end of the main cabin
had opened, and she stood in the gap, slim, yellow-haired, with gray
eyes that blazed as they looked on the little tableau.
"Who says my father is a cur?" she demanded. "You?" And she faced Lund
with such intrepid challenge in her voice, such stinging contempt, that
the giant was silenced.
"I was dressing," she said, "or I would have come out before. If you say
my father deserted you, you lie!"
Captain Simms turned to her. Doctor Carlsen had risen and moved toward
her. Rainey wished he was on the dock. Here was a story breaking that
was a _saga_ of the North. He did not want to use it, somehow. The
girl's entrance, her vivid, sudden personality forbade that. He felt an
intruder as her eyes regarded him, standing by Lund's side in apparent
sympathy with him, arrayed against her father. And yet he was not
certain that Lund had not been betrayed. The remembrance of the first
look in the captain's face when he had glanced up from handling the gold
and seen Lund was too keen.
"Go into your cabin, Peggy," said the captain. "This is no place for
you. I can handle the matter. Lund has cause for excitement; but I can
satisfy him."
Lund stood frozen, like a pointer on scent, all his faculties united in
attention toward the girl. To Rainey he seemed attempting to visualize
her by sheer sense of hearing, by perceptions quickened in the blind.
The doctor crossed to the girl and spoke to her in a low voice.
Lund spoke, and his voice was suddenly mild.
"I didn't know there was a lady present, miss," he said. "Yore father's
right. You let us settle this. We'll come to an agreement."
But, for all his swift change to placability, there was a sinister
undertone to his voice that the girl seemed to recognize. She hesitated
until her father led her back into the cabin.
"You two'll sit down?" said the doctor, speaking aloud for the first
time, his voice amiable, carefully neutral. "And we'll have a drop of
something. Mr. Lund, I can understand your attitude. You've suffered a
great deal. But you have misunderstood Captain Simms. I have heard about
this from him, before. He has no desire to cheat you. He is rejoiced to
see you alive, though afflicted. He is still Honest Simms, Mr. Lund.
"I haven't your name, sir," he went on pleasantly, to Rainey. "The
captain said you were a newspaperman?"
"John Rainey, of the _Times_. I knew nothing of this before I came
aboard."
"And you will understand, of course, what Mr. Lund overlooked in his
natural agitation, that this is not a story for your paper. We should
have a fleet trailing us. We must ask your confidence, Mr. Rainey."
There was a strong personality in the doctor, Rainey realized. Not the
blustering, driving force of Lund, but a will that was persistent,
powerful. He did not like the man from first appearances. He was too
aloof, too sardonic in his attitudes. But his manner was friendly
enough, his voice compelling in its suggestion that Rainey was a man to
be trusted. Captain Simms came back into the cabin, closing the door of
his daughter's room.
"We are going to have a little drink together," said the doctor. "I
have some Scotch in my cabin. If you'll excuse me for a moment? Captain,
will you get some glasses, and a chair for Mr. Lund?"
The captain looked at Rainey a little uncertainly, and then at Lund,
whose aggressiveness seemed to have entirely departed. It was Rainey who
got the chair for the latter and seated himself. He would join in a
friendly drink and then be well shut of the matter, he told himself.
And he would promise not to print the story, or talk of it. That was
rotten newspaper craft, he supposed, but he was not a first-class man,
in that sense. He let his own ethics interfere sometimes with his pen
and what the paper would deem its best interests. And this was a whale
of a yarn.
But it was true that its printing would mean interference with the
_Karluk's_ expedition. And there was the girl. Rainey was not going to
forget the girl. If the _Karluk_ ever came back? But then she would be
an heiress.
Rainey pulled himself up for a fool at the way his thoughts were racing
as the doctor came back with a bottle of Scotch whisky and a siphon. The
captain had set out glasses and a pitcher of plain water from a rack.
"I imagine you'll be the only one who'll take seltzer, Mr. Rainey," said
the doctor pleasantly, passing the bottle. "Captain Simms, I know, uses
plain water. Siphons are scarce at sea. I suppose Mr. Lund does the
same. And I prefer a still drink."
"Plain water for mine," said Lund.
"We're all charged," said the doctor. "Here's to a better
understanding!"
"Glad to see you aboard, Mr. Rainey," said the captain.
Lund merely grunted.
Rainey took a long pull at his glass. The cabin was hot, and he was
thirsty. The seltzer tasted a little flat--or the whisky was of an
unusual brand, he fancied. And then inertia suddenly seized him. He lost
the use of his limbs, of his tongue, when he tried to call out. He saw
the doctor's sardonic eyes watching him as he strove to shake off a
lethargy that swiftly merged into dizziness.
Dimly he heard the scrape of the captain's chair being pushed back. From
far off he heard Lund's big voice booming, "Here, what's this?" and the
doctor's cutting in, low and eager; then he collapsed, his head falling
forward on his outstretched arms.