The tropic coolness of the night intensified as the hours advanced. An
added freshness swept out from the shore carrying its scent of flowers
and earth. The feasting pirates had evidently fallen asleep over their
food and empty wine mugs, for they did not return.
With a growing sense of uneasiness, Chris cautiously brought his head
out from under his jade-green wing. He had had for the past hour the
eerie feeling of being stared at, and he pecked at his scarlet and
yellow breast feathers while sending a glance about the cabin.
He knew without having to look, where the source of his uneasiness
lay. Claggett Chew had turned on his right side and fixed him with a
pale, piercing, and unblinking eye. So fixed, it was, that for a
heart-thudding moment Chris imagined his enemy to be dead. But after a
longer pause than usual, the pale heavy lids finally blinked, though
the unwavering eyes did not move from where Chris was perched, as
nonchalantly as he knew how to, on the back of Osterbridge Hawsey's
chair.
The intelligence behind the stare was infinitely keen and resourceful.
Chris, preening himself in a difficult effort to appear what he was
not, knew that if Claggett Chew had not already guessed his disguise,
he was certainly more than suspicious.
Hastily, and with increasing starts of fear that sent the blood
spurting through his veins, Chris cast about in his mind as to how he
could distract Claggett Chew. As a parakeet, he was chained by the
tough silk cord that bound his bird's foot. He glanced down.
Osterbridge Hawsey's now sleeping head lolled like a child's to one
side. Chris eyed the length of the coral silk cord, and then hopped
lightly from the back of the chair to Osterbridge Hawsey's shoulder. A
blink of his parakeet's eyes, from under their gray lids, showed him
that Claggett Chew had him fixed in a penetrating and unwavering
stare. In his role as parakeet, he moved sideways up Osterbridge
Hawsey's shoulder, making for the shelter that the lolling head would
afford to hide him from his enemy's eyes.
As he moved step by step, the parakeet made small low, raucous
noises--not loud enough to awaken Osterbridge Hawsey, but enough, he
hoped, to make him seem a natural creature to the man who watched him
so intently. As he neared Osterbridge Hawsey's neck, seeing the ridge
of collar on which he intended to perch, Chris took heart and with a
last quick effort, climbed the collar to hide behind Osterbridge
Hawsey's head, under the thick cluster of curls tied with what was now
a ratty black bow. He was, in this precarious shelter, about to change
himself into a fly, when a scraping noise froze him with fear. Looking
around Osterbridge's neck he saw that Captain Chew was making
desperate efforts to get out of his berth, and had not taken his eyes
from the place where he had last seen the parakeet. Chris knew in that
moment with what an astute and formidable enemy he was faced.
Paralyzed, he remained in his green and red parakeet feathers watching
the motions of the injured pirate.
Claggett Chew might be suspicious but he was also a fevered and badly
wounded man. From his insecure hiding place, terrified at every
sleeping movement from Osterbridge Hawsey, and even more fearful of
what Claggett Chew intended, Chris stared out as purposefully as
Claggett Chew had only a few moments before.
[Illustration]
The ashen-faced man across the room in the glare of the hanging lamp
heaved and pushed at the sides of the bunk, his eyes brilliant with
high fever; the sweat of illness and strain glistening over his bare
head and colorless face. He ground his teeth at the sudden, almost
intolerable flashes of pain that gripped him when he moved his leg.
Still he persevered, grasped at a corner of the bunk and pushed
himself upright.
If it was possible for his white face to become paler, some last
vestige of color seemed to leave it. Claggett Chew threw up an arm to
catch on something to steady himself, swayed and closed his sunken
eyes. His arm caught the lamp, which, rocking, threw jet shadows as
jagged as its light was harsh. Claggett Chew's prominent broken nose,
and the deeply grooved lines running down from it to the thin lips
under his mustache, changed the cruelty of his face into a brutal
mask. To Chris, he scarcely looked human. He was a picture of all that
was heartless and evil. But holding to the edge of his bunk, weakened
and ill though he was, the power of his will still ruled his body.
He doesn't know when he's licked, Chris thought, and not knowing--he
isn't!
Then, trying to hoist himself upright, Claggett Chew began beckoning
and appealing to Osterbridge Hawsey, and Chris shook at the momentary
possibility that some noise or word would awaken his sleeping hiding
place.
"Osterbridge! Osterbridge!" Claggett Chew cried hoarsely. "Wake up!
Hear me!--Fire take your eyes!" he muttered in his rage, "can you not
rouse? Osterbridge! Osterbridge!"
But after a slight shift in position, Osterbridge Hawsey slept on.
Claggett Chew, his face livid with pain, blood weaving down his chin
where he had bitten his lip in an attempt to stifle his groans,
managed to push himself up and totter to a chair against which he
leaned weakly, calling out again: "Plague your bones! Osterbridge! You
sot! Help me--you sleazy fashionable!"
He started across the few feet of floor separating him from his
friend, and, stooped though he was to adjust his height to the
low-ceilinged cabin, nevertheless his bulk was a terrifying sight as
he stumbled and staggered forward. His hairless head nearly scraped
the ceiling, and his shoulders were as broad across as those of two
men. His hands, white but strong and bony, twitched at the finger ends
as if they were unused to idleness without hurting, or without the
handle of his whip to grasp.
Two steps forward, Chris saw, was all Claggett Chew needed to show him
where the parakeet had gone, snatch him up, and snuff out his life as
a candleflame is pinched between finger and thumb. Chris was tearing
with his beak at the silk cord on his foot, raking at it between every
look he sent towards Claggett Chew. Chris knew that if the pirate
touched Osterbridge Hawsey, or worse, fell, the touch or the noise
would succeed in awakening the heavily sleeping fop and the parakeet,
exposed, would be an easy prey for Claggett Chew.
The Captain of the _Vulture_, sweat rolling down his tortured face,
his eyes starting from their deep-sunk sockets with the strain of
keeping himself on his feet, began roaring at Osterbridge once more.
"Osterbridge! Scummy no-good! _Wake!_ That parrot has a scar on his
jaw such as I once gave a boy! _Osterbridge!_" he roared with a final
terrible effort.
Then everything happened at once. Osterbridge Hawsey was aroused at
last and sat up abruptly, heavy-headed and bleary, thickly asking:
"Claggett! What a _noise_! Cannot a man be allowed to doze in peace?
Where _are_ your manners?"
In the same instant, Claggett Chew reached out to pluck the parakeet
from behind the sheltering head and neck of "the fashionable." Chris,
with a superhuman effort, changed himself to a mouse, tearing his
foot from the frayed cord that held it, and leaped into the air.
Simultaneously, Claggett Chew, overcome by the approaching blackness
he had been fighting, crashed to the floor unconscious.