The smoke of the guns of both ships so hung upon the air that Chris
counted on its heavy curtain to screen him from his enemies. He swam
to the far side of the attacking vessel and there forced his magic
knife for the second time against the side of the _Vulture_.
He was treading water, holding to a rope that dangled over the side of
the ship when, with no interior tremor of warning, a cut that he
almost thought had penetrated to the bone lashed across his shoulders
narrowly missing his left ear. Without stopping to think Chris took
half a breath and submerged as deeply as he could go, hearing above
him, even through the sounds of the battle and the wavering water, the
"fleck!" of Claggett Chew's metal-tipped whip as it hit the water
where he had been only a second before. Chris would have dived under
the great barnacled hull of the _Vulture_ then and there, to come up
on the other side, but good swimmer though he was, he was unsure that
he could hold even a full breath for so long a dive. Added to this, he
had had no time to do more than gasp a momentary breath of air, and
even as he rose to the surface with bursting lungs, he saw the figure
of a man leap into the water from the side of the _Vulture_.
Before the bubbles of the man's descent had had time to disappear, the
most dreaded of all sights for a swimmer showed itself above the
water. It was the sinister triangle of a shark's-fin cutting the
surface of the sea as it advanced with terrifying speed to where Chris
gazed, almost paralyzed with horror.
Thrusting the knife into the pouch at his neck, Chris took the shape
of a dolphin and plunged deeply, even as the infuriated shark was
carried over and beyond him by its own impetus before it could turn.
But turn it did, with lightning speed, and Chris knew he had no
protection against that murderous underslung jaw racked above and
below with deadly teeth.
The shark, in one long powerful movement, had turned and gone under
the dolphin, which now raced upward from the dim, lightless depths of
the sea to the surface where it hoped to escape. The shark turned on
its back with a motion at once lazy and sickening in its assurance of
its prey. Its soft greenish-white belly glimmered slimily in the sea,
its frightful jaws open as it came almost languidly up through the
water, certain of snapping its adversary in half.
But in that one moment when it turned belly uppermost, its eyes were
unable to watch its goal, and in that moment the dolphin made a
desperate leap from the water and a sea bird soared into the air.
The sea bird had no more than wheeled to sight the shark below, when a
scream from the air above it made it instantly drop and shift to one
side as a hawk, talons spread and eyes red with hatred, plunged down
from a great height, its beak open to seize and to rend.
The sea bird, veering away on the wind, became a fly, but the hawk
instantly vanished to be replaced by a bat, which darted after the fly
with such velocity that it was the current of air from its wings that
drove the fly closer to the pirate ship.
[Illustration]
With a despairing effort, the fly flew directly into the smoke of the
battle, and at that moment a mouse hid in a corner near an overturned
cask shaking in all its limbs, its pointed teeth chattering with
fright. Finally regaining its breath, it ventured to look around the
corner. All seemed serene to the mouse, who saw no shadow of danger,
although sounds of battle still ebbed and flowed on the deck below it,
crisscrossed by shouts and orders, screams and groans, as the pirates
and the sailors of the _Mirabelle_ doggedly fought on. The mouse
wished to retake its own shape and continue its work with the magic
knife which had been interrupted, it thought, too soon to have done
any good. At last it decided to run along the deck near Claggett
Chew's cabin. From there it hoped to reach the side of the ship
nearest to the _Mirabelle_.
As it slipped from its hiding place and began its run, it realized too
late its mistake, and panic almost overcame it. For a cat had been
crouched behind it and now gave a mighty pounce. One outstretched paw
came down on the mouse's tail, but the mouse wrenched it free and
desperate and panting, dashed into the first opening it saw.
[Illustration]
This proved to be no less than Claggett Chew's cabin, the door of
which had been left open so that Osterbridge Hawsey could watch the
fight with the least possible discomfort. He sat, somnolent, in a
comfortable chair, his long legs stretched out before him, smoking a
clay pipe. His attention wandering, as it so often did, he failed to
see the mouse who ran under his legs into the shadow beneath them.
The frantic mouse now determined, in the seconds left to it for
decision, to attempt a bold move. In a flash--in fact, as a black cat
with angry yellow-slitted eyes put its head around the door jamb--a
jade-green parakeet with red and yellow breast feathers hopped onto
Osterbridge Hawsey's ankle, and with a speed tempered by its most
engaging ways, sidled up Osterbridge Hawsey's outstretched leg.
The yellow-eyed cat made a dash with both clawing paws outstretched to
fall upon the bird, but the parakeet fluttered into the air out of
reach and came down higher up on Osterbridge Hawsey's knee.
Osterbridge, startled from his daydream, shooed away the cat and got
up precipitously enough to give it a kick which sent it miaowling from
the cabin. Osterbridge, vastly pleased to see his green parakeet
again, was wreathed in smiles.
"Ah, now!" he exclaimed, holding out a condescending finger, "Petit
Monsieur back again! How too simply enchanting! Just when poor
Osterbridge was _so_ bored and had no one to talk to! Well, my
pretty--" and both Osterbridge and the parakeet cocked their heads at
one another--"and where have _you_ been, I wonder?"
Osterbridge examined the little bird perched on his finger and his
eyes were thoughtful. "It is true, you have a tiny mark at the side of
your jaw--if parakeets have jaws, my friend. But there is no such
thing as magic. Not the kind of magic whereby a human can be something
else!"
He broke into peals of high laughter. "What a joke if it were
possible! Now what could _I_ be, eh?"
He looked fondly at the bird and the bird looked back at him, daring
to open its beak and emit a small but clear "Haw!"
"Haw yourself!" returned Osterbridge in high good humor. He leaned
back in his chair.
"Now, all this is a most _engaging_ train of thought," he pursued. "If
I could change myself, _what_ should I be?"
He fell to musing, and as he did so the dreaded shadow Chris had
anticipated fell across the doorway. A moment later Claggett Chew,
limping from an old wound and a newly received bruise, stood in the
entrance.
Osterbridge Hawsey yawned. "Ah--there you are at last, Claggett," he
said, "Battle all over? It still sounds _rather_ ferocious, to me. But
of course I am no expert. Heaven forbid!" Osterbridge ended, rolling
his eyes toward the ceiling with his vague smile.
As Claggett Chew did not reply, Osterbridge looked back at him. The
pirate's eyes were fixed on the parakeet, and his twitching fingers
played with the steel-tipped whip. Claggett Chew's voice when it came
was as sharp and as cold as a dagger in a dead man.
"I will have that bird, Osterbridge," he said.
Osterbridge's expression did not change but his eyes did, and they
became almost as icy as Claggett Chew's.
"Oh no, you will not, Claggett," he said, and his high-pitched voice
managed to be saturated with sarcasm. "This is the one thing that is
keeping me from _unutterable_ boredom, while you go into your
interminable fight." He paused to give Claggett Chew a cutting look.
"You know how I feel about piracy--too terribly degrading, though I
can see it has its excitement and rewards. But it _is_ unnecessary--"
Claggett Chew's eyes had a way of not blinking. They held a crocodile
fixity. His tone, when he spoke again, did not vary. "I am not a
trader, Osterbridge. Nor shall I bandy words with you on this subject.
Give me that bird, or I shall take it from you!"
[Illustration]
Osterbridge Hawsey rose with a slow grace from his chair, his hand
curled gently but protectingly around his parakeet.
"Claggett," he said in his thin voice that cut now with the unexpected
thinness of paper, "I am sorry to say such a thing to you, but your
fever during the weeks just past has undoubtedly altered your brain.
You are a madman, Claggett." Osterbridge Hawsey removed himself with
deliberation from the proximity of the doorway, placing himself on the
other side of the cabin table over which hung the swinging lamp. He
did not turn his back to Claggett Chew nor take his eyes from him.
[Illustration]
"Kindly leave the room, Claggett," he went on, in too quiet a voice to
be otherwise than poisonous, "until you are more yourself. Your
conduct and tone are unbecoming to a gentleman," Osterbridge said,
with his head held high in disdainful dignity.
They were an extraordinary sight. The shaven-headed, clay-faced pirate
looming so high and so huge in the doorway that he filled it
altogether, his clothes torn, filthy and stained from the battle and
from careless weeks at sea. His companion was a travesty of his
onetime elegance, dirty lace ruffles spotted by forgotten meals, his
velvet coat marked by chairbacks and soiled from months of constant
wear, his hair unwashed and sleazily caught back, no longer curled
with a fine exactitude. Both men had been housed together for too
long. Long ago they had exhausted all topics of conversation, their
two difficult personalities had for months been festering, each at the
sight of the other.
Now Claggett Chew ground out between his clenched teeth: "You are a
fool, Osterbridge. Have always been one and will so remain. Do you
defy me and do not give up that bird, as hell is my witness I shall
snatch it from you with this whip, and nothing shall stop me!"
Osterbridge reached behind him with his right hand, holding the
parakeet in an increasingly uncomfortable and tightening grip in his
left. On the wall behind him hung his rapier in its scabbard,
delicately incised and showing the fine workmanship of its French
origin. With a quick, deft movement, Osterbridge's fingers had found
the hilt and drawn the rapier out, his face snarling, his eyes
expressionless. They were fixed on Claggett Chew who had not moved
from where he leaned against the side of the doorway.
Osterbridge Hawsey's voice was almost more frightening when he spoke
again than Claggett Chew's, as he slowly brought the rapier to his
side with quiet calculated gestures.
"I have had enough of your ordering, Claggett. You may order your
scurvy men about as you wish--half-wits, rascals, thieves and
murderers who know no better than to do your bidding, knowing they may
well die by your hands as by some other. But you have met your match.
I, Osterbridge Hawsey, shall not give in to a madman and a murdering
pillager. How I ever came to join you or your pirates God alone knows,
but you shall not govern me! Nor shall you have one object that is my
own! _En garde!_" he cried, whisking out the rapier.
As he did so--such is the force and training of habit--his left hand
automatically came up in the first position of the fencer and the
duelist, and as it came up and the fingers slackened about the
parakeet, the long whip lashed out and curled around Osterbridge
Hawsey's hand. The parakeet ducked into encircling fingers,
Osterbridge Hawsey let out a piercing scream, more of rage than of
pain, and opened his hand. The parakeet, liberated, flew straight into
the face of the man with the whip, pecking at it with its sharp beak,
scratching at it with his pin-like claws, and beating its wings in
such confusing fury that the pirate bobbed his head. At the same time
the big man stepped backward, throwing up his left arm in an attempt
either to catch the bird or drive it off.
But the bird's attack lasted for only a moment. Then, as Claggett
Chew's fingers grasped at it, the parakeet was off over his shoulder
and lost in the din and obscurity of the battle. Behind it it heard
the cries of hatred and rage as the pirate and Osterbridge Hawsey
faced one another in the cabin to fight with whip and sword amid the
crash of overturned tables and chairs and the splintering crack of the
lamp and the windowpanes.