The Max Brand Megapack (10 page)

“For a woman?” repeated McTee, wondering. “Do you mean to say—”

“Tut, man, it’s my granddaughter. Look!”

Perhaps the whisky had loosened the old man’s tongue; perhaps these confidences were merely a tribute to the name and fame of McTee; but whatever was the reason, McTee knew he was hearing things which had never been spoken before. Now Henshaw produced a leather wallet from which he selected two pictures, and handed one to the Scotchman. It showed a little girl of some ten years with her hair braided down her back. McTee looked his question.

“That picture was sent to me by my son ten years ago.”

It showed the effect of time and rough usage. The edges of the cheap portrait were yellow and cracked.

“He was worthless, that son of mine. So I shut him out of my mind until I got a letter saying he was about to die and giving his daughter into my hands. That picture was in the letter. Ah, McTee, how I pored over it! For, you see, I saw the face of my wife in the face of the little girl, Beatrice. She had come back to life in the second generation. I suppose that happens sometimes.

“I made up my mind that night to make a fortune for little Beatrice. First I sold my name and honor to get a half share and captaincy of a small tramp freighter. Then I went to the Solomon Islands. You know what I did there? Yes, the South Seas rang with it. It was brutal, but it brought me money.

“I sent enough of that money to the States to keep the girl in luxury. The rest of it I put back into my trading ventures. I got a larger boat. I did unheard-of things; and everything I touched turned into gold. All into gold!

“From time to time I got letters from Beatrice. First they were careful scrawls which said nothing. Then the handwriting grew more fluent. It alarmed me to notice the growth of her mind; I was afraid that when I finally saw her, she would see in me only a barbarian. So I educated myself in odd hours. I’ve read a book while a hurricane was standing my ship on her beam ends.”

McTee, leaning forward with a frown of almost painful interest, understood. He saw it in the wild light of the old man’s eyes; a species of insanity, this love of the old man for the child he had never seen.

“Notice my language now? Never a taint of the beach lingo in it. I rubbed all that out. Aye, McTee, it took me ten years to educate myself for that girl’s sake. In the meantime, I made money, as I’ve said. Ten years of that!

“Beatrice was in college, and six months ago I got the word that she had graduated. A month later I heard that she was going into a decline. It was nothing very serious, but the doctors feared for the strength of her lungs. It made me glad. Now I knew that she would need me. An old man is like a woman, McTee; he needs to have things dependent on him.

“I turned everything I had into cash. I did it so hurriedly that I must have lost close to twenty per cent on the forced sales. What did I care? I had enough, and I made myself into a grandfather who could meet Beatrice’s educated friends on their own level.

“I kept this old ship, the
Heron
, out of the list of my boats. I am going back to Beatrice with gold in my hands and gold in my brain! All for her. But is she not worth it? Look!”

He thrust the second portrait into McTee’s hands. It showed a rather thin-faced girl with abnormally large eyes and a rather pathetic smile. It was an appealing face rather than a pretty one.

“Beautiful!” said McTee with forced enthusiasm.

“Yes, beautiful! A little pinched, perhaps, but she’ll fill out as she grows older. And those are her grandmother’s eyes! Aye!”

He took the photograph and touched it lightly.

His voice grew lower, and the roughness was plainly a tremolo now: “The doctors say she’s sick, a little sick, quite sick, in fact. Twice every day I make them send me wireless reports of her condition. One day it’s better—one day it’s worse.”

He began to walk the cabin, his step marvelously elastic and nervous for so aged a man.

“Is it not well, McTee? Let her be at death’s door! I shall come to her bedside with gold in either hand and raise her up to life! She shall owe everything to me! Will that not make her love me? Will it?”

He grasped McTee’s shoulder tightly.

“I’m not a pretty lad to look at, eh, lad?”

McTee poured himself a drink hastily, and drained the glass before he answered.

“A pretty man? Nonsense, Henshaw! A little weather-beaten, but a tight craft at that; she’ll worship the ground you walk! Character, Henshaw, that’s what these new American girls want to see in a man!”

Henshaw sighed with deep relief.

“Ah-h, McTee, you comfort me more than a drink on a stormy night! For reward, you shall see what I’m bringing back to her. Come!”

He rose and led McTee into his bedroom, for two cabins were retained for the captain’s use. Filling one corner of the room was a huge safe almost as tall as a man.

He squatted before the safe and commenced to work the combination with a swift sureness which told McTee at once that the old buccaneer came here many times a day to gloat over his treasure. At length the door of the safe fell open. Inside was a great mass of little canvas bags. McTee was panting as if he had run a great distance at full speed.

“Take one.”

The Scotchman raised one of the bags and shook it. A musical clinking sounded.

“Forty pounds of gold coin,” said Henshaw, “and about ten thousand dollars in all. There are eighty-five of those bags, and every one holds the same amount. Also—”

He opened a little drawer at the top of the safe and took from it a chamois bag. When he untied it, McTee looked within and saw a quantity of pearls. He took out a small handful. They were chosen jewels, flawless, glowing. His hand seemed to overflow with white fire. He dropped them back in the bag, letting each pearl run over the end of his fingers. Henshaw restored the bag and locked the safe. Then the two men stared at each other. They had been opposite types the moment before, but now their lips parted in the same thirsty eagerness.

“If she were dead,” said McTee almost reverently, “the sight of that would bring her back to life.”

“McTee, you’re a worthy lad. They’ve told me lies about you. Indeed it would bring her back to life! It must be so! And yet—” Sudden melancholy fell on him as they returned to the other room and sat down. “Yet I think night and day of what an old devil of a black magician told me in the Solomon Islands. He said I and my gold should burn together. I laughed at him and told him I could not die on dry land. He said I would not, but that I should burn at sea! Think of that, McTee! Suppose I should be robbed of the sight of my girl and of my gold at the same time!”

McTee started to say something cheerful, but his voice died away to a mutter. Henshaw was staring at the wall with visionary eyes filled with horror and despair.

“Lad, do you think ghosts have power?”

“Henshaw, you’ve drunk a bit too much!”

“If they have no power, I’m safe. I fear no living man!” He added softly: “No man but myself!”

“I’m tired out,” said McTee suddenly. “Where shall I bunk, captain?”

“Here! Here in this room! Take that couch in the corner over there. It has a good set of springs. With gold in my hands. Here are some blankets. With gold in my hands and my brain. Though you don’t need much covering in this latitude. I would raise her from the grave.”

He went about, interspersing his remarks to McTee with half-audible murmurs addressed to his own ears.

“Is this,” thought McTee, “the Shark of the South Seas?”

A knock came and the door opened. A fat sailor in an oilskin hat stood at the entrance.

“The cook ain’t put out no lunch for the night watches, sir,” he whined.

Henshaw had stood with his back turned as the door opened. He turned now slowly toward the open door. McTee could not see his face nor guess at its expression, but the moment the big sailor caught a glimpse of his skipper’s countenance, he blanched and jumped back into the night, slamming the door behind him. That sight recalled something to McTee.

“One thing more, captain,” he said. “What of Harrigan? Do we break him between us?”

“Aye, in your own way!”

“Good! Then start him scrubbing the bridge and send him down to the fireroom afterwards, eh?”

“It’s done. Why do you hate him, McTee? Is it the girl?”

“No; the color of his hair. Good night.”

CHAPTER 17

Long before this, Harrigan had reported to the bos’n, burly Jerry Hovey, and had been assigned to a bunk into which he fairly dived and fell asleep in the posture in which he landed. In the morning he tumbled out with the other men and became the object of a crossfire of questions from the curious sailors who wanted to know all the details of the wreck of the
Mary Rogers
and the life on the island. He was saved from answering nine-tenths of the chatter by a signal from the bos’n, who beckoned Harrigan to a stool a little apart from the rest of the crew. Jerry Hovey was a cheery fellow of considerable bulk, with an habitual smile. That smile went out, however, when he talked with Harrigan, and the Irishman became conscious of a pair of steady, alert gray eyes.

“Look here,” said Hovey, and he talked out of the corner of his mouth with a skill which would have become an old convict of many terms, “I’ve had it put to me straight that you’re a hard one. Is that the right dope?”

Harrigan smiled.

“Because if it is,” said Hovey, “we’re the best gang at bustin’ up these hard guys that ever walked the deck of a ship. If you try any side steps and fancy ducking of your work, there’ll be a disciplinin’ comin’ your way at a gallop. Are you wise?”

Harrigan still smiled, but the coldness of his eye made the bos’n thoughtful. He was not one, however, to be easily cowed. Now he balled his fist and smote it against the palm of his other hand with a slap that resounded.

“On my own hook,” he stated, “I can sling my mitts with the best of them, an’ I’m always lookin’ for work in that line. Now I’m sayin’ all this in private, sonny, to let you know that Black McTee has wised up the skipper about you, and I’m keepin’ a weather eye open. If you make one funny move, I’ll be on your back.”

“All right, Jerry.”

“Don’t call me Jerry, you swab! I’m the bos’n.”

“Look me in the eye, Jerry Hovey, me dear. If you so much as bat the lashes av wan eye in lookin’ at me, I’ll bust ye in two pieces like a sea biscuit, Jerry, an’ I’ll eat the biggest half an’ throw the rest into the sea. Ar-r-re ye wise?”

Now, Jerry Hovey was a very big man, and he had thrashed men of larger bulk than Harrigan. But there was something about the Irishman’s thickness of shoulder and length of arm that gave him pause. So first of all Jerry grew very thoughtful indeed, and then his habitual smile returned. Nevertheless, Harrigan did not forget those gray, alert eyes.

The bos’n went on in a gentler voice: “I was tryin’ you out, Harrigan. I’ll lay to it that the cap’n has the wrong idea about you. But will you tell me why he’s ridin’ you?”

“Sure. It’s Black McTee. Before the
Mary Rogers
went down, McTee was tryin’ to break me. I guess he’s asked this White Henshaw to try a hand. What have they got lined up for me?”

“You’re to scrub down the bridge an’ while your hands are still soft you go down to the fireroom an’ pass coal. It’ll tear your hands off, that work.”

Harrigan was gray, but he answered. “That’s an old story. McTee worked me like that all the time.”

“An’ you didn’t break?” gasped Hovey.

Harrigan grinned, but his smile stopped when he noticed a certain calculation in the face of the bos’n.

“Mate,” said Hovey, “I guess you’re about ripe for something I’m goin’ to say to you one of these days. Now go up to the bridge an’ scrub it down.”

With the prospect of the long torture before him once more, Harrigan in a daze picked up the bucket of suds to which he was pointed and went with his brush toward the bridge. Through the mist which enveloped his brain broke wild thoughts—to steal upon McTee at the first meeting and hurl his hated body overboard. Yet even in his bewildered condition he realized what such an act would mean. Murder on land is bad enough, but murder at sea is doubly damned by the law. It was in the power of White Henshaw to hang him up to the mast.

Revolving these dismal prospects with downward head, he climbed from the waist of the ship to the cabin promenade, and there a voice hailed him, and he turned to see Kate Malone approaching. She was all in white—cap, canvas shoes, silk shirt absurdly lose at the throat, and linen coat with the sleeves turned far back so that her hands would not be enveloped. The duck trousers were also taken up several reefs.

“Good morning,” she said, and held out her hand.

He watched her smile wistfully, and then made a little gesture with his own hands, one burdened with the scrubbing brush and the other with the bucket.

“What does it mean?”

“Hell,” said Harrigan.

“Explain.”

“It’s McTee again, damn his eyes!”

“Do you mean to say they’ve started to treat you as they did on the
Mary Rogers
? The scrubbing and then the work in the fireroom?”

“Right.”

She stamped her foot in impotent fury.

“What manner of man is he, Dan? He’s not all brute; why does he treat you like this?”

The Irishman smiled.

She cried with increasing anger: “What can I do?”

“Make your skin yellow an’ your hair gray an’ walk with no spring in your step. He wants to break me now because of you.”

There was moist pity in her eyes, yet they gleamed with excitement at the thought of this battle of the Titans for her sake.

“I will go to him,” she said after a moment, “and tell him that you mean nothing to me. Then he will stop.”

The cold, incurious eyes studied her without passion, and once more he smiled.

“He’ll not stop. Whether you like me or not, Kate, doesn’t count. One of us’ll go down, an’ you’ll be for the one that’s left. He knows it—I know it.”

“Harrigan!” called the voice of McTee from the bridge, and the tall Scotchman lifted his cap to Kate.