The Max Brand Megapack (2 page)

Harrigan strode on full of thought. His uncertain course brought him at last to the waterfront, and he idled along the black, odorous docks until he came to a pier where a ship was under steam, making ready to put out to sea. The spur touched the heart of Harrigan. The urge never failed to prick him when he heard the scream of a steamer’s horn as it put to sea. It brought the thoughts of far lands and distant cities.

He strolled out to the pier and watched the last ropes cast loose. The ship was not large, and even in the dark it seemed dingy and dilapidated. He guessed that, big or small, this boat would carry her crew to some distant quarter of the world, and therefore to a place to be desired.

A strong voice gave an order from the deck—a hard voice with a ring in it like the striking of iron against iron. Harrigan glanced up with a start of recognition, and by the light of a swinging lantern he saw McTee. If he were in command, this ship was certainly going to a far port. Black water showed between the dock and the ship. In a moment more it would be beyond reach, and that thought decided Harrigan. He made a few paces back, noted the aperture in the rail of the ship where the gangplank was being drawn in, then ran at full speed and leaped high in the air.

The three sailors at the rail shouted their astonishment as Harrigan struck the edge of the gangplank, reeled, and then pitched forward to his knees. He rose and shook himself like a cat that has dropped from a high fence to the ground.

“What’re you?”

“I’m the extra hand.”

And Harrigan ran up the steps to the bridge. There he found McTee with the first and second mates.

“McTee,” he said, “I came on your ship by chance an’ saw you. If you
can
use an extra hand, let me stay. I’m footfree an’ I need to be movin’ on.”

Even through the gloom he caught the glint of the Scotchman’s eye.

“Get off the bridge!” thundered McTee.

“But I’m Harrigan, and—”

McTee turned to his first and second mates.

“Throw that man off the bridge!” he ordered.

Harrigan didn’t wait. He retreated down the steps to the deck and went to the rail. A wide gap of swarthy water now extended between the ship and the dock, but he placed his knee on the rail ready to dive. Then he turned and stood with folded arms looking up to the bridge, for his mind was dark with many doubts. He tapped a passing sailor on the shoulder.

“What sort of an old boy is the captain?”

He made up his mind that according to the answer he would stay with the ship or swim to the shore, but the sailor merely stared stupidly at him for a moment and then grinned slowly. There might be malice, there might be mere ridicule in that smile. He passed on before another question could be asked.

“Huh!” grunted Harrigan. “I stay!”

He kept his eyes fixed on the bridge, remaining motionless at the rail for an hour while the glow of Honolulu grew dimmer and dimmer past the stern. There were lights in the after-cabin and he guessed that the ship, in a small way, carried both freight and passengers. At last McTee came down the steps to the deck and as he passed Harrigan snapped: “Follow me.”

He led the way aft and up another flight of steps to the after-cabin, unlocked a door, and showed Harrigan into the captain’s room. Here he took one chair and Harrigan dropped easily into another.

“Now, what ’n hell was your line of thinkin’, McTee,” he began, “when you told me to—”

“Stand up!” said McTee.

“What?”

“Stand up!”

Harrigan rose very slowly. His jaw was setting harder and harder, and his face became grim.

“Harrigan, you took a chance and came with me.”

“Yes.”

“I didn’t ask you to come.”

“Sure you didn’t, but if you think you can treat me like a swine and get away with it—”

It was wonderful to see the eyes of McTee grow small. They seemed to retreat until they became points of light shining from the deep shadow of his brow. They were met by the cold, incurious light of Harrigan’s stare.

“You’re a hard man, Harrigan.”

He made no answer, but listened to the deep thrum of the engines. It seemed to him that the force which drove the ship was like a part of McTee’s will, a thing of steel.

“And I’m a hard man, Harrigan. On this ship I’m king. There’s no will but my will; there’s no right but my right; there’s no law but my law. Remember, on land we stood as equals. On this ship you stand and I sit.”

The thin lips did not curve, and yet they seemed to be smiling cruelly, and the eyes were probing deep, deep, deep into Harrigan’s soul, weighing, measuring, searching.

“When we reach land,” said Harrigan, “I got an idea I’ll have to break you.”

He raised his hands, which trembled with the restrained power of his arms, and moved them as though slowly breaking a stick of wood.

“I’ve broken men—like that,” he finished.

“When I’m through with you, Harrigan, you’ll take water from a Chinaman. You’re the first man I’ve ever seen who could make me stop and look twice. I need a fellow like you, but first I’ve got to make you my man. The best colt in the world is no good until he learns to take the whip without bucking. I’m going to get you used to the whip. This is frank talk, eh? Well, I’m a frank man. You’re in the harness now, Harrigan; make up your mind: Will you pull or will you balk? Answer me!”

“I’ll see you damned!”

“Good. You’ve started to balk, so now you’ll have to feel the whip.”

He pulled a cord, and while they waited, the relentless duel of the eyes continued. A flash of instinct like a woman’s intuition told Harrigan what impulse was moving McTee. He knew it was the same thing which makes the small schoolboy fight with the stranger; the same curiosity as to the unknown power, the same relentless will to be master, but now intensified a thousandfold in McTee, who looked for the first time, perhaps, on a man who might be his master. Harrigan knew, and smiled. He was confident. He half rejoiced in looking forward to the long struggle.

A knock came and the door opened.

“Masters,” said McTee to the boatswain, “we’re three hands short.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Here are the three hands. Take them forward.”

CHAPTER 3

Masters looked at Harrigan, started to laugh, looked again, and then silently held the door open. Harrigan stepped through it and followed to the forecastle, a dingy retreat in the high bow of the ship. He had to bend low to pass through the door, and inside he found that he could not stand erect. It was his first experience of working aboard a ship, and he expected to find a scrupulous neatness, and hammocks in place of beds. Instead he looked on a double row of bunks heaped with swarthy quilts, and the boatswain with a silent gesture indicated that one of these belonged to Harrigan. He went to it without a word and sat down cross-legged to survey his new quarters. It was more like the bunkhouse of a western ranch than anything else he had been in, but all reduced to a miniature, cramped and confined.

Now his eyes grew accustomed to the dim, unpleasant light which came from a single lantern hanging on the central post, and he began to make out the faces of the sailors. An oily-skinned Greek squatted on the bunk to his left. To his right was a Chinaman, marvelously emaciated; his lips pulled back in a continual smile, meaningless, like the grin of a corpse.

Opposite was the inevitable Englishman, slender, good-looking, with pale hair and bright, active eyes. Harrigan had traveled over half the world and never failed to find at least one subject of John Bull in any considerable group of men. This young fellow was talking with a giant Negro, his neighbor. The black man chattered with enthusiasm while the Englishman listened, nodding, intent.

One thing at least was certain about this crew: the Negro, the Chinaman, the Greek, even the Englishman, despite his slender build, they were all hard, strong men.

The cook brought out supper in buckets—stews, chunks of stale bread, tea. As they ate, the sailors grew talkative.

“Slide the slum this way,” said the Englishman.

The Negro pushed the bucket across the deck with his foot.

“A hard trip,” went on the first speaker.

“All trips on the
Mary Rogers
is hard,” rumbled a voice.

“Aye, but Black McTee is blacker’n ever today.”

“He belted the bos’n with a rope end,” commented the Negro.

“He ain’t human. This is my last trip with him. How about you, John? You got a lump on your jaw yet where he cracked you for breakin’ that truck.”

This was to the Chinaman, who answered in a soft guttural as if there were bubbling oil in his throat: “Me sail two year Black McTee, an’—”

To finish his speech he passed a tentative hand across his swollen jaw.

“And you’ll sail with him till you die, John,” said the Englishman. “When a man has had Black McTee for a boss, he’ll want no other. He’s to other captains what whisky is to beer.”

The white teeth of the Negro showed. “Maybe Black McTee won’t live long,” he suggested.

There was a long silence. It lasted until the supper was finished. It lasted until the men slid into their bunks. And Harrigan knew that every man was repeating slowly to himself: “Maybe Black McTee won’t live long.”

“Not if this gang goes after him,” muttered Harrigan, “and yet—”

He remembered the fight in Ivilei and the heaving shoulders which showed above the heads of the swarming soldiers. With that picture in his mind he went to sleep.

They were far out of sight of land in the morning and loafing south before the trade wind, with a heavy ground swell kicking them along from behind. Harrigan saw the
Mary Rogers
plainly for the first time. She was small, not more than fifteen hundred or two thousand tons, and the dingiest, sootiest of all tramp freighters. He had little time to make observations.

In the first place all hands washed down the decks, some of the men in rubber boots, the others barefooted, with their trousers rolled up above the knees. Harrigan was one of this number. The cool water from the hose swished pleasantly about his toes. He began to think better of life at sea as the wind blew from his nostrils the musty odors of the forecastle. Then the bos’n, with the suggestion of a grin in his eyes, ordered him up to scrub the bridge. He climbed the steps with a bucket in one hand and a brush in the other. There stood McTee leaning against the wheelhouse and staring straight ahead across the bows. He seemed quite oblivious of his presence until, having finished his job, Harrigan started back down the steps.

“D’you call this clean?” rumbled McTee. “All over again!”

And Harrigan dropped to his knees without protest and commenced scrubbing again. As he worked, he hummed a tune and saw the narrow jaw of McTee jut out. Harrigan smiled.

He had scarcely finished stowing his bucket and brush away when the bos’n brought him word that he was wanted in the fireroom. Masters’s face was serious.

“What’s the main idea?” asked Harrigan.

The bos’n cast a worried eye fore and aft.

“Black McTee’s breakin’ you,” he said; “you’re getting the whip.”

“Well?”

“God help you, that’s all. Now get below.”

There was a certain fervency about this speech which impressed even Harrigan. He brooded over it on his way to the fireroom. There he was set to work passing coal. He had to stand in a narrow passage scarcely wide enough for him to turn about in. On either side was a towering black heap which slanted down to his feet. Midway between the piles was the little door through which he shoveled the coal into the fireroom.

All was stifling hot, with a breath of coal dust and smoke to choke the lungs. Even the Greek firemen sweated and cursed, though they were used to that environment. An ordinary man might have succumbed simply to that fiery, foul atmosphere. It was like a glimpse of hell, dark, hopeless.

It was not the heat or the atmosphere which troubled Harrigan, but his hands. His skin was puffed and soft from the scrubbing of the bridge. Now as he grasped the rough wood of the short-handled scoop the epidermis wore quickly and left his palms half raw. For a time he managed to shift his grip, bringing new portions of his hands to bear on the wood, but even this skin was worn away in time. When he finished his shift, his hands were bleeding in places and raw in the palms.

As he came on deck, he tied them up with bits of soft waste in lieu of a bandage and made no complaint, yet his fingers were trembling when he ate supper that night. He caught the eyes of the rest of the crew studying him with a cold calculation. They were estimating the strength of his endurance and he knew at once that they had been through the same trial one by one until they were broken.

He could see that they hated the captain and he wondered why they would ship with him time and again. He watched their expressions when Black McTee was mentioned, and then he understood. They were waiting for the time when the captain should weaken. Then they would have their revenge.

The second day was a repetition of the first. He began with scrubbing down the bridge. The suds, strong with lye, ate shrewdly at his raw hands. Still he hummed as he worked and watched McTee’s frown grow dark. When he was ordered below to the fireroom, he wrapped his hands in the soft waste again. That helped him for a time, but after the first two hours the waste matted and grew hard with perspiration and blood. He had to throw it away and take the shovel handle against his bare skin. He told himself that it was only a matter of time before calluses would form, but what chance was there for a formation of calluses when the water and suds softened his hands every morning?

On the third day he was a little more used to the torture. His hands were hopelessly raw now, but still he made no complaint and stuck with his task. That night he secured a rag and retreated to the stretch of deck between the wheelhouse and the after-cabin, where he squatted beside a bucket of water and washed his hands carefully. Both hands were puffed and red; one of the creases in the left palm bled a steady trickle. He washed them slowly, with infinite relish of the cool water, until he felt that peculiar sensation which warns us that we are watched by another eye.