Harrigan

On the promenade outside he met Sloan, the wireless operator, on his way to Captain Henshaw’s cabin with a slip of paper in his hand.  Sloan winked at him broadly.

“The good news has come, sir,” he grinned.  “Take a look at this!”

And McTee eagerly read the typewritten slip.

Beatrice is rallying.  Doctors have decided effusion of blood was not hemorrhage.  Opinion now very hopeful.

“Will that bring the old boy around for a while?” asked Sloan.

“He’ll slip you a twenty on the strength of that and give you a drink as well,” said McTee.

They reached the cabin and entered together to find that White Henshaw lay on the couch in the corner.  His physical strength was apparently exhausted, and one long, lean arm dangled to the floor.  At sight of the dreaded wireless operator with the message in his hand, his yellow face turned from yellow to pale ivory.  He rose and supported himself with one hand against the wall, scowling as if he dared them to notice his weakness.

“Good news!” called Sloan cheerily, and extended the paper.

The captain snatched the paper, his eyes were positively wolfish while he devoured the message.

“Sloan—­good lad,” he stammered.  “Stay by your instrument every minute, my boy.  Before night we’ll have word that she’s past all danger.”

Sloan touched his cap and withdrew.

“Good news!” said McTee amiably.  “I’m mighty glad to hear it, captain.”

The old man fell back into a chair, holding the precious piece of paper with its written lie in both trembling hands.

“Good news,” he croaked.  “Aye, McTee.  You were right, lad!  Those damned doctors don’t know their business.  They’re making the case out bad so they’ll get more credit for the cure.  See how they’re fooling with me—­ and me with my heart on fire in the middle of the sea!”

His eyes wandered strangely in the midst of his exultation.

“That would be a strange death, eh, McTee—­to burn in the middle of the sea with a ship full of gold?”

The Scotchman shuddered.

“Forget that, man.  You’re not going to burn at sea.  You’re going to reach port with all your gold and you’re going to stand beside Beatrice and say—­”

Henshaw broke in:  “And say, ’Beatrice, I’ve come to make you happy.  We’ll leave this country where the fogs are so thick and the sun never shines, and we’ll go south, far south, where there’s summer all the year.’  That’s what I’ll say!”

“Right,” nodded McTee.  “If her lungs are weak, that’s the place to take her.”

Henshaw jerked erect in his chair.  “Weak lungs?  Who said she had weak lungs?  McTee, you’re a fool!  A little cold on the chest, that’s all that’s the matter with the girl!  The doctors have made the sickness—­ they and their rotten medicines!  And now they’re making sport out of White Henshaw.  I’ll skin them alive, I will!”

McTee lighted a cigar and nodded judiciously as he puffed it.

“Very good idea, Henshaw.  If you want me to, I’ll go along and help you out.”

“You’re a brick, McTee.  Maybe I’ll need you.  Getting old; not what I used to be.”

“I see you’re not,” said McTee boldly.

Henshaw scowled:  “What do you mean?”

“That affair of Harrigan.  He’s still going scot-free, you know.”

“Right!  McTee, I’m getting feeble-minded, but I’ll make up for lost time.”

He caught up pen and paper, while McTee drew a long breath of relief.  A moment later he was astonished to note that the captain had not written a single letter.

“I’d forgotten,” murmured Henshaw.  “When I started to write that order this morning—­just as I was putting pen to paper—­in came Sloan with the message from the doctors saying that Beatrice was in a critical situation.  It may be, captain, that this message is bad luck for me, eh?”

“Nonsense,” said McTee easily, gripping his hand with rage, while he fought to control his voice.  “You mustn’t let superstitions run away with you.”

“So!  So!” frowned Henshaw.  “You’re a young man to give me advice, McTee.  I’ve followed superstitions all my life.  I tell you there’s something in those star-gazing devils of the South Seas.  They know things that aren’t in the books.”

“What about the old fool who prophesied that you’d die by fire at sea?”

Henshaw shivered, and his eyes narrowed as he stared at McTee.

“How do you know he’s an old fool, eh?  We haven’t reached port yet—­not by a long sight!”

“Well,” said McTee, with a carefully assumed carelessness, “this ship belongs to you—­you’re the skipper; but on a boat I was captain of, no damned engineer would pull my beard and tell me to rightabout.  They never got away with a line of chatter like that when Black McTee was speaking to them.  Never!”

At this comparison the face of Henshaw grew marvelously evil.

“McTee,” he said, “men step lively when you speak to them—­but they jump out of their skins when they hear White Henshaw’s voice.”

“That’s what I’ve heard,” said the other dauntlessly, “but d’you think Campbell ever would have taken this chance if he didn’t know you’re not what you used to be?”

For reply Henshaw set his teeth and dipped the pen into the ink.  As he poised it above the paper, Sloan appeared at the door calling:  “One minute, captain!”

The captain turned livid and rose slowly, crumpling the paper as he did so and letting it drop to the floor.

“Out with it!” he muttered in a hoarse whisper.  “She’s worse again!  Damn you, McTee, I told you this message was bad luck!”

The wireless operator was much puzzled and glance from the Scotchman to his skipper.

“I only wanted to know, sir, if you wish to send an answer to this last wireless.  Any congratulations?”

“No—­get out!”

And as Sloan fled from the door with a wondering side glance at McTee, Henshaw sank back into his chair, picked up the paper on which he was about to write, and tore it into small bits.  Not until this task was finished was he able to speak to McTee.

“D’you see now?  Is there nothing in my superstitions?  Why, sir, just holding that pen over this piece of damnable paper brought Sloan on the run to my door.  If I’d written a single word, he’d of had a message from the doctors saying that Beatrice was dying.  I know!”

“You really think,” began McTee, and some of his furious impatience crept into his voice—­“you really think that writing on that piece of paper with your pen would have brought in Sloan with a wireless message from the mainland?”

Henshaw shook his head slowly.

“There’s no use trying to explain these things,” he said, “but sometimes, McTee, there’s a small voice that comes up inside of me and tells me what to do and what not to do.  When I first saw the picture of Beatrice—­that one where she’s just a slip of a child—­there was a voice that said:  ’Here’s the spirit of your dead wife come back to life.  You must work for her and cherish her.’  So I’ve done it.  And because I started to do it, the voice never left me.  It warned me when to put to sea and when to stay hi port.  It gave me a hint when to buy and when to sell, and the result is that I’m rich—­rich—­rich.  Gold in my hand and gold in my brain, McTee!”

The Scotchman began to feel more and more that old age or his monomania had shaken White Henshaw’s reason, but he said bitterly:  “And I suppose, if that voice never fails you and if these South Seas natives can read the future, that you are bound to burn at sea?”

“Damn you!” said Henshaw, terribly moved.  “What devil keeps putting that in your brain?  Isn’t it in mine all the day and all the night?  Don’t I see hellfire in the dark?  Don’t I see the same flames, blue and thin, dancing in the light of the sun at midday?  Is the thing ever out of my mind?  Were you put on this ship to keep dinning the idea into my ears?  If there’s something more than the life on earth, then there must be a hell—­and if there’s a hell, then it’s real hellfire that I see!”

He paused and pointed a gaunt, trembling arm at McTee: 

“D’you understand?  The men I’ve killed before they died—­they send their spirits here to walk beside me.  They wait in the dark—­and they whisper in my ear!”

McTee swallowed hard and commenced to edge toward the door.

“Farley is always hanging around—­Farley, as I saw him on the beach that last time in his loincloth, with his pig eyes; sometimes he seems to be begging me to take pity on him; sometimes he seems to be laughing at me.  And he’s always got his hand outstretched.  And Collins comes stroking his beard in the way he had, and he keeps his hand stretched out to me.  What do they want?  Alms!  Alms!  Alms!  They want my soul for alms to take it below and burn it in the hellfire—­the thin, blue flames!”

He stopped in the midst of his ravings and drew himself erect, a smile of infinite cruelty on his lips.

“Let them all come with their damned, empty palms!  They’re ghosts, and they cannot stop me so long as I follow the small voice that’s inside of me.  They can’t stop me, and I’ll win back to Beatrice.  There I’m safe—­safe!  Her hands are thin and light and cool and as fragrant as flowers.  She’ll lay them on my eyelids and I’ll go to sleep!  And the ghosts will close their empty hands.  Ha!  McTee, d’you know aught of the power of a woman’s love?”

He stepped close to the burly Scotchman.

“Keep off,” growled McTee.  “I want none of you!  There’s poison in your touch!”

He raised his hand like a guard, but two lean, thin hands, incredibly strong, closed on his wrists.

“A woman’s love,” went on the old buccaneer of the South Seas, “is stronger than armor plate to save the man she cares for.  You can’t see it; you could never see it!  But I tell you there are times when the ghosts have come close to me, and then sometimes I’ve seen the shadows of thin, small hands come in front of me and push them back.  The hands of Beatrice push them back, and they’re helpless to harm me!”