Harrigan

She released their hands; the door closed upon them; they stood facing each other on the deck in the dark.

“McTee,” said Harrigan with deep emotion, “we’re swine.  We were about to fight before—­her.”

“Harrigan,” said McTee, “we are swine.  But when the time comes, we’ll make up for it to her.  If you hear a word in the forecastle, let me know about it; if I hear a word in the captain’s cabin, I’ll send for you.  I may be wrong.  Henshaw may be in his right senses.  We’ll see.  In the meantime there are just the two of us, Harrigan, and against us there’s a mutinous crew on one side and a mad captain, I think, on the other.”

“There’s no use in thinkin’,” said Harrigan; “when the time comes, we’ll fight.  So long, Angus.  When the trouble starts, our assemblin’ point is Kate.”

And he went forward to the forecastle.  In the morning he discovered what he wanted to know.  The men were aloof from him.  He was conscious of eyes upon him whenever his back was turned, but while he faced them, no one would meet his glance.

In some way Hovey had learned that Harrigan was no longer to be trusted as a member of the mutineers, and he must have spread his tidings among the rest of the sailors.  What he sensed in those covert glances, however, was not an immediate danger, but rather a waiting—­an expectancy, and he deduced rightly that they would not attempt to lay a hand upon him until the mutiny was started.  Then he would be reserved for some lingering death as a traitor doubly dyed.

While they were eating breakfast, Hovey came in late with the word that during the night someone had tampered with the dynamo, and the result was that the ship must complete her voyage without electric lights and—­far more important—­without the use of the wireless.  Sam Hall started to blurt a comment on this, but a glance from Hovey silenced him.  It was plain that the bos’n would risk no conversation from his blunt sailors while Harrigan was in earshot.  The Irishman hurried through his breakfast and took his bucket and scrubbing brush toward the bridge, for he had many questions to ask McTee.  He had scarcely left the forecastle when Hovey said to Garry Cochrane:  “Watch the door.  I’ve got something important to say.”

Cochrane took up the designated position, and Hovey went on:  “Lads, I’ve bad news, bad and good news together.  The boats are gone—­though who the devil destroyed them we don’t know—­and now the wireless is destroyed.  The boats are a big loss, for now we’ll have to rig up some sort of a raft to make shore when we beach the Heron.  The busting of the wireless almost balances that loss.  Now we’re sure they can’t slip out any quick wireless call that would bring a dozen ships after us.  Bad news and good news together; and here’s some more of the same kind.

“Henshaw has made up his mind to give Kamasura the whip.  You know what that means?  Well, I’ll tell you.  It means that after the first dozen strokes—­as Borgson will lay them on—­Kamasura will break down and tell everything we don’t want him to say.  Understand?  With the cabin warned of what we’re going to do, what chance would we have to take them?  So we’ll hang around close, lads, and the minute Kamasura opens his face to say the wrong thing, we’ll rush ’em—­are you with me?  And go for two men first—­Black McTee and Harrigan.  With them out of the way we’ll simply chew up the rest.  Try to take the others alive, but don’t waste any time with McTee and the Irishman.  You can lay to it before you start that they’ll never be taken till they’re dead.”

For some minutes he talked on, appointing to each man or group of men the work he would be expected to perform when Hovey gave the signal to attack, which would be one long blast on his whistle.

While they planned, Harrigan had reached the bridge and found McTee impatiently awaiting him.

“You’re late,” frowned the Scotchman.  “What’s happened in the forecastle?”

“Black looks on all sides, and no talk,” said Harrigan.

“A falling barometer,” nodded McTee, “and things are just as bad in the cabin.  You’ve heard about the wireless breaking?”

“I have.  What does it mean?”

“It may have been done by the mutineers.  I doubt it.  But that isn’t all that’s happened.  This is a pretty cool day for the tropics.”

Harrigan stared at him, baffled by the sudden change of the conversation.

“It is cool,” he assented.

“But in the fireroom it’s hotter than it’s been at any time since the Heron started on this trip.  The second assistant came up to complain to Henshaw, and I heard them.

“‘There’s something wrong with the air shafts,’ he said to White Henshaw.

“‘Look here,’ said Henshaw, ’I’ve had enough grumbling from the fireroom.  Put a fan in the air shaft, and don’t come up here again with any nonsense.  D’you expect to find cool breezes in the South Seas?  No, they’re hot as fire—­hot as fire—­hot as fire!’

“He repeated those words three times over in a way that made my flesh creep, and then he laughed.  Even the second saw that something was wrong.  He took a long look at Henshaw, and then he went out with his head down.”

“What did it all mean?” asked Harrigan.

“I don’t know.  I don’t dare think what it means.  But if my guess is right, then the Heron is a lot nearer hell than even you and I expected.  Look, there goes Fritz Klopp, the first assistant engineer.  I’ll wager he’s got another complaint about the heat in the fireroom.”

They watched Klopp go into the captain’s cabin, waited a moment, and then the door flew open and Klopp sprang out and fled aft like a man pursued.  Henshaw came to the open door and peered after the engineer and laughed silently.

McTee muttered:  “That’s the way the devil laughs when he watches the damned souls pass by.”

Here Henshaw glanced up and saw them watching him from the bridge.  His face altered suddenly to a malevolence so terrible that both the men stepped back.  Harrigan was trembling like a hysterical girl.  He looked in the face of McTee and saw that the Scotchman had blanched.  For a long moment they exchanged glances, and then McTee went down from the bridge and entered the cabin.

Henshaw was not there.  He had evidently gone into the inner room, and McTee sat down to wait.  The time had come for him to ask questions, and he was nerving himself for the ordeal.  His plans were disturbed by a muffled sound from the inner cabin, a sound so unusual that McTee stiffened in his chair with horror and then rose slowly.

Tiptoe he stole across the floor and laid a hand lightly on the knob of the door of the captain’s private room.  It turned easily without any creak, and the door opened a few inches.  There sat Henshaw with his back to McTee, leaning over a table.  Gold pieces were spilled loosely across the surface of the wood—­possibly the contents of three or four of those small canvas bags—­and Henshaw leaned forward with his forehead resting upon the glittering yellow coins and one hand clutching a quantity of them.  His other hand held a photograph of the dead Beatrice.  The sound continued.  It was the low sobbing of the captain, a hoarse and horrible murmur.

McTee closed the door and went back onto the deck, for he suddenly understood the futility of questions.  Harrigan, in the meantime, had waited for the return of McTee, and when the latter did not come, the Irishman lingered on the bridge for an hour or more, pottering about with his brush in a pretense of finishing up a perfect job.  His attention was drawn then by a gathering crowd and bustle in the waist of the ship between the wheelhouse and the forecastle.  The entire crew of the Heron seemed to be mustering, with the exception of those needed to keep the engines running.  They stood in a circle, leaving the cover of the hatch clear.

He hurried down to witness the ceremony, and as he reached the waist, he saw Henshaw take up his position with folded arms in the very center of the hatch.  A moment later Kamasura was led up by Eric Borgson and Jan Van Roos.

The two mates, under the direction of Henshaw, lashed the Japanese face down upon the hatch, pulling his arms and legs taut with ropes that fastened to the bolts on all sides of the hatch cover.

When he was securely tied, Kamasura was stripped to the waist, and then Harrigan saw Borgson, grinning evilly, step up with a long whip in his hand.  It was a blacksnake, heavily loaded and stiff at the butt and tapering gradually to a slender, supple, snakelike body, with a thin, sinister lash.  Borgson whirled the whip around his head to get its balance.  Henshaw stepped back, still with folded arms.

“This fellow Kamasura,” he announced to the crew, “has blown up the boats of the Heron.  There’s no doubt of it.  Borgson caught him almost in the act.  I could do worse things than this to Kamasura, but I’ve decided to flog him until he confesses.”

There was not a word of answer from the crew; they waited, hushed, ominous.  A whisper sounded in the ear of Harrigan, who stood with gritting teeth and clenched hands.

It was McTee who murmured:  “Hold onto yourself, Harrigan.  Our time hasn’t come.”

“I’ll hold onto myself all right,” said Harrigan, “but look at the crew.”

In fact, there was something more deadly than any snarling of a crowd in this unnatural silence of many men.  Also they were not looking at Kamasura; they were staring, every man, at the bos’n, who stood with his whistle hanging from a cord around his neck.

“Begin!” said Henshaw.

The blacksnake whistled around the head of the third mate and there was a long scream from Kamasura—­but the blacksnake only cracked loudly in the air.  Borgson laughed with a hideous delight.  Harrigan, sickly white, bowed his head.  Again the blacksnake whirled and again it cracked, but this time on naked flesh, and the scream of Kamasura was like the cut of a knife.

Again, again, and again the blacksnake fell, and now Kamasura twisted his head toward the captain and cried in a voice made thin by pain and rage at once:  “I confess!  Captain, let me speak!”

At a gesture from Henshaw, the third mate reluctantly stepped back, drawing the lash of the blacksnake slowly through his hands with a caressing touch.  Van Roos, the color completely gone from his usually blooming cheeks, cut the ropes, and Kamasura rose, facing the captain.  He extended a naked, trembling arm toward Hovey.

“Mutiny!” he yelled.  “The whole crew—­the whole forecastle—­mutiny, Cap’n Henshaw!  I know—­”

The piercing whistle of the bos’n cut into his speech, and the crew rolled forward over the hatch with a single shout that might have come from one throat except for its shrill volume.