Harrigan

Kamasura, in nowise loath to bring his work to an end, stood back and laid on the whip with redoubled vigor.  The lash spatted sharply against the raw and bleeding flesh.  The screams sank into moans, and the moans in turn declined to a mere horrible gasping of the breath.  Even this ceased at length, and the quivering of the body stopped.  Kamasura leaned over and slipped his hand under the body in the region of the heart.  When he straightened up again, he made a gesture of finality with his crimsoned hands.  The mate was dead.

They cut his body loose at once and pitched him over the rail, then turned their attention to Van Roos.  Sam Hall was the inspired man this time, and according to his directions they lashed the body of the big mate on the same blood-spotted hatch cover where Borgson had lain a moment before, but this time the victim was placed upon his back.  Hall himself attended to the tying of Van Roos’s head, and he performed his work so ably that the mate could not change his position in the least particle.  He was literally swathed in ropes; so much so, in fact, that it was difficult to see how he could be tormented.  Sam Hall, however, insisted that this was what he wanted, and the crew consented to let him do his work.

“You’ve heard something, an’ you’ve seen something,” said Hovey at this juncture to Campbell; “but what you’ve seen and heard isn’t nothin’ to what’ll happen to you unless you start handling the engines of the Heron.  Why, Campbell, I’m goin’ to give you to the firemen!”

“Hovey,” answered the engineer calmly, “the only place I’d run this ship would be down to hell—­your home port.  That’s final!”

The bos’n was white with rage.

“I’d like to tear your heart out an’ feed it to the fish,” he said, stepping close to Campbell, and then, remembering himself, he moved back and grinned:  “But the men will find something better to do with you.”

He crossed the deck and held up a bucket of water toward Harrigan and McTee.  He raised a dipperful and allowed it to splash back in the bucket.

“Well?” asked Hovey.

They merely stared at him as if they had not heard him speak.

“All right,” said Hovey, quite unmoved, “there’s plenty of time for you to make up your minds.  But if you wait too long—­well, we’ll come and get him.  And the girl, too!”

He laughed and turned away.

“I thought,” muttered McTee, “that we could end it by simply dying—­but I forgot the girl.”

“The girl,” answered Harrigan, “and—­and them!  She’s got to die before we’re too far gone.  You’ll do that to save her from—­them?”

McTee moistened his parched lips before he could speak.

“One of us has to do it, but it can’t be me, Harrigan.”

“Nor me, Angus.  We’ll wait till tonight.  Maybe a ship’ll pass and see us lyin’ like a derelict and put a boat aboard, eh?”

“But if no ship comes, then we’ll draw straws, eh?”

“Yes.”

Two sharp, sudden cries now called their attention back to the waist of the ship to the blood-stained hatch cover where Van Roos lay.

Sam Hall had approached the big mate with a knife in his hand.  He kneeled beside the prostrate body and fumbled at the face an instant.  No one had been able to make out the significance of his act.  Then the knife gleamed, and twice he plucked with one hand and cut with the knife.  The two sharp cries answered him.  Then he rose; two little trickles of blood ran down the face of the mate.

“Well?” asked Jacob Flint.  “When does the game begin?”

“The game is just started,” said Hall, “an’ the sun will do the rest.  I’ve cut off his eyelids!”

They stared a moment in amazement, and then an understanding broke on them.  Every tribe of savages in the world has been accredited with this ingenious torture which blinded their victim and usually drove him mad.  The sun was now climbing the sky rapidly, and already fell on the face of the mate.  The tropic sun which scorches and burns the toughest of skins was now directed full on the pupils of his eyes.

The sailors sought comfortable positions and waited for a long exhibition of pain, but they were mistaken.  The torture acted far more quickly than even the whip.  There was no outcry.  Not once during his struggles did Van Roos make a sound from his throat, save for a quick, heavy panting.  Perhaps by contrast with the yells of Borgson, which were still in the ears of the men, this silence was more horrible than the most throat-filling shrieks.  They could see Van Roos twisting his head ceaselessly and vainly to escape that blinding light.  His ruddy face became swollen like the features of a drowned man.  And that was all that happened—­only that, and the panting, the quick, choppy panting like a running man.  Finally one of the sailors rose with a mallet in his hand.

“Where you goin’?” asked Hall ominously.

“Going to finish him.”

Hall caught the fellow’s arm.

“Listen!” he whispered, and such was the silence that the hoarse whisper was audible all over the deck.  “Don’t you hear?”

And with one hand he kept beat for the quick breaths of the tortured man.  At that moment there was a long sigh, and the breathing stopped.  Hall strode angrily forward to his victim, but when he reached the hatch, Van Roos was dead.  A blood vessel must have burst in his brain, and death was as instantaneous as though a bullet had struck him.  So they cut him free, and his body followed that of Borgson over the rail.  Then the eyes of the mutineers turned aft toward the wireless house, and then back upon Campbell.  Six victims remained.  One of the firemen slipped close to Hovey on naked feet.  He did not speak, but his long, thin arm pointed toward the engineer.

“Not yet,” said Hovey, “not yet!  Tomorrow if he doesn’t give in, we’ll turn you loose on him.”

The fireman grinned and went back on noiseless feet to his companions to spread the good tidings.  Hovey approached the wireless house.

“We’ve got one show left to offer, but we’re savin’ it till tomorrow,” he said.  “So brace up, hearties, and keep cheer.  You’ll see Campbell go a way worse than either of these tomorrow.”

“Wait,” called Harrigan, suddenly roused.  “D’you mean to say that you’d try your hellwork on a kind man like Campbell?”

“A kind man like Campbell?” echoed Hovey, and then laughed.  “A kind man?”

And he retreated with no other answer, and left the fugitives aft to the merciless, sweltering heat of the sun.  By the time the sun went down, they were so fevered by the need of water that they had not the strength to bless the cool falling of the dark; they still carried the fire of the sunlight in their blood.