Captain Scraggs Part 16

In the course of an hour Gibney and McGuffey returned, and Scraggs met them as they leaped down on to the deck of the _Maggie_. "Gentlemen," he remarked--"an' at that I'm givin' you two all the best of it, even if you two have got a quit-claim deed that you ain't pirates--I wish to announce that if you two have come aboard my s.h.i.+p for the puppose o' havin' a little fun at my expense, I'm a-goin' to call the police an' have you arrested for disturbin' the peace. On the other hand an' futher, if your mission's a peaceful one, you're welcome aboard the _Maggie_. I may have a temper an' say things that sounds mighty harsh when I'm het up, but in my calmer moments my natural inclination is to be a sport."

"Scraggsy, old hard-luck," Mr. Gibney boomed, "we won so we can afford to be generous in victory. Like you, me an' Mac is inclined to be uppish at times, particularly in the hour of triumph, an' say an' do things we're apt to be ashamed of later."

"Them's my sentiments," McGuffey chimed in.

"We ain't comin' aboard to beg you for no job," Mr. Gibney warned. "Git that idea out o' your head--if you got it there. Me an' Bart each got close to a thousand dollars in bank this minute an' we're as free an' independent as two hogs walkin' on ice. Any ol' time we can't stand up we can set down."

Captain Scraggs was frankly mystified. "If you two got a thousand dollars each in bank--an' I ain't disputin' it, for I hear on good authority you got that much for salvin' the _Chesapeake_--what're you hangin' around the _Maggie_ for?"

Mr. Gibney approached and placed his great right arm fraternally across Scraggs's skinny shoulder. Mr. McGuffey performed a similar office with his brawny left, and Captain Scraggs looked apprehensive, like a man who is about to be kissed by another in public.

"Scraggsy, when all is lovely an' the goose honks high, it's our great American privilege to fight like bearcats if we feel that way about it. But when misfortune descends on one of us, like a topmast in a typhoon, it's time to stop bickerin'. Me an' Bart, driftin' along the docks for a const.i.tootional this mornin', bears the sorrerful tidin's that your new navigatin' officer an'

your new engineer has quit. Judgin' from that shanty on your left eye, at least one of 'em quit under protest. Immediately, Scraggsy, me an' Mac decided you might hate our innards but just the same you needed us in your business. Consequently, we're here to help you if you'll let us an' for not another durned reason in the world."

"There's four alleeged mechanics down in the engine room loafin'

on the job an' gettin' ready to soak you a dollar an' a half an hour overtime to-night an' Sunday," McGuffey informed the skipper. "An' that hurts me. I don't mind takin' a poke at you myself but I'll be shot if I'll stand idly by an' see somebody else do it. With your kind permission, Scraggs, I'll climb into my dungarees an' make things hum in that engine room."

Captain Scraggs was truly affected. His weak chin trembled and tears came to his little mean green eyes. He could not speak; so Mr. Gibney hugged him and patted him on the back and told him he was a good fellow away down low, if the truth were only known; whereat Captain Scraggs commenced to sob aloud. McGuffey coughed and tears as big as marbles cascaded down the honest Gibney's rubicund countenance.

"I ain't wuth your sympathy after the way I treated you," Captain Scraggs cried brokenly.

"Shet up, you little b.u.m," Mr. Gibney cried furiously. "Or I'll bang you in that other eye that's ready for bangin'."

"If you're shy a few bucks----" McGuffey began.

"I am," Captain Scraggs wailed. "I'm worried to death. I don't know how I'm ever goin' to pay for that b.l.o.o.d.y boiler an' git to sea with the _Maggie_----"

"Little sorrel-top," Mr. Gibney murmured, ruffling Scraggs's thin blonde hair. "Forget them sordid monetary considerations. I'm somethin' like forty jumps ahead o' the devil an' ruination for the first time since me an' Bull McGinty organized the Brotherhood o'

the South Seas----"

"Leggo me," snarled Captain Scraggs and springing back, he bent and looked earnestly into Mr. Gibney's happy countenance. "Good land o' Goshen, if you ain't him!" Hate gleamed in his eyes.

"Ain't who, you shrimp!" Mr. Gibney was mystified at this abrupt change of att.i.tude.

Captain Scraggs blinked and pa.s.sed his hand wearily across his brow. "Forgive me, Gib," he answered humbly. "I was sort o' took back, that's all."

"Took back at what?"

"We won't say nothin' more about it, Gib, except that while I'd like to accept your kind offer an' put you back on the job again, I--I just can't bring myself to do it. I'll have to forget first."

"Forget what? Bart, is Scraggsy gone nutty?"

"Out with it, Scraggs," Mr. McGuffey urged. "Spit it out, whatever it is."

"I'd rather not, but since you ask me I suppose I might as well.

Gib, ever since me an' you first hooked up together, away back in the corner o' my head there's been lurkin' a suspicion that once before, a long time ago, you an' me have had some business dealin's, but for the life o' me I couldn't place you. One minute I'd just be a-staggerin' on the brink of memory, as the feller says, an' the next it'd slip away from me. But just now, when you mentioned Bull McGinty an' the Brotherhood o' the South Seas--well, Gib, it all come back to me like a flash. Bull McGinty an' the schooner _Das.h.i.+n' Wave_!" Captain Scraggs shook his head as if his thoughts threatened to congeal in his brain and he desired to shake them up. "Bull had a dash o' the tar-brush in his make up, if I don't disremember, an' you was his young mate. Man, how funny you did look with them long red whiskers--an' you little more'n a boy."

"Jumpin' Jehosophat, Scraggsy! Was you one o' the Brotherhood?"

Captain Scraggs came close and thrust his face up for Mr.

Gibney's inspection. "Gib," he said solemnly, "look at me! Touch the cord o' memory an' think back. D'ye remember that pore little feller you robbed of five hundred dollars twenty-odd year ago in the schooner _Das.h.i.+n' Wave_? D'ye remember that typhoon we was in an' how, when I was that tuckered out an' so seasick I couldn't stand up, you made me pump s.h.i.+p an' when I protested, you stuck a horse pistol under my nose an' _made_ me? That man, Adelbert P.

Gibney was _me! Me! Me!_" Scraggs's voice rose in a cras.h.i.+ng crescendo; his teeth clicked together and he shook his skinny fist under the great Gibney nose. Gibney paled and drew away from him.

"How was I to know, Scraggsy?" he faltered. "The whole bunch was runts--sickly, measly little fellers. Nevertheless an' agin, you shouldn't ought to have any kick comin'. You had a fine trip an'

a heap of adventure an' me an' Bull paid your pa.s.sage back to San Francisco. Come, Scraggs. Be sensible. What's the use holdin' a grudge after twenty-five years?"

"Oh, I ain't holdin' a grudge, exactly, Gib, my boy. I admit I had a good run for my money an' it was a smart piece o' work, an'

I got to admire the idea, same as I got to admire the seamans.h.i.+p you displayed sailin' the _Chesapeake_ single-handed. It ain't what you done to me as makes my blood boil. It's what you went an' done afterward."

"What'd I do afterward? You can't hang nothin' on me, Phineas P.

Scraggs. Bluffin' don't go. Cough it up."

"All right, since you drive me to it. How about that lovely, untootered savage that you lures into your foul clutches so's you can make yourself king of Aranuka? Hey? Hey? How about that little tropic wild flower you carelessly plucked an' thrun away?

Oh, I'll admit she was a savage, but she was sweet an' human for all that an' she had feelin's. She had a heart to bust an' you busted it for fair."

Mr. Gibney attempted to hoot, but made a poor job of it. "Why, wherever do you get this wild tale, Scraggsy, old spell-binder?

You're sure jingled or you wouldn't talk so vagrant."

"You can't git away with it like that, Gib. I trailed you. Gib, for two mortal years I follered you, after you dropped us at Suva, an' I was just a thirstin' for your blood. If I'd met up with you any time them first two years I'd have shot you like a dog. I got a whisper you was in Aranuka but when I got there you'd left. But I found your wife--her you called Pinky. She couldn't believe you'd slipped your cable for good an' there she was, a-waitin' an' a-waitin' for her king to come back. Gib, I'm free to tell you that piracy, barratry, murder an' homicide pales into insignificance compared with what you went an' done, for you broke an innercent an' trustin' heart an' h.e.l.l's too good for a man that'll pull a trick like that."

"Scraggsy, Scraggsy, Scraggsy," Mr. Gibney protested. "Them's awful hard words."

"I can't help it. You told me to speak out an' I'm a-doin' it.

You hooks up with this unsophisticated, trustful woman--she ain't a woman; she's a young girl at the time--an' she ain't civilized enough to be on to your kind. So you finds it easy to make her love you. Not with the common sordid love of a white woman but with the fierce, undyin' pa.s.sion o' the South Seas. An' when you get her in your clutches, her an' her whole possessions an' she's yours body an' bones, in the sight o' G.o.d an' the sight o'

man--you ups an' leaves her! You throw her down like she's so much dirt an' leave her to die of a broken heart. An' she'd a-done it, too, if it hadn't a' been for the children."

Captain Scraggs was fairly thunderin' his denunciation as he concluded with: "You--you murderer! Ain't you ashamed of yourself?"

Mr. Gibney, thoroughly crushed, hung his head. "If there was kids, Scraggsy," he pleaded, "they wasn't mine, not that I knows on."

"I ain't sayin' you don't speak the truth there, Gib. Maybe you don't know that part of it, because you left before they was born. Yes, sir, that gal had two twins--a boy an' a girl an' both that white, when I see them as yearlings, you'd never suspect they had a dab o' the tar-brush in 'em at all. The boy had red hair--provin' he was yourn, Gib."

Mr. Gibney could stand no more. He sat down on the hatch coaming and covered his face with his hard red hands. "If there was kids, Scraggsy," he sobbed, "I didn't know it. I had everything else, Scraggs, but heirs to my throne. Scraggsy, believe me or not, but if I'd had children I'd have stuck by Pinky. I wouldn't desert my own flesh an' blood, so help me."

"Well," Scraggs went on sorrowfully, "Pinky's dead an' so her troubles is over. I heard some years ago she'd pa.s.sed on with consumption. But them two _hapahaole_ kids o' yourn, Gib. Just think of it. Banged an' ragged around between decks, neither black nor white--too good for the natives an' not good enough for the whites. Princes on their mother's side, they been robbed o'

their hereditary rights by a gang o' native roughnecks, while their own father loafs alongsh.o.r.e in San Francisco an' enjoys himself."

"Looky here, Scraggs," Mr. McGuffey struck in ominously. "Ain't you said about enough? Don't hit a feller when he's down."

"Well, he ain't down so low that he can't climb back. If he's got a spark o' manhood left in him he'll never rest until he goes back to Aranuka, looks up them progeny o' his, an' does his best to make amends for the past. Gib, you can't work for me aboard the _Maggie_--not if the old girl couldn't turn her screw until you stepped aboard. Pers'nally you got a lot o' fine p'ints an'

I like you, but now that I know your past----"

He threw out his hands despairingly. "It's your morals, Gib, it's your blasted morals."

"You're right, Scraggs," Mr. Gibney mumbled brokenly. "It's my duty to go look up them poor children o' mine. Bart, you stick by old Scraggsy. I owe him somethin' for showin' me my duty an' I'm lookin' to you to pay the interest on my bill till I get back with them poor kids o' mine. Until then I guess I ain't fit to 'sociate with white men."

Mr. McGuffey appeared on the point of weeping and put his arm around his old comrade in silent sympathy. Presently Mr. Gibney shook hands with him and Scraggs and, motioning them not to follow him, went ash.o.r.e. Before him, in his mind's eye, there floated the picture of a South Sea Island with the nodding, tufted palms fringing the beach and the glow of a volcano against the moonlit sky. Standing on the headland, waving him a last farewell, stood the broken-hearted victim of his capricious youth, the lovely Pinky Poui-Slam-Bang. Every lineament of her beautiful features was tattooed indelibly on his memory; he knew she would haunt him forever.

He went up to the Bowhead saloon, had a drink, leaned on the end of the bar and thought it over. There was but one way to get back to Aranuka and that was to s.h.i.+p out before the mast on a South Sea trader--and with that thought came remembrance of the _Tropic Bird_, soon to be discharged and outward bound.