All the Brothers Were Valiant Part 15

And another: "They're going to hog it. Them two...."

The little sea of scowling, twisting faces moved, it surged forward....

The men charged, more than a score, to overwhelm the four.

In the moment before, Joel had marked young d.i.c.k Morrell, at one side, twisted with indecision; and in the instant when the men moved, he called: "With us, Mr. Morrell."

It was command, not question; and the boy answered with a shout and a blow.... On the flank of the men, he swept toward them. And Joel's harpooner, and one of Asa Worthen's old men formed a triumvirate that fought there....

They were thus seven against a score. But they were seven good men. And the score were a mob....

It was fists, at the first, as Joel had sworn. The first, charging line broke upon them; and old Aaron was swept back, fighting like a cat, and crushed and bruised and left helpless in an instant. The fat cook dodged into his galley, and s.n.a.t.c.hed a knife and held the door there, prodding the flanks of those who swirled past his stronghold. Joel dropped the first man who came to him; and likewise Mark. But another twined 'round Joel's legs, and he could not kick them free, and there was no time to stoop and tear the man away.

He and Mark kept back to back for a moment; but Mark was not a defensive fighter. He could not stand still and wait attack; and when his second man fell, he leaped the twisting body and charged into the clump of them.

His black hair tossed, his eye was flaming; and his long arms worked like pistons and like flails. He became the center of a group that writhed and dissolved, and formed again. His head rose above them all.

The man who gripped Joel's legs, freed one hand and began to beat at Joel's body from below. Joel could not endure the blows; he bent, and took a rain of buffets on his head and shoulders while he caught the attacker by the throat, and lifted him up and flung him away. He staggered free, set his back against the galley wall; and when he s.h.i.+fted to avoid another attack, he found his place in the galley door. The fat cook crouched behind him, and Joel heard him shout: "I'll watch your legs, Cap'n. Give 'em the iron, sir. Give 'em th' iron."

Once Joel, looking down, saw the cook's knife play like a flame between his knees.... None would seek to pin him there.

The black harpooner fought his way across the deck to Joel's side. He left a trail of twisting bodies behind him. And he was grinning with a huge delight. "Now, sar, we'll do 'em, sar," he screamed. The sweat poured down his black cheeks; and his mouth was cut and bleeding. His s.h.i.+rt was torn away from one shoulder and arm....

"Good man," said Joel, between his panting blows. "Good man!"

Across the deck, one who had run forward for a handspike swept it down on young d.i.c.k Morrel's brown head. Morrell dodged, but the blow cracked his shoulder and swept him to the deck. The man who had fought beside him spraddled the prostrate body, and jerked an iron from the boat on the davits at his back and held it like a lance, to keep all men at a distance. A sheath knife sped, and twisted in the air, and struck him b.u.t.t first above the eye, so that he fell limply and lay still....

Mark Sh.o.r.e had been forced against the rail near where Jim Finch was pinned. Big Finch was howling and weeping with fright; and a little man of the crew with a rat's mean soul who hated Finch had found his hour. He was leaping about the mate, las.h.i.+ng him mercilessly with a heavy end of rope; and Finch screamed and twisted beneath the blows.

So swiftly had the tumult of the battle arisen that all these things had come to pa.s.s before the harpooners asleep in the steerage could wake and reach the deck. When they climbed the ladder, and looked about them, they saw Morrell and his ally prostrate at one side, Joel and the cook holding the galley door against a half dozen men; and big Mark's towering head amidst a knot of half a dozen more. And one of the harpooners backed away toward the waist of the s.h.i.+p, watchful and wary, taking no part in the affair.

But the other ... He was a Cape Verder, black blood crossed with Spanish; and Mark Sh.o.r.e had tied him to a davit, once upon a time, and lashed him till he bled, for faults committed. He saw Mark now, and his eyes shone greedily.

This man crouched, and crossed to a boat--his own--and chose his own harpoon. He twisted off the wooden sheath that covered the point, and flung it across the deck; and he poised the heavy iron in his hands, and started slowly toward Mark, moving on tiptoe, lightly as a cat.

Mark saw him coming; and the big man shouted joyfully: "Why, Silva! Come, you...."

He flung aside the men encircling him. One among them held the handspike with which he had struck down Morrell; and Mark smote this man in the body, and when he doubled, wrenched the great club from his hands. He swung this, leaped to meet the harpooner.

They came together in mid-deck. The great handspike whistled through the air, and down. An egg-sh.e.l.l crunched beneath a heel.... Silva dropped.

Mark stood for an instant above him; and in that instant, every man saw the harpoon which Silva had driven home. Its heavy shaft hung, dragging on the deck; it hung from Mark's breast, high in the right shoulder; and the point stood out six inches behind his shoulder blade. It seemed to drag at him; he bent slowly beneath its weight, and drooped, and lay at last across the body of the man whose skull the handspike had crushed.

There were, at that moment, about a dozen of the men still on their feet; but in the instant of their paralyzed dismay, two things struck them; two furies ... d.i.c.k Morrell, tottering on unsteady feet, brandis.h.i.+ng a razor-tipped lance full ten feet long. He came upon the men from the flank, shouting; and Joel, when he saw his brother fall, left his shelter in the galley door and swept upon them. The fat cook, with the knife, fought n.o.bly at his side.

The men broke; they fled headlong, forward; and Joel and Morrell and the cook pursued them, through the waist, past the trypots, till they tumbled down the fo'c's'le scuttle and huddled in their bunks and howled....

A dozen limp bodies sprawled upon the deck, bodies of moaning men with heads that would ache and pound for days.... Joel left Morrell to guard the fo'c's'le, and went back among them, going swiftly from man to man....

Silva was dead. The others would not die--save only Mark. The iron had pierced his chest, had ripped a lung....

XVIII

He died that night, smiling to the last. He was able to speak, now and then, before the end; and Joel and Priss were near him, at his side, soothing him, listening....

He asked Joel, once: "Shall I tell you--where--pearls..."

Joel shook his head. "I do not want them," he said. "They have enough blood to turn them crimson. Let them lie."

And Mark smiled, and nodded faintly. "Right, boy. Let them lie...." And his eyes shone up at them; and he whispered presently: "That was--a fight to tell about, Joel...."

In those hours beside Mark, Priss completed the transition from girl to woman. She was very sober, and quiet; but she did not weep, and she answered Mark's smiles. And Mark, watching her, seemed to remember something, toward the last. Joel saw his eyes beckon; and he bent above his brother, and Mark whispered weakly:

"Treasure--Priss, Joel. She's--worth all.... Kissed her, but she fought me...."

Joel gripped his brother's hand. "I knew there was no--harm in you--or in her," he said. "Don't trouble, Mark...."

When old Aaron had st.i.tched the canvas shroud, they laid Mark on the cutting stage; and Joel read over him from the Book, while the men stood silent by. Chastened men, heads bandaged, arms in slings ... Big Jim Finch at one side, shamed of face. Varde, sullen as ever, but with hopelessness writ large upon him. Morrell, and old Hooper....

Joel finished, and he closed the Book. "Unto the deep...." The cutting stage tilted, and the wave leaped and caught its burden and bore it softly down.... The sun was s.h.i.+ning, the sea danced, the wind was warm on fair Priscilla's cheek....

And as though, the brief, dramatic chapter being ended, another must at once begin, the masthead man presently called down to Joel the long, droning hail:

"Ah-h-h-h! Blow-w-w-w-w!"

And he flung his arm toward where a misty spout sparkled in the sun a mile or two away. Minutes later, the boats took water; and the _Nathan Ross_ was about her business again.

Joel wrote in the log that night, with Priscilla beside him, her fingers in his hair. Priscilla had been very humble, till Joel took her in his arms and comforted her....

He set down the s.h.i.+p's position; he recorded their capture, that day, of a great bull cachalot; and then:

"... This day Mark Sh.o.r.e was buried at sea. He died late last night, from wounds received when he fought valiantly to put down the mutiny of the crew. Fourth brother of the House of Sh.o.r.e...."

And below, the ancient and enduring epitaph:

"'All the brothers were valiant.'"

Priscilla, reading over his shoulder, pointed to this line and whispered sorrowfully: "But I--called you coward, Joel." He looked up at her, and smiled a little. "I know better now," she said. "So--give me the pen ...

And close your eyes...."

He heard the scratch of steel on paper; and when he opened his eyes again he saw that Priscilla had underscored, with three deep strokes, the first word of that honorable line.