The Blood Ship Part 30

"Stop fighting, lads! Stop it, I say! It is I--Newman! Stop fighting and go for'ard!"

If ever a human face showed amazement and discomfiture, Swope's did.

He had been so busy at his game of potting his officer he did not see Newman until the latter walked into his range of vision and sent forth his hail. He could have shot Newman then, and I could not have prevented, for he had his weapon leveled. But this sudden apparition seemed to paralyze him; he just lowered his arm, and stared.

It startled and paralyzed all hands. The struggle on the main deck ceased abruptly. It was the strangest thing I ever beheld, the way Newman's thunderous command seemed to turn to graven images the men on deck. They were frozen into grotesque att.i.tudes, arms drawn back to strike, boots lifted to kick. Mister Lynch stood with his capstan bar poised, as though he were at bat in a baseball game. Every face was lifted to the giant figure standing there on the p.o.o.p. I even saw in the brilliant light a white face framed in one of the portholes in the roundhouse.

Newman repeated his command. He did not beg or entreat; he commanded, and I don't think there was a sailor or stiff on the main deck who, after his first word, dreamed of disobeying him. Such was the big man's character superiority, such was the dominance his personality had acquired over our minds. I tell you, we of the foc'sle looked upon Newman as of different clay; it was not alone my hero-wors.h.i.+p that magnified his stature, in all our eyes he was one of the great, a being apart from and above us.

And not only foc'sle eyes regarded him in this light. There were the tradesmen peering out of the roundhouse ports, with never a thought in their minds of disobeying his injunction. I had it from their own lips afterwards; it was not just surprise at the big fellow's sudden appearance that stayed their hands, it was the power of his personality. There was Mister Lynch, arrested by Newman's voice in mid-stroke, as it were. There was Swope, standing palsied and impotent, with a growing terror in his face.

"Go for'ard, lads! Go below! Come up here, Lynch! Not another blow, men--for'ard with you!"

The frozen figures on the deck came to life. There was a murmur, a shuffling of feet, and Lynch lowered his great club. But it was an obedient noise.

From one quarter came the single note of dissent. The man in the main rigging sang out. It was Boston's voice.

"Go aft, mates!" he shouted. "We've got them--we've won--don't listen to him!" Then he threw his voice at Newman. "d.a.m.n you, Big 'Un, you've spoiled the game!" A flash followed the oath, and a splinter flew from the deck at Newman's feet.

There was a flash from my gun as well. I fired without taking conscious aim; I swear, an invisible hand seemed to lift my arm, a finger not mine seemed to press the trigger--and that greedy, murderous rascal in the rigging screamed, and loosed his hold. He struck the sheer pole in his descent, and bounced into the sea.

The shots seemed to awaken Captain Swope from his surprise and terror.

He had suddenly moved with catlike swiftness; when I lowered my eyes from the rigging, I saw he had left his refuge behind the mizzenmast and was standing in the open deck. Aye, there he stood in that light, which had reached its maximum, revealed to all eyes--and stamped upon his face was an expression of insane fury so terrible and deadly he seemed not a human being at all, but a mad beast crouched to spring.

His lips were drawn back from his teeth, and a froth appeared upon his black beard. The crowd forward saw the demon unmasked in his face, even as I saw it, and from them arose a gasping "_a-ah_!" of horror.

The sound caused the lady, who was standing at Newman's elbow, to turn around; or perhaps it was the feel of Swope's burning eyes that spun her about so quickly. He was raising his arm, the arm that held the gun, not quickly but slowly and carefully. With a stab of horror I saw him aim, not at the man, but at the woman.

No outside power this time seemed to aid me. I shot. I should have hit the beast, he was not ten paces distant--but only a click answered when my hammer fell. My gun was empty. I threw up my arm, intending to hurl the weapon, and I think I cried out. Swope shot--and the lady threw up her hands and fell.

You must understand, this all happened in a brief instant of time.

Aye, it was but a short moment since we stepped out on deck. What happened after that shot must be measured by seconds.

For the lady was still falling, and my hand was still reaching behind me to gather energy for a throw, when Newman bore down upon his enemy.

I had not seen him turn around even, and there he was at arm's grips with the captain. There was another flash from Swope's revolver, in Newman's very face. It was a miss, for Newman's hands--helpless lumps of flesh but a few moments before--closed upon Swope's neck. I saw Newman's face. It was a terrible face, the face of an enraged and smiting G.o.d. The great scar stood out like a dark line painted upon his forehead.

He lifted Swope from his feet with that throat grip. He whirled him like a flail, and smashed him down upon the deck, and let him go. And there Yankee Swope lay, sprawled, and still, his head bent back at a fatal angle. A broken neck, as a glance at the lolling head would inform; and, as we discovered later, a broken back as well. It was death that Newman's bare hands dealt in that furious second.

Newman did not waste so much as a glance at the work of his hands. He had turned to the lady, with a cry in his throat, a low cry of pain and grief--which changed at once to a shout of gladness. For the lady was stirring, getting to her feet, or trying to.

Newman gathered her slight form into his great arms. I heard him exclaim, "Where, Mary? Did it--" And she answered, dazedly, "I am all right--not hit." He took a step towards me, towards the companion.

The swelling murmur from the deck arrested him.

He walked to the break of the p.o.o.p, with the woman in his arms. She seemed like a child held to his breast. He spoke to the men below in a hushed, solemn voice.

"It is ended," he said. "Swope is dead."

As he stood there, the flares commenced to go out. One by one they guttered and extinguished, and the black night swept down like a falling curtain.

Five bells chimed in the cabin.

CHAPTER XXIII

It was the end, even as Newman said. The end of the mutiny, the end of hate and dissension in that s.h.i.+p, the end, for us, of Newman, himself, and the lady. Peace came to the _Golden Bough_ that night, for the first time, I suppose, in her bitter, blood-stained history. A peace that was bought with suffering and death, as we discovered when we reckoned the cost of the night's work.

Swope was dead--for which there was a prayer of thanks in every man's heart. Fitzgibbon was gone, and the n.i.g.g.e.r. Boston was dead at my hand; his partner, Blackie, lay stark in the scuppers, as did also the stiff named Green, each with a bashed in skull, the handiwork of Mister Lynch.

Such was the death list for that night's work. It was no heavier I think--though of much different complexion--than the list Captain Swope had planned.

As for wounded--G.o.d's truth, the _Golden Bough_ was manned by a crew of cripples for weeks after. Lynch had wrought terribly, there on the main deck--broken pates, broken fingers, a cracked wrist, a broken foot, and three men wounded, though not seriously, by Swope's and Connolly's shots. Such were the foc'sle's lighter casualties. Aft, the list was shorter. Morton had a bullet wound in the shoulder; it would lay him up for the rest of the pa.s.sage, but was not dangerous.

Connolly had a lump behind his ear. Lynch was bruised a bit, and his clothes were slashed to ribbons, otherwise he had escaped scathless.

The lady was not really hurt at all. Swope's bullet plowed through her ma.s.s of hair, creasing her so lightly the skin was unbroken, though the impact knocked her down.

I was almost the only man on the s.h.i.+p who bore no marks of that fight, though I was a sight from the beating, and Lynch--or perhaps it was Newman--made me bo'sun of the deck in the labor of bringing order out of chaos. I rallied the unhurt and lightly hurt, and we carried the worse injured into the cabin, where the lady and Newman attended them.

I opened the barricaded galley, and freed the frightened Chinamen, Wong and the cook and the cabin boy, and Holy Joe, the parson. As I learned afterwards, Holy Joe, when he learned of the intended mutiny, threatened, in vain attempt to stop it, to go aft and blow the plot.

Blackie and Boston wanted to kill him for the threat, but the squareheads would not have it so, and he was shut up in the galley with the Chinamen.

By Lynch's order, we launched the dinghy, and, with me at the tiller and two lordly tradesmen at the oars, set out in humane but hopeless quest for the mate and the n.i.g.g.e.r. I cruised about for nigh an hour, and came back empty-handed. We had not really expected to find them, or trace of them. Fitzgibbon had been stabbed, and it was known, also, that he did not know how to swim; and as for the n.i.g.g.e.r, "I plugged him as he jumped," said Lynch.

When we got back, Lynch had me muster the available hands, and we launched the longboat. All the rest of the night, Wong and his two under-servants cargoed that craft with stores of every kind.

One other man had lost his mess number in that s.h.i.+p, we discovered, as the night wore on. The traitor. We found not hide or hair of c.o.c.kney; he was gone from the s.h.i.+p, leaving no trace. At least, no trace I could discover. But when I looked for him, I became conscious of a new att.i.tude towards me on the part of my s.h.i.+pmates. I had been their mate, in a way their leader and champion. Now, by virtue of Lynch's word--and Newman's--I was their boss. I was no longer one of them.

Aye, and sailorlike they showed it by their reserve. They said truthfully enough they did not know what had become of c.o.c.kney--and they kept their guesses to themselves. But my own guess was as good, and as true. Boston and Blackie had attended to c.o.c.kney. I could imagine how. A knife across the windpipe and a boost over the side; without doubt some such fate was c.o.c.kney's.

Mister Lynch made no effort to put the s.h.i.+p on her course. We left the yards as they were, and drifted all the rest of the night. I, and the unwounded tradesmen, kept the deck; in the cabin, the lady and Newman labored, and conferred with Lynch and Holy Joe. Aye, Holy Joe, as well as myself, was lifted to higher estate by that night's happenings. He lived aft, even as I, the rest of the voyage, and was doctor of bodies as well as souls.

Near dawn, they called me into the cabin, and put dead man's shoes upon my feet, so to speak.

"Shreve, it is my duty to take the s.h.i.+p into port," says Lynch. "What will be the outcome of tonight's work, I do not know. But I do not fear. My testimony, and that of the sailmakers and carpenters, to say nothing of your story, and the stories of the other men forward, will be more than sufficient to convince any court of justice. There will be no jailing because of to-night's trouble--you may tell the men that."

"Yes, sir," I replied. Aye, it was good news to take forward to the poor shaking wretches in the foc'sle.

"You understand, I am captain for the remainder of the pa.s.sage," Lynch went on. "And I have decided to appoint you chief mate. Connolly will be second mate."

Aye, that was it. Jack Shreve, chief mate of the _Golden Bough_! "I have decided," says Lynch--but I knew the decision belonged to Newman and the lady, who were smiling at me across the table.

"And you understand--they are leaving in the longboat," added Lynch.

I looked at my friend, and the lady, and my new honor was bitter and worthless in my mouth.

"Take me with you," I urged.

"To share an outlaw's career? No, lad--we must go alone," said Newman.

I remember he added to Lynch, "If this boy proves the friend to you he was to me, you will be a lucky man, Captain."

The sky was just graying with the coming day when the two left the s.h.i.+p. But before they went over the side, there took place in the growing light on the deck before the cabin a scene as strange and solemn as any I have seen since. Holy Joe married them, there on the deck--and in the scuppers, behind the lady's back, covered up with a spare sail, lay the s.h.i.+p's dead, Yankee Swope among them. Aye, the parson tied the knot, for this life and next, as he said, and I was best man, and Captain Lynch gave away the bride.