Chapter IX: Book III: Bone of Contention (4)

"And I did so want to see them again," said she. "She would have known us by this time and not been afraid. Perhaps she would even have let me touch it."

"They are much happier in the water," he said, with a smile, for her face made him think of a child who had lost its toy.

She would not be satisfied till they had searched far along the shore, but nothing came of it, and she was disconsolate. The day was not cheerful and she would not bathe. They filled their buckets, and he caught some rabbits and they returned early to the ship.

Her humours appealed to him, even though he could not possibly understand them completely. Everything she did, and the way she did it, and indeed everything connected with her, was coming to have a vital interest for him.

He could not know how the anguished fear in that mother-seal's eyes had touched her heart, how she had yearned to pick up that sleek little baby and fondle it in her arms, how she had been hoping and longing to see them again, how great her disappointment had been. She felt bereft and went off early to bed.

Wulf lay smoking and thinking till night fell, and then went up to do sentry. He paced the deck till midnight, saw no sign of movement aboard the 'Jane and Mary,' and went below and was soon sound asleep.

He woke once with a start, believing he had heard a footstep. Then a ripple clop-clopped against the side of the ship and he lay down again satisfied.

He was awakened again by a hand gripping his shoulder, and, starting up, found a ghostly white figure bending over him, and The Girl's voice in his ear,

"There is something wrong. Can you not smell it?"

For a moment he imagined her dreaming. Then his nose warned him that she was right. There was something unusual in the atmosphere.

Even when their fire was no more than a heap of gray ashes with a golden core, and one of their lee ports was open, the faint, not unpleasant smell of wood smoke hung about the cabin. But this was quite different,--an acrid, pungent smell as of burning fat. He glanced at the fire and raked his mind for an explanation of it.

"It is worse in my room," she said, and he went quietly to the sacred little passage off which her sleeping-apartment opened.

Yes, it was worse there, and what it meant he could not imagine.

"You have not been burning anything?" he asked.

"Nothing. The horrid smell wakened me."

He turned and ran up the companion-steps, with a vague idea that something in the hold might have caught fire, though how that could be was beyond him. There was nothing there but their reserve stores, and certainly nothing that could take fire of its own accord. Besides, it was two days since he had been down there, and he never took a light, as the hatch, when shoved askew, gave all that was needed.

He fumbled the bolts of the little doors open, but the doors seemed jammed. He pushed. They remained firm. He made sure of the bolts again and put his shoulder to the doors. They resisted all his efforts.

"Good Lord!" he said, in something of a panic. "What's all this?"

He brushed hastily down past The Girl again, groped for his boots by the side of his blankets, pulled them on, and picked up his axe, with the certainty in his mind that something wrong was toward and it was as well to be fully armed.

Then he smashed away at the woodwork till it was in fragments, and he could climb up through the bristling splinters and over an unexpected plank that had somehow got across the doors and prevented their opening.

The first thing he saw when he got on deck was a faint glow about the main-hatch opening, and smoke pouring out of it. Running to it, a glance showed him a fierce fire roaring somewhere down below. A cry of dismay at his side told him that The Girl had scrambled up after him.

"The buckets," he jerked, and she sped back, tearing skin and garment on the splintered doors, while he sought and found a length of rope.

His voice was steady again, though his hands shook with agitation, as he slipped one end of the rope through the handle of the bucket and held the two ends, while the bucket hung in the bight and so could be released instantly by loosing one end of the rope. He filled both buckets and with a hasty, "Hand them down to me and fill again as I throw them up," lowered himself into the hold.

The fire was burning fiercely against the after starboard bulkhead, which, as it happened, was the one nearest The Girl's sleeping-cabin. Their lighter stores had been moved from their usual places and heaped about it and were blazing furiously. The bulkhead itself was on fire, but had apparently only just caught.

Wulf flung his first bucketful at it, and it answered with a hiss like a snarling curse, and showed a red-starred black blotch amid the crawling yellow flames.

He tossed the empty bucket up on deck, and gave the bulkhead another dose with his second, and as he tossed that one up the first came dangling down filled again.

"Good girl!" he shouted exultantly, to reassure her. "Plenty more! We shall do it all right," and the full buckets came dangling down as fast as he could empty them.

A score or so of bucketfuls ended it, and he climbed up, black with smoke and streaked with steam and sweat, and very grateful to be in fresh air again.

The night was just thinning towards the dawn. The Girl was sitting on the coaming of the hatch in a state of collapse, her wet garment clinging clammily about her, her head in her hands, her slender figure shaken with convulsive sobs. His anger boiled furiously at thought of the malice that had planned her suffering--her possible death. Love and pity swelled his heart for her. She looked so utterly forlorn and broken with the fight.

"It is all right, dear!"--he could not help it, it slipped out in spite of him. "Come away down to the cabin. You are shivering. You are wet through and torn to pieces. You have done splendidly, but it was an upsetting piece of business all round. Come!" and he put his arm under hers and drew her up.

She was so limp, however, that he had almost to carry her, and the feel of her unconscious sobs under his enfolding arm quickened his blood again.

At the companion-doors he had to release her and go back for his axe. A stout plank had been cunningly bound against the doors by a rope tied round the companion. His lips tightened sternly as he chopped the rope through and the plank fell to the deck.

He carried her gently down and laid her on his blankets, put some sticks on the fire and blew them into flame, and set on the kettle, which was fortunately full. By the time he had made some coffee and dashed it with rum, she had recovered herself and was sitting up in the blankets with one drawn closely about her.

"That was an unnerving business," he said, as he handed her her cup. "I'm afraid you had the worst of it. You have a lot of scratches--and your hands! Oh, I am truly sorry----"

"It was the rope," she said quietly, looking at the rasped rawness of them. "It was all horrible. How did it get on fire?"

"It was a deliberate attempt on the part of that wretch to make an end of us."

"No!"--and she gazed at him in blankest amazement.

"Without doubt. He blocked our doors here with a plank and a rope, and then started the fire down in the hold."

"Is such wickedness possible?"

"To a madman living chiefly on rum anything is possible."

"He deserves to die."

"Richly. He deserves no mercy. The thought of cutting him down with an axe was horrible. But after this----"

"There is no safety for us while he lives."

"I'm afraid there isn't."

Sleep, he knew, would brace her unstrung nerves better than any thing else, so, after bathing her hands in luke-warm water and anointing them with some of the rendered pork fat she kept for her cooking, he induced her to go and lie down in her bunk. Her other scratches she said she would attend to when she could see them properly.

Then he went on deck and drew up a bucket of water and washed off his own stains, and afterwards smoked many pipes as he pondered the unpleasantly weighty subject of Macro. For that matters could go on like this was out of the question.

XLII

He had cakes made and breakfast all ready long before she came out of her room, still visibly feeling the effects of the night's proceedings.

"I am stiff and sore all over," she said, lowering herself carefully to her seat on the floor. "And you?"

"Sorer in mind than in body."

"What will you do?"

"I shall go over presently and tell him that now he must look out for himself. I will end him, the first chance I get, as I would a wild beast."

"He will try to kill you on the spot."

"He won't get the chance. I'll see to that."

"I shall go with you."

"No."

"Yes, indeed. My heart would thump itself to pieces, waiting here all alone."

"He is dangerous, and he has a vile tongue when it runs away with him----"

"I do not care. It is no more dangerous for me than for you. No--no--no!"--as he was about to argue the matter,--"I cannot be left behind," and nothing he could say could move her.

They saw no sign of life on the 'Jane and Mary,' not so much as a whiff of smoke from the companion-hatch.

"Perhaps he fled when he saw his horrid scheme had failed," suggested The Girl hopefully.

"Not very likely, I'm afraid, but we can go across and see. Won't you be good now and take my advice----"

"I'll be good, but I won't stop here alone."

So perforce he took her with him on the raft, and paddled quietly across to the other ship.

But before they reached it she lifted a warning finger for him to stop paddling and listen. And on their anxious ears there broke the strangest medley of sounds conceivable, and chilled them in the hearing. Wild bursts of laughter, cut short by yells of rage or sudden screams, as of one in mortal fear,--hoarse shouts, torrents of oaths, dull flailing blows which sounded like fists on wood, and, through it all, the never-ceasing yells and screams.

"He has gone mad," panted The Girl, very white in the face, and looked at him with wide anxious eyes.

"Delirium tremens,"--with an understanding nod. "He could stand more than most, but a man cannot live on rum alone," and he paddled slowly towards the ship, his face knitted with doubts as to what he should do.

He was in two minds. If he left the man to himself he would inevitably die in the end, for he had unlimited liquor on board and would turn to it at once, like a hog to its mire, as soon as this bout ran its course. On the other hand, every fragment of professional instinct in him impelled him to the rescue.

Never in his life had he withheld aid from one in extremity. And yet it seemed monstrously absurd--to drag a man back from death solely for the purpose of letting him do his best to kill you, the first chance that offered.

And he had more than himself to think for. Suppose he saved this wretched man, and was worsted by him later on, what of The Girl? She would have reason enough to blame his pusillanimity, and he himself would curse it with his last breath.

But was it fair fighting--to see your enemy in a hole and make no effort to save him? Old-time Chivalry would never even have argued the matter. It would have helped the enemy out, handed him his weapons, and courteously awaited the renewal of the combat. Ah--times were changed.... And this man was compound of treachery and malice.

Thoughts such as these whirled through his brain before he had covered the short space to the other ship.

"Wait here!" he said to The Girl, and climbed through the well-known hole in the side,--and she followed him close in spite of his frowning objection. She had not come thus far to be out of the critical moment.

He ran down to the cabin, and went straight to the mate's door. The dreadful sounds,--the shouts and yells and cries of fear, the furious oaths, the wild thumping blows--filled the cabin with horrors. Even in that anxious moment The Girl was cognisant of a dreary, dirty, repulsive look about it which had not been there before. It was more like the den of a wild beast than a living-room. Some of the silken hangings were torn down, the one or two that were left hung by single pegs. It looked as though a maniac had chased his mad fancies round the room and sought them behind the draperies.

Wulf, gripping his axe, opened the door into the passage, looked in, then went in. And The Girl drew near, to be at hand in case of need, and stood shuddering.

"Keep off! Keep off, ye blank-eyed deevils! ---- ---- ----! Wi' your bloody beaks and tearing claws.... Keep off! Keep off ---- ---- ---- ye!" and the black fists, all bruised and bleeding, whirled and struck at the roof and sides of the bunk as he fought the birds the rum had bred in his brain. Then, as they beat him down in a pestiferous crowd, he gave a shrill scream and doubled himself over in a heap in his bunk, with his hands clasped over his head to save it from their attacks. Then up again, shouting and fighting for dear life, and down flat again with a scream, cowering in uttermost extremity of terror, while oaths dribbled out of him like water out of a spout.

Wulf came out and closed the door, and pushed her brusquely up the stairs to the deck.

"You should not have come down," he said sternly. "This is no place for you," and then, seeing how white her face was, he added more gently, "There is no danger--except to him. He is fighting for his life with the birds. I can do nothing for him--except get rid of all his rum. He would turn to it the moment he comes round, and it is poison in his present state."

He went down again and rooted about everywhere, found two kegs in the cabin under the torn hangings, and another in Macro's room, with a spigot in it. He carried them up on deck, staved in the heads with his axe, and emptied them overboard. In the main-hold he found three more and did the same with them.

"When he gets through, his throat will be like a lime-kiln. There is a bucket of water down there. I will put in it the coffee we left from breakfast and leave it in his cabin. It will be the best thing for him if he will drink it. But he'll be crazy for rum---- I'll take you back and get the coffee. I'm sorry you came."

There was strong disapproval in his tone, but she did not resent it. After all, his thought was entirely for her in the matter.

"You're sure he won't fly at you?" she asked anxiously.

"He's much too busy with the birds. Besides, I shall not touch him or speak to him. It is best to leave him to himself. We will leave some food by him also," and she obediently let herself down before him on to the raft.

"It does seem absurd----" she began impulsively, as they joggled along.

"To keep him alive so that he may try again to kill us,"--he nodded. "I know. But there it is, as the country-folk say. However, he won't live long if he keeps on at the rum. As soon as he gets better he'll go straight out to the pile to get more, unless he's too weak. It's terribly wasteful work, what he's at, and no food to work on."

"Whether it's wrong or not, I cannot help wishing he would die," she said passionately. "It is too dreadful."

"I don't want his blood on my hands if I can help it," he said briefly. But he felt as she did.

XLIII

After carrying supplies to the mate, he came back for her, and they went ashore for fresh water, and he providently secured a couple more rabbits.

The Girl was very quiet, depressed, and very unlike her usual bright self. But he was not surprised. Her anxiety for the future was enough to account for it, and there was, besides, the reaction from the strenuous upsetting through which they had just passed.

Each morning he went across to see how the sick man was getting on, and she let him go alone, but followed him with anxious eyes, and stood in the bows watching till she saw him safely on his way back.

On the third day they took advantage of the enemy's enforced inactivity to go out to the pile and make good the losses caused by the fire. And all the time they were away The Girl was in a state of dire anxiety lest he should have discovered their absence and got across and fired their ship. But to her great relief it was there all right when they got back, and showed no signs of visitation.

On the fourth morning Wulf found his patient sufficiently recovered to be spoken to plainly as to the future, and he did not mince matters. While he spoke, the mate lay watching him through almost closed eyes, just one narrow line between the heavy lids catching the light from the port and imparting a singularly sinister look to the haggard face. The veiled eyes watched him cautiously, charged with what?--suspicion? hatred? treachery? All these, Wulf imagined. But they gave no sign. They were like the eyes of a snake, of a caged beast being rated by its keeper.

"Your dastardly attempt on us failed," said Wulf, to the steely glint of the black soul behind the narrowed lids. "And now,--understand! You are outside the pale. Leave us alone and we leave you alone. Interfere further with us and I will kill you as I would a dangerous beast. Now you are warned, and your blood be on your own head."

The other made no sign. The narrow gleam of the dark eyes out of the rigid impassivity of the dark face was more bodeful than a torrent of curses.

As he left the ship, Wulf picked up and took with him the only two axes he could find. Magnanimity had its limits, but it was wasted here.

"Well?" asked The Girl anxiously, when he returned.

"He is almost himself again, but very much weakened of course. I have given him final warning that if he molests us further I shall kill him."

"It would have been simpler to let him die."

"Simpler--yes, but I could not bring myself to it. We'll fight him fair if fight we must."

The weather still kept dull and gray and heavy, with a reserve of menace and malice in it akin to that of the mate. The sky was veiled with ever-hurrying clouds. The sea was smooth, with something of treachery in its sullen quietude, as though it were only biding its time to break out again and do its worst.

The following morning, to their surprise, they saw Macro start out early for the wreckage. And Wulf, watching him grimly, said, "He's after his poison. And now he'll probably drink himself to death. It's amazing the hold it takes on a man. He won't trouble us much longer."

They spent the day ashore, but the vivacity and enjoyment of that other day were awanting. Perhaps it was the cheerless weather,--the physical and mental strain of these later days,--the thought that their devil was loosed again,--anyhow, a subtle sense of foreboding. Whatever it was it weighed upon their spirits, and a long tramp up the beach, in forlorn hope of meeting Mistress Seal again, did not succeed in raising them.

"What is it, I wonder?" said The Girl. "Something is going to happen, I know. I have felt like this before, and always something dreadful has followed."

"But you never knew what, beforehand? Perhaps you have the gift of prevision,--the second sight."

"I may have, but it doesn't go so far as to explain things. I just feel anxious for it to be over and done with."

"What?"

"What's coming, whatever it is."

"We must be extra careful for a time, till you are sure the trouble is past," he said, with a smile, but he felt the weight on his spirits as she did.

Physically, however, their long tramp did them good, and they returned home with famous appetites.

"I wonder if he's back yet," said The Girl, as they were paddling to the ship. There was no doubt as to where her fears centred.

"I don't see the raft. We'll see better from the deck," and when they had climbed aboard they looked at once towards the spit and saw the mate's raft still lying there. He was not back yet.

They ate, and rested, and until the darkness swallowed the spit, the raft still lay there.

"He's staying late," said Wulf. "Maybe he's broached a keg and taken too much. It would be what I would expect from him under the circumstances."

He patrolled the deck, after she had gone to bed, listening for the sound of the mate's oar. But he heard nothing, and at last made up his mind that the fellow had probably waited too late and had made himself snug out there for the night, though, for himself, the idea would not have commended itself. There was little danger, however, of his coming across in the dark, so he went down and slept soundly at the foot of the companion-steps.

All the next day they were on the look-out for him, but he did not come.

Wulf had told her of his idea that he had probably found means of passing the night out there, in which case he would no doubt put in another long day rooting for treasure. So that it was not until night had fallen again, and the raft still lay waiting on the spit, that he decided in his own mind that something was wrong.

"I shall go across to the pile in the morning to find out," he said, as they sat by the fire.

"I shall go with you."

"I would very much sooner you stopped here."

"And suppose it was all a trick on his part. He may be hiding in the sandhills. He would watch you go and then come out on me. No," with a very decided shake of the head, "I go with you."

So, in the morning, they set off, walked along the spit to the western point and waded and swam to the wreckage, keeping a keen look-out for first sight of the mate.

"Those hideous birds!" panted The Girl, as the skirling, squabbling crew swooped and hovered over the far end of the pile.

"We'll keep as far away from them as possible," and they crept up at a distance, and he proceeded to make a raft, since a supply of further stores was needed to make good their losses by the fire.

So far they had come upon no signs of Macro. From the top of the pile they looked carefully all round, but beyond the usual smashed boxes and cases there was nothing to show that he had ever been there.

"Where on earth can he have got to?" said Wulf.

"Perhaps he's fallen into the sea, or down into some crack," said The Girl, not unhopefully.

"It is always possible. He might not recognise how the fever had pulled him down."

They loaded their raft without any interference from the birds, beyond the blood-curdling clamour of their angry disputations. They were quite ready to go, but still the whereabouts of the mate was a mystery, and Wulf was loth to leave it at that. He might be lying broken in some crack. If he had come to some sudden end it would be best to know it, if that were possible, so that their fears--on their own account as well as his--might be at rest. On the other hand it was quite impossible to rake over the whole pile. That would be a good month's work.

A grim idea shot suddenly into Wulf's mind, as he stood looking keenly round from the highest point he could clamber up to. It came at sight of the birds whirling and clamouring round the end of the pile. Suppose ... oh,--horrible! ... yet it might very well be.

"What is it?" asked The Girl anxiously, for his lips and face had tightened ominously at his thought.

"Nothing, maybe. I'm going over there to see...."

"Can you see anything of him?"

"No."

He poled the raft along the edge of the pile towards the hovering cloud of birds.

"Now, I'm going to swim along here and climb up. I want to see what they're at. You will be quite safe here."

She glanced at him with a startled look, fathoming his grim thought instantly, and it blanched her face for a moment.

"They may turn on you," she jerked.

"They seem too busy."

He let himself down into the water and swam noiselessly along the side of the pile, and she stood watching anxiously.

When he reached the outskirts of the whirling cloud he found a sodden crack, and drew himself in, and disappeared from her sight. Her heart kicked till it felt like choking her. Her face was strained, her eyes wide and fearful. She felt horribly alone.

Inside his niche, Wulf climbed cautiously, the curdling clamour very close. Now and again a feathery fiend with eyes like glass and reddened beak swooped past his hiding-place, with a shrill cry of warning to the rest at sight of him, or it might be of invitation.

He got his eyes above the top at last, in spite of pointed attentions from angry outsiders, scanned the spot where the shrieking crew centred most thickly, and dreamed of what he got a glimpse of there for weeks afterwards.

---- The remnants of what had been a man, all pecked and scratched and torn to shreds,--white, clean-picked bones showing through fragments of his clothing, myriads of squawking birds, of all shapes and sizes, clustered on it like bees on a comb, hustling and fighting one another with shrill screams and thrashing wings and red beaks. It was only when, through some unusually bitter struggle, the mass writhed and rose for a moment, only to settle more closely the next, that he could see. Not far from the body was a broached keg which the birds had overturned in their strife. It explained everything to him.

He dropped back down his cleft, sick at the sight, grateful for the clean feel of the water. He plunged his head under and spat out the feeling of it all. Then he made his way quietly back to The Girl, and she had no need to ask what he had found. He nodded, and climbed up on to the raft and pushed quickly away.

"You are sure he is dead?" she asked, after a time.

"Horribly dead," and told her no more till later, and then not very much. "It is strange to think of it all," he said, in conclusion. "He always feared the birds. In his delirium it was the birds he was fighting. And the birds got him at last."

The manner of his death shocked and horrified them. But the knowledge that the menace of him had passed out of their lives was untellable relief.