Harrigan by Max Brand (story books to read txt) 📖

Henshaw. Ten years ago I didn't have a crooked thought or a mean one in my brain. Today there's hell inside me, understand? Hell!" He paused, breathing hard.

"There's others on this ship that have been through the same grind, some of them longer than me. There's others that ain't here, but that ain't forgotten, because me an' some of the rest, we seen them dyin' on their feet. Maybe they ain't dropped into the sea, but they're just the same, or worse. You'll find 'em loafin' along the beaches. They take water from the natives, they do."

He went on in a hoarse whisper: "On this ship I've seen 'em busted. An' Henshaw has done the bustin'. This is a coffin ship, Harrigan, an' Henshaw he's the undertaker. He don't bring 'em to Davy Jones's locker—he does worse—he brings 'em to hell on earth, a hell so bad that when they go below, they don't notice no difference. Harrigan, me an' a few of the rest, we know what's been done, an' some of us have thought wouldn't it be a sort of joke, maybe, if sometime what Henshaw has done to others was done to himself, what?"

The sweat was standing out on Harrigan's face wet and cold. It seemed to him that through the darkness he could make out whole troops of those broken men littering the decks. He peered through the dark at the bos'n, and made out the hint of the gray-blue eyes watching him again as the cat watches the mousehole, and the heart of Harrigan ached.

"Hovey, are you bound for the loincloth an' the beaches, like the rest?"

"No, because I've sold my soul to White Henshaw; but you're bound there, Harrigan, because you can never sell your soul. I looked in your eyes and seen it written there like it was in a book."

He gripped the Irishman by the shoulder.

"There's some say this is the last voyage of White Henshaw, but me an' some of the rest, we know different. He can't leave the sea, which means that he won't take us out of hell. Now, talk straight. You stood up to McTee; would you stand up to Henshaw?"

Harrigan muttered after a moment of thought: "I suppose this is mutiny, bos'n?"

"Aye, but I'm safe in talkin' it. White Henshaw trusts me, he does, because I've sold my soul to him. If you was to go an' tell him what I've said, he'd laugh at you an' say you was tryin' to incite discontent. What's it goin' to be, Harrigan? Will you join me an' the rest who can set you free an' make a man of you, or will you stay by McTee and White Henshaw and that devil Campbell?"

"How could you set me free?"

"One move—altogether—in the night—we'd have the ship for our own, an' we could beach her and take to the shore at any place we pleased."

Harrigan repeated: "One move—altogether—in the night! I don't like it, bos'n. I'll stand up to my man foot to foot an' hand to hand, but for strikin' at him in the dark—I can't do it."

He caught the sound of Hovey's gritting teeth.

"Think it over," persisted the bos'n. "We need you, Harrigan, but if you don't join, we'll help McTee and Henshaw and Campbell to make life hell for you."

"I've thought it over. I don't like the game. This mutiny at night—it's like hittin' a man who's down."

"That's final?"

"It is."

"Then God help you, Harrigan, for you ain't the man I took you for."

CHAPTER 20

He rose and left Harrigan to the dark, which now lay so thick over the sea that he could only dimly make out the black, wallowing length of the ship. After a time, he went into the dingy forecastle and stretched out on his bunk. Some of the sailors were already in bed, propping their heads up with brawny, tattooed arms while they smoked their pipes. For a time Harrigan pondered the mutiny, glancing at the stolid faces of the smokers and trying to picture them in action when they would steal through the night barefooted across the deck—some of them with bludgeons, others with knives, and all with a thirst for murder.

Sleep began to overcome him, and he fought vainly against it. In a choppy sea the bows of a ship make the worst possible bed, for they toss up and down with sickening rapidity and jar quickly from side to side; but when a vessel is plowing through a long-running ground swell, the bows of the ship move with a sway more soothing than the swing of a hammock in a wind. Under these circumstances Harrigan was lulled to sleep.

He woke at length with a consciousness, not of a light shining in his face, but of one that had just been flashed across his eyes. Then a guarded voice said: "He's dead to the world; he won't hear nothin'."

Peering cautiously up from under the shelter of his eyelashes, he made out a bulky figure leaning above him.

"Sure he's dead to the world," said a more distant voice. "After the day he must have put in with Campbell, he won't wake up till he's dragged out. I know!"

"Lift his foot and let it drop," advised another. "If you can do that to a man without waking him, you know he's not going to be waked up by any talkin'."

Harrigan's foot was immediately raised and dropped. He merely sighed as if in sleep, and continued to breathe heavily, regularly. After a moment he was conscious that the form above him had disappeared. Then very slowly he turned his head and raised his eyelids merely enough to peer through the lashes. The sailors sat cross-legged in a loose circle on the floor of the forecastle. At the four corners of the group sat four significant figures. They were like the posts of the prize ring supporting the rope; that is to say, the less important sailors who sat between them. Each of the four was a man of mark.

Facing Harrigan were Jacob Flint and Sam Hall. The former was a little man, who might have lived unnoticed forever had it not been for a terrible scar which deformed his face. It was a cut received in a knife fight at a Chinese port. The white, gleaming line ran from the top of his temple, across the side of his right eye, and down to the cheekbone. The eye was blind as a result of the wound, but in healing the cut had drawn the skin so that the lids of the eye were pulled awry in a perpetual, villainous squint. It was said that before this wound Flint had been merely an ordinary sailor, but that afterward he was inspired to live up to the terror of his deformed face.

Sam Hall, the "corner post," at Flint's right, was a type of blond stupidity, huge of body, with a bull throat and a round, featureless face. You looked in vain to find anything significant in this fellow beyond his physical strength, until your glance lingered on his eyes. They were pale blue, expressionless, but they hinted at possibilities of berserker rage.

The other two, whose backs were toward Harrigan, were Garry Cochrane and Jim Kyle. The latter might have stood for a portrait of a pirate of the eighteenth century, with a drooping, red mustache and bristling beard. The reputation of this monster, however, was far less terrible than that of any of the other three, certainly far less than Garry Cochrane. This was a lean fellow with bright black eyes, glittering like a suspicious wolf's.

Between these corner posts sat the less distinguished sailors. They might have been notable cutthroats in any other assemblage of hard-living men, but here they granted precedence willingly to the four more notable heroes.

Around the circle walked Jerry Hovey like a shepherd about his flock. It was apparent that they all held him in high favor. His chief claim to distinction, or perhaps his only one, was that he had served as bos'n for ten years under White Henshaw; but this record was enough to win the respect of even Garry Cochrane.

It was Jim Kyle who had peered into the face of Harrigan, for now he was pushing to one side the lantern he had used and settling back into his place in the circle. He gestured over his shoulder with his thumb.

"How'd you happen to miss out with the Irishman, Jerry?"

"Talk low or you may wake him," warned Hovey. "I lost him because the fool ain't sailed long enough to know White Henshaw. He has an idea that mutiny at night is like hittin' a man when he's down—as if there was any other way of hittin' Henshaw an' gettin' away with it!"

The chuckle of the sailors was like the rumble of the machinery below, blended and lost with that sound.

"So he's out—an' you know what that means," went on Hovey.

A light came into the pale eyes of Sam Hall, and his thick lips pulled back in a grin.

"Aye," he growled, "we do! He's a strong man, but"—and here he raised his vast arms and stretched them—"I'll tend to Harrigan!"

The voice of the bos'n was sharp: "None o' that! Wait till I give orders, Sam, before you raise a hand. We're too far from the coast. Let old Henshaw bring us close inshore, an' then we'll turn loose."

"What I don't see," said one of the sailors, "is how we make out for hard cash after we hit the coast. We beach the Heron—all right; but then we're turned loose in the woods without a cent."

"You're a fool," said Garry Cochrane. "We loot the ship before we abandon her. There'll be money somewhere."

"Aye," said Hovey, "there's money. That's what I got you together for tonight. There's money, and more of it than you ever dreamed of."

He waited for his words to take effect in the brains of the men, running his glance around the circle, and a light flashed in response to each eye as it met his.

He continued: "White Henshaw cashed in every cent of his property before he sailed in the Heron. I know, because he used me for some of his errands. And I know that he had a big safe put into his cabin. For ten years everything that White Henshaw has looked at turned into gold. I know! All that gold he's got in that safe—you can lay to that."

He turned to the sailor who had first raised the question: "Money?
You'll have your share of the loot—if you can carry it!"

They drew in their breath as if they were drinking.

Hovey continued: "Now, lads, I know you're gettin' excited and impatient. That's why I've got you together. You've got to wait. And until I give the word, you've got to keep your eyes on the deck an' run every time one of the mates of White Henshaw—damn his heart!—gives the word. Why? Because one wrong word—one queer look—will tip off the skipper that something's wrong, and once he gets suspicious, you can lay to it that he'll find out what we're plannin'. I know!"

There was a grim significance in that repeated phrase, "I know," for it hinted at a knowledge more complete and evil than falls to the share of the ordinary mortal.

"Lads, keep your eyes on the deck and play the game until I give the
word! If the wind of this comes to the captain, it's overboard for
Jerry Hovey. I'd rather give myself to the sharks than to White
Henshaw. That's all.

"Now, lads, it's come to the point where we've got to know what we'll do. There's two ways. One is to crowd all them what ain't in the mutiny into one cabin an' keep 'em there till we beach the boat."

"So that they can get out and tell the land sharks what we've done?" suggested Garry Cochrane in disgust.

"Garry," said Hovey with deep feeling, "you're a lad after my heart. And you're right. If one of them lives, he'll be enough to put a halter around the necks of each of us. We couldn't get away. If we're once described, there ain't no way we could dodge the law."

He grinned sardonically as he looked about the circle: "There's something about us, lads, that makes us different from other men."

The sailors glanced appreciatively at the scarred countenances of their fellows and laughed hoarsely.

"So the second way is the only