Hell's Hatches Page 5

  CHAPTER V

  A SHIP OF DEATH

  With a good many days of my life to which I cannot look back withouta blush of shame, I write deliberately when I say that the oneushered in by the raucous grind of the _Cora Andrews'_ chain runningthrough its hawse-pipe as she let go anchor a couple of cables'lengths off Kai beach, stands alone in the horror and the painfulnessof its memories. It is characteristic of all but the most degraded ofbeach-combers--doubtless their general contempt of life has much to dowith it--that "once in a while" they "can finish in style"; that, on ashowdown, they are usually there with the goods. I had always felt surethat, in a pinch, I could force myself to come through in the sameway--the thought had gilded many a slough of despond for me. Well, thisday, I had my chance and funked it--funked it clean, as a yellow dogslinks from a fight with its tail between its legs, as an underbredhunter refuses a jump. Oh yes, I had an excuse. "Seeing green" is nextthing to "seeing yellow." Almost anyone knows that. But I had thoughtthat there was enough red blood left in me to make it possible for me totake the bit in my teeth and finish like a thoroughbred at the last. Butthere was not. That was the thought which had made the ghastly tragedyeven more tragical to me, which made a mockery of the triumph which Imight otherwise have felt when, first Australia and then Europe,acclaimed me as the greatest marine painter of the decade.

  For several days previous to the coming of the _Cora Andrews_ I hadbeen slipping up pretty badly on my "absinthe reform" program. It waslargely the fault, I think, of a positively infernal spell of weather.The ozone-laden trade winds, falling light after a spell of lowbarometer, had finally failed altogether. Kai was lapped in sluggishmoisture-saturated airs that clung like a wet blanket. The Gargantuanpopcorn-like piles of the trade clouds were replaced by strata ofmiasmic mists which awakened all the latent fevers in a man's body andmind. The sea, slatily slick of surface, heaved in oily, indolentsmoothness, sliding over the reef without sound or foam. The brooding,ominous sullenness was all-pervading, oppressive with sinistersuggestion.

  Everyone on the island was drinking heavily, and mostly alone. No tipsychoruses boomed out from under the sounding-board of Jackson'ssheet-iron roof. Even "Slant" Allen failed to appear for his wildend-of-the-afternoon dashes up and down the beach. Rona dropped inlanguidly one afternoon to say that Bell was tilting the bottle morefrequently than she had ever known him to do before, and that for threedays he had missed his early morning plunge from the reef.

  "Too much walkee with Jo'nnee Walkah, Whitnee," she punned in a feebleflicker of pleasantry. "I veh-ry much worree along Bel-la."

  She needn't have worried, though. _He_, at least, had the stuff in himfor a proper finish.

  It was only to be expected that I should seek solace in a time like thisby snuggling closer than ever into the enfolding arms of the "GreenLady." That fickle jade was at her best--and her worst. Never had shewinged me to loftier pinnacles of sensuous delight; never had shedropped me to profounder depths of horror and despond. The night beforethe _Cora_ came marked a new "high"; also a new "low." I dropped like aplummet straight from a pea-green grotto full of lilies of the valley,maiden's hair ferns and ambrosia-breathed houri to the fire-scorchedcliffs ringing the mouth of the Bottomless Pit. I knew that Pit of old.Most of the early hours of my mornings for the last five years had beenspent in trying to keep from being pushed into it.

  But this time, though, it looked as if they were going to get away withit. Failing to break my grip (I always managed to hang on somehow), theyhad tried new tactics. They were pushing in the side of the Pit itselfso as to carry me with it. I felt the relentless creeping of the ledgeon which I struggled to maintain precarious footing. If I could onlypush back into the rock ... through it ... out to the air! Nothing couldstand against the mighty heave I gave with my shoulders. The cliffparted with a great rip-roar of rending, and I reeled back, back,straight through--the pandanus siding of my hut. An instant before anigger had knocked off the shackle of the _Cora's_ anchor chain. Theunchecked run of forty-odd fathoms of rusty iron links through ahawse-pipe is very like in sound to the rending of a rocky cliff--thatis, to a man in an absinthe nightmare.

  That violent awakening did not bring me straight back to normal by anymeans. You never come out of the "green horrors" that way, unless, ofcourse, you fall into water, or set fire to the house, or do somethingelse that calls for instant action. You usually come out by gradualstages, each successive one marked by a shade more of the earth-earthythan the last.

  In this instance my fall only changed the spirit of my nightmare. I wasby no means out of the woods, either. I had backed away from the Mouthof the Pit all right, but what brought that Ship of Death--black andsinister she was against the bloody redness of the infernalsunrise--unless it was to take me there again? I _knew_ that it was areal ship. I _knew_ those black things festooned along its rails werereal dead men. I _knew_ that the horrible reek which presently camepouring in over the oily water to penetrate my contracted nostrils wasthe real smell of rotting flesh. I _knew_ that I was looking out at Kailagoon, and from the door of my own hut. I _knew_ these things, just asI _knew_ it was real blood I saw and tasted when I bit my finger toprove that I knew them.

  But it was still as in a dream that I became aware of an erraticallyrowed whaleboat pulling away from the Death Ship and making for thebeach. It was with an agreeable sense of relief that I noted that it wasapparently heading for the quay rather than in my direction. Drawingnear, it sheered away from the weed-slippery landing and went full-tiltfor the beach. A man--a big man, bare of legs and of chest, wearing onlya red _sulu_--ran down to meet it. It seemed no more than a perfectlynatural development of the ghastly pantomime that the big man shouldraise a revolver and shoot one of the black rowers when the latterjumped over the gunwale of the whaleboat and started to bolt up thebeach. I saw the flash from the revolver, saw the fugitive crumple andfall, and the sharp report, impacting on the side of my sheet-ironrain-water tank, slammed against my ear-drums with a shattering "whang."

  That close-at-hand shot had the effect of shocking me back a notch ortwo more nearer normal; but, nerve-shattered as I always was at the endof a night, it was something very akin to the abject terror that grippedme as I backed away from the Brink of the Pit which now impelled me to"back away" from the new menace. Seizing my painting things from sheerforce of habit, I slunk off through the long early morning shadows ofthe coco palm boles, not to stop until I came out upon the broken coralof the steep-shelving leeward beach of the island. It was as far as Icould go without swimming.

  Here Laku, my Tonga boy, found me toward noon. The coffee from the flaskhe brought was the first thing to pass my lips since I had poured mylast drink the night before. It steadied me somewhat, but my nervesstill refused to react. The shock of the morning had been too much forthem. I realized that Kai had a mighty knotty problem on its hands withthat shipload of dead and dying niggers in the lagoon (Laku had told meit was the _Cora_, and something of what the trouble was), and it took alot of screwing before I got my courage up to a point where I couldforce my reluctant feet to carry me back to shoulder my share of theresponsibilities.

  I was still streaking and dabbing at my canvas at three o'clock, and itmust have been nearly an hour later before I packed up and started backtoward the village. I burned that bizarre rectangle of colour-slashedcanvas on the very first occasion (which was not until a day or twolater) that I had a chance to stand off and look at it objectively.There was revealed in it too much of the utter unmanliness which markedmy conduct on this most shameful day of my life to make it a pleasantthing to have around. For me to have kept it would have been like aman's framing and hanging the excoriation of the judge who had sentencedhim for some despicable crime.

  What had transpired in the village up to the moment of my return at theend of the afternoon I must set down as I learned of it later.Everything considered, it seems to me that Kai--with one or two notableexceptions--beha
ved very creditably in an extremely trying emergency.Awakened when the _Cora's_ anchor was let go, a number of men had runout to the beach, from where their glasses quickly gave them a prettygood idea of the state of affairs aboard the luckless black-birder. Thenthey got together at Jackson's--the lot of them in their pajamas or_sulus_, just as they had tumbled out of their sleeping mats--to decidewhat was to be done. The majority at first seemed inclined to stand bytheir predetermined plan of shooting the first, and every man from aplague-infested ship that tried to land on the beach. But at thisjuncture Doc Wyndham, calling their attention to the fact that awhaleboat had already put away from the _Cora_, suggested that they waitand learn just how things stood before starting off gunning.

  "I'm with you as far as shooting any nigger that tries to breakquarantine goes," he said, "but I'm dam'd if I'll stand by and seeanyone take a pot shot at Mike Grogan, or any other sick white man, forthat matter. Old Mike nursed me through a spell of 'black-water' once atPort Darwin, and if he is in that boat I dope it it's up to me to totehim home to my shack and do what I can for him. If he can't clamber outI'm going to wade in and carry him back to the beach, so you'll have toshoot the two of us if you shoot at all. But I don't think you will. I'mnot asking any of you chaps to have anything to do with the stunt. Youneedn't touch him. I'll take him home and swear not to budge from theretill the thing's over one way or the other. After that I'll put myselfin a ten-day quarantine. Moreover, I won't be expecting attention fromany white man or nigger on the island in case the luck goes against meand I catch the pest myself. It's my own little game and I won't standfor any interfering in it."

  That was the gist of Doc Wyndham's remarks as Jackson outlined them tome the next day. They met with hearty assent from all of the dozen ormore present, except on the score of letting the Doc have the job all tohimself. He turned down every one of the volunteer nurses, however,saying it was his own kettle of fish and that he'd have to stew it inhis own way. He even insisted on meeting the boat alone, urging thatthere was no use in multiplying the points of possible "plague contact."

  So it must have been the distinguished surgeon from Guy's that I sawshoot the bolting black that morning. Had I continued to watch, insteadof bolting myself at that juncture, I would have seen him wade out, lifta man tenderly from the stern-sheets of the whaleboat, and startcarrying the limp body up the beach to where a spreading bread-fruittree shaded the door of the sheet-iron shack which he was wonthumorously to refer to as his "professional, social and domesticheadquarters for Melanesia." Following that, I would have seen a bunchof motley-clad figures prance down and start menacing the irresoluteboat-pullers with flourished revolvers, forcing the frightened blacks toback off and begin splashing their wobbly way out to the _Cora_.

  Wyndham's conduct all through struck me as rather fine, especially for aman who was a convict of three continents and two hemispheres.Disappointed in finding his friend Grogan in the whaleboat, on learningthat the latter and his mate were already dead, Doc just as cheerfullyset about paying to the Agent the debt he felt he owed to old Mike.Before entering his house, he called to his girl--a saucy little Samoannamed Melita, who had gone right on sleeping through all theracket--ordering her to make a hurried departure by the back door andnot to return until he sent for her. The Doc was never a man to letsentiment interfere with business, Jackson opined.

  Making the doomed man as comfortable as possible in his own canvasfolding bed, Wyndham deferred giving an opiate until he had gained suchinformation as he could of how things were on the _Cora_. Then, aftercommunicating (from a safe distance) what he had learned to a delegationfrom executive headquarters at Jackson's, he nailed a red _sulu_ to hisfront door as a danger signal and disappeared behind the bars of hisself-imposed quarantine.

  I may as well state here that Wyndham--thanks, doubtless, to theprecautions which he, as a medical man, would have known how totake--side-stepped the plague completely, quite as completely, indeed,as he sidestepped the Thursday Island customs authorities a year or solater, when a half season's shipment of pearls from Makua Reef, Limited,disappeared as into thin air.

  Of the information Wyndham gleaned from the Agent before giving thelatter a shot of morphine to relieve his agony and mercifully hasten theinevitable end, the most important as affecting Kai's action was thatsomething over a hundred blacks had been battened down in the schooner'sforecastle and 'midships hold for seventy-two hours, with nothing but acouple of stubby wind-sails feeding them air. The dead had all beencleared out before this was done, but there were a lot of bad casesamong the living who were driven or thrown down the hatches. By thestench, the Agent knew that some of these had already died; but thatmany still had life in their bodies he judged by the unabated vigour ofthe howling.

  The most reassuring news passed on by the dying man was that Ranga-Ro,Grogan's gigantic Malay Bo'sun, had remained in charge of the _Cora_,and that he appeared to have the black crew (only three or four of them,luckily, had succumbed to the plague so far) well in hand. Thatbrightened the outlook a good deal, for what Kai had feared above allelse was a general breakout and stampede, which might inundate theisland with plague-infected niggers, crazy beyond all possibility ofcontrol.

  Ranga, who claimed to have had at one time or another every tropicaldisease on record, was--or believed himself to be--a plague immune. Hewas not in the least worried over the responsibilities that had fallenon him, and could be counted upon, the Agent thought, to see the gamethrough. The only trouble was that he couldn't navigate, so that if the_Cora_ was going to be taken to a port where any real relief could beobtained, she would have to have at least one competent white officer.Would Kai furnish that officer? was the question up before the meetingcalled at Jackson's to decide what should be done with the ill-fatedblack-birder.

  This was rather a larger assemblage than the one which had gathered atdawn, called up by the rattle of the _Cora's_ anchor-chain. The latterwas mostly made up of the "inside push," "Jackson's Own," as they weresometimes alluded to, and that they were a dead game bunch of sports wasattested by the way in which they had volunteered in a body to nurse forDoc Wyndham. The later and more representative meeting was hardly up tothe earlier one on the score of quality. There were a few out-and-outrotters on the island, and about the worst of these was a typicalWooloofooloo larrikin from Sydney, whose name I have forgotten. As foulof tongue as of face, he was as sneaking and cowardly as a wild Malaitepup reared in a black-birder's galley. He it was who, with a smirk onhis tattoo-defiled face, got up and suggested that the simplest way outof the difficulty was to "blow up an' burn the bloomin' 'ooker w'ere shelies. Cook the bloody niggers to a frizzle, pleg an' all." Give him afew sticks of dynamite and he'd pull off the bally job himself.

  The leering wretch, in his eagerness, pushed right out in front ofgaunt-framed old Jackson, who was "presiding." "Wi'out battin' ablinker," as he told me later, that old Kalgoorlie outlaw took theproper and necessary action. His straight-from-the-hip kick doubled themiscreant up, breathless, speechless, upon the floor--the only floor ofsawed boards in all Kai. He rather favoured that method when he had tothrow a man out, Jackson explained, on account of the convenient parcelit made of him when lifted by the back of his belt.

  When Jackson called the meeting to order again and explained what wordWyndham had sent as to the lay of things on the _Cora_, "Froggy"Frontein, one of the escapes from Noumea, his Gallic soul aflame, poppedup and volunteered to sail her to any non-French port in the Pacific.That brought a cheer for "Froggy," but the enthusiasm died down a bitwhen it transpired that the only ships the gallant ex-counterfeiter hadever boarded in his life were the steamer which deported him fromMarseilles and the cutter in which he--buried under copra in itshold--had escaped from New Caledonia.

  More competent volunteers were not lacking, however, and several ofthese were trying to urge their respective claims at once when "Slant"Allen's magnetic glance drew the eye of the chairman and he was giventhe floor.

  Calling several of t
he more insistent of the volunteers by name, "Slant"asked if it had occurred to them that the nearest port which hadquarantine facilities equal to handling more than a dozen cases ofinfectious disease was in Australia--probably Townsville, but possiblyBrisbane. They admitted that they hadn't thought that far ahead.

  "In that case," Allen cut in with, "it may be in order for me to pointout that there's not a one of the whole mob of you young hopefuls thatwouldn't be pinched and clapped in the brig just as soon as they sawyour face and recollected what it was you sloped for in the firstplace."

  That shot made some impression, though "Crimp" Hanley seemed to think hehad countered not uneffectively when he asked: "Who in hell thinks he'sgoing to last long enough to get her there?"

  What "Slant" had got up to say, he went on without deigning to engagethe logical "Crimp" in argument, was that there was one first-classsailor in Kai against whom nothing was booked in Australia, a man,moreover, who had been known to be looking for a command for a number ofmonths. He referred to Captain Bell, who, he regretted to say, had notbeen summoned to their meeting. If it was agreeable to those present, hewould be glad to wait upon Captain Bell and acquaint him with the factsin connection with the emergency which confronted them all. In the eventthat Captain Bell should see fit to assert his claim to this place ofhonour, as he had no doubt would be the case, he--"Slant"--was in favourof giving that claim precedence over all others, both because of CaptainBell's well-known ability as a navigator (his late slip, they would alladmit, was due to circumstances quite beyond his control), and becausehe was the only competent man available who would not have to step outof the frying pan into the fire on making port in Australia. What wasmore, in case Captain Bell felt that he needed a mate for a voyage whichcould not but be beset with much danger and many difficulties,he--"Slant"--wished to take the occasion to put in his claim for thatberth. He had been in bad in Sydney, he had to admit, but it was nothingvery serious, and he felt assured that, in a pinch, there were certaininfluences which could be counted upon to get him clear. No fear that hewould not be seen in the Islands again in due course.

  Considering what "Slant" was really driving at, you'll have to admitthat this was put with consummate adroitness. The meeting voted byacclamation to allow him to carry out his suggestion, adjourning in themeantime to await developments. It was significant, in the light of whattranspired later, that Allen flatly refused the offer of Jackson and twoor three others to go along to Bell's with him and "make a delegation ofit."

  No suspicion was aroused by the fact that Allen, on the way to Bell'sshack, stopped in at his own for five or ten minutes. Indeed, nothingthat he did at any time awakened anybody's suspicions--among the beachpush, I mean.

  When "Slant" came out of Bell's at the end of half an hour, he wasaccompanied by the American, the latter apparently leaning heavily onthe Australian's shoulder. This occasioned little surprise, as Bell, whohad hardly been seen for the last three days, was believed to have beendrinking heavily. Instead of returning round the curve of the beach toreport at Jackson's, as it had been assumed he would, "Slant" led theway to a little dugout canoe lying in the shade of the coco palms infront of Bell's and started pulling it down to the water's edge. When itwas seen that the slender Australian was doing most of the tugging,while the big American seemed to be blundering about to small purpose,it was remarked at Jackson's that Bell, for the first time since he hitthe beach of Kai, appeared to have stowed enough booze to submerge his"Plimsol" and affect his trim. At the same time it was admitted that theYankee was a wonderful "weight-carrier"--nothing like him ever seen inthe Islands. It was thus that they mixed nautical and racing idiom atJackson's Sporting Club.

  When the little canoe was finally launched, Bell, helped by Allen,stumbled forward and slithered down in the bow. The Australian plied hispaddle from the stern. It was remarked that the dugout's progress wasvery slow, but "Slant's" leisurely paddling was attributed to the carehe had to take on account of the trim Bell's lopsided sprawl gave thecranky craft.

  By the time the canoe slid in alongside the _Cora_, Bell appeared tohave collapsed completely. Lifting carefully by the shoulders, Allen wasseen to raise the inert body in the bow enough for a hulking yellowgiant--easily recognizable as the lusty Ranga-Ro--to throw a mighty armaround its waist. Then, with his other arm looped round a stanchion, heswung his burden high above the rail and into the arms of two of theblack crew. Thereafter nothing was seen of the _Cora's_ new skipper foran hour or more.

  "Doosed smart loadin'," was Jackson's laconic comment on the teamworkAllen and Ranga had displayed in hoisting Bell's husky frame out of awobbling canoe and up over the _Cora's_ four feet of freeboard topped byfive strands of "nigger wire."

  Allen did not go aboard, but continued to lie alongside for ten orfifteen minutes, evidently giving extended orders to the Malay bos'n.Immediately the canoe pushed off, great activity was observable amongthe crew, who were evidently rushing preparations for getting under waybefore the ebb began to race through the passage.

  The rate at which Allen paddled back to the beach was in marked contrastto his leisurely progress on the way out. Grounding the canoe on thebeach near where it had been launched, he made directly for the door ofBell's house and bolted inside. Reappearing almost immediately, he cameon along the beach at a more deliberate gait.

  At Jackson's he told them that Bell had jumped at the chance of takingthe _Cora_ to Townsville.... Said it might be the means of getting hismaster's certificate back in case he pulled it off all right. Buthe--"Slant"--couldn't allow a white man to tackle a job like that alone.He had only landed to pick up his kit and a few things Bell wanted. Hewas going to get back aboard the _Cora_ before they began to shorten in.It was going to be a ticklish job, fetching the passage from where shelay in those fluky airs.

  Leaving Jackson's, Allen went to his own (or rather "Quill"Partington's) house, where, according to what I heard from Mary Regan acouple of days later, he took several drinks but did not do anythingtoward throwing his things together. A half-hour later he was seenhurrying along the beach to Bell's again, and when he came out fromthere it was in the company of a girl--plainly the "Peacock." Paddled bya third party, who came upon the scene at this juncture, these two wentoff to the schooner, boarding her just as she filled away on the firsttack of the almost dead beat to the entrance of the narrow seawardpassage. For all they knew on the beach, Allen was carrying out hisprogram (with the little incidental of Rona--doubtless taken along atthe last moment by way of a surprise for Bell--thrown in), just as hehad outlined it to them. They were not hurt by his failure to saygood-bye. They were not strong for the gentler amenities in the Islands,anyhow.