Perceval Gibbon - The Second Class Passenger

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He snatched a rifle and led the way, the others tumbling after him.
Some hundred yards beyond the kraal the footpath dipped abruptly
towards the valley, and at an angle of it there was to be gained a
clear view of the bush beneath, where it surged at the foot of the
hill and ran down the kloof; at the lower part of the kloof it
ceased, and the ground was bare red earth for a space of some
thousand yards. Mills sat down on a stone. Dave squatted beside him,
and the others grouped themselves on adjacent boulders.

The sun was well into the sky by now--it was about six o'clock in the
morning. The air was of diamond, and the chill of the night had
already passed. The men glued their eyes on the bare patch and
waited.

"Funny game you played up there," whispered Dave to the trader.

Mills nodded without speaking.

"I'm not blaming you," continued the other. "I reckon I understand,
old boy. But are you goin' to shoot at him?"

"I am that," was the reply.

"Well, I hope you get him," said Dave. "The chaps'll forget the other
business then. They didn't like it, you know--nobody would."

"It's not because I care for them or what they think----" began
Mills.

"I know it's not," interrupted Dave. "You know all the ranges, I
suppose?"

"Nine hundred yards to that black spot," said Mills. "The spot's a
bit of a hole in the ground. Twelve hundred to the big boulder."

He rose off the stone he was sitting on and lay down on the path,
belly under, and ran up the back sight of his rifle with care.
Flinging back the bolt, he blew into the chamber and thrust a
cartridge in; tested the air with a wet finger, and wriggled the butt
home into his shoulder. Dave watched him in silence; Mills was, he
knew, a good shot, and he was now preparing, with all the little
tricks and graces of the rifle-range, to pull trigger on the man he
had risked--nay, almost thrown away--his life to save from the
consequences of an unspeakable crime.

"Ah!" breathed Mills, with an artist's luxurious satisfaction.

Down the valley a figure had broken from the bush, and was plainly to
be seen against the red ground. The men on the hill flopped down and
prepared to shoot.

"Don't fire," Dave warned the others. He was watching Mills. The
trader's face bore no signs of his recent mental struggle. It carried
no expression whatever, save one of cool interest, just touched with
a craftsman's confidence. His barrel was steady as his head. The
little figure below was moving over the rough ground towards the
black spot. They could see its legs working grotesquely, like a
mechanical toy.

"So," murmured Mills. "Now just a little farther. So!"

He fired.

There was no leap into the air, no tragic bound and sprawling tumble.
The little figure in the valley fell where it was, and never moved.

Mills jerked open his breech.

"I'll bet that took him in the spine," he said.

IV

THE MURDERER

From the open door of the galley, where the cross, sleepy cook was
coaxing his stove to burn, a path of light lay across the deck,
showing a slice of steel bulwark with ropes coiled on the pins, and
above it the arched foot of the mainsail. In the darkness forward,
where the port watch of the Villingen was beginning the sea day by
washing down decks, the brooms swished briskly and the head-pump
clacked like a great, clumsy clock.

The men worked in silence, though the mate was aft on the poop, and
nothing prevented them from talking as they passed the buckets to and
from the tub under the pump and drove their brooms along the planks.
They labored with the haste of men accustomed to be driven hard, with
the shuffling, involuntary speed that has nothing in it of free
strength or good-will. The big German four-master had gathered from
the boarding-houses of Philadelphia a crew representing all the
nationalities which breed sailors, and carried officers skilled in
the crude arts of getting the utmost out of it. And since the lingua
franca of the sea, the tongue which has meaning for Swedish
carpenters, Finn sail-makers, and Greek fo'c's'le hands alike, is not
German, orders aboard the Villingen were given and understood in
English.

"A hand com' aft here!"

It was the mate's voice from the poop, robust and peremptory. Conroy,
one of the two Englishmen in the port watch, laid down the bucket he
was carrying and moved aft in obedience to the summons. As he trod
into the slip of light by the galley door he was visible as a fair
youth, long-limbed and slender, clad in a serge shirt, with dungaree
trousers rolled up to the knees, and girt with a belt which carried
the usual sheath-knife. His pleasant face had a hint of uncertainty;
it was conciliatory and amiable; he was an able seaman of the kind
which is manufactured by a boarding-master short of men out of a
runaway apprentice. The others, glancing after him while they
continued their work, saw him suddenly clear by the galley door,
then dim again as he stepped beyond it. He passed out of sight
towards the lee poop ladder.

The silent, hurried sailors pressed on with their work, while the big
barque purred through the water to the drone of wind thrusting in the
canvas. The brooms were abaft of the galley when the outcry began
which caused them to look apprehensively towards the poop without
ceasing their business of washing down. First it was an oath in
explosive German, the tongue which puts a cutting-edge on profanity;
then the mate's roar:

"Is dat vat I tell you, you verfluchter fool? Vat? Vat? You don't
understand ven I speak? I show you vat----"

The men who looked up were on the wrong side of the deck to make out
what was happening, for the chart-house screened the drama from
them. But they knew too well the meaning of that instantaneous
silence which cut the words off. It was the mate biting in his breath
as he struck. They heard the smack of the fist's impact and Conroy's
faint, angry cry as he failed to guard it; then the mate again, bull-
mouthed, lustful for cruelty: "Vat--you lift up your arm to me! You
dog!" More blows, a rain of them, and then a noise as though Conroy
had fallen or been knocked down. And after that a thud and a scream.

The men looked at one another, and nods passed among them. "He kicked
him when he was down on the deck," the whisper went. The other
Englishman in the watch swore in a low grunt and dropped his broom,
meeting the wondering eyes of the "Dutchmen" and "Dagoes" with a
scowl. He was white-haired and red-faced, a veteran among the nomads
of the sea, the oldest man aboard, and the only one in the port watch
who had not felt the weight of the mate's fist. Scowling still, as
though in deep thought, he moved towards the ladder. The forlorn hope
was going on a desperate enterprise of rescue.

It might have been an ugly business; there was a sense in the minds
of his fellows of something sickening about to happen; but the mate
had finished with Conroy. The youth came staggering and crying down
the ladder, with tears and blood befouling his face, and stumbled as
his foot touched the deck. The older man, Slade, saved him from
falling, and held him by the upper arm with one gnarled, toil-
roughened hand, peering at him through the early morning gloom.

"Kicked you when you was down, didn't he?" he demanded abruptly.

"Yes," blubbered Conroy, shivering and dabbing at his face. "With his
sea-boots, too, the--the----"

Slade shook him. "Don't make that noise or he might kick you spine
more," he advised grimly. "You better go now an' swab that blood off
your face."

"Yes," agreed Conroy tremulously, and Slade let him go.

The elder man watched him move forward on shambling and uncertain
feet, with one hand pressed to his flank, where the mate's kick was
still an agony. Slade was frowning heavily, with a tincture of
thought in his manner, as though he halted on the brink of some
purpose.

"Conroy," he breathed, and started after the other.

The younger man turned. Slade again put his hand on Conroy's arm.

"Say," he said, breathing short, "is that a knife in your belt?"

Conroy felt behind him, uncomprehending, for the sheath-knife, which
he wore, sailor fashion, in the middle of his back.

"What d'you mean?" he asked vacantly. "Here's my knife."

He drew it and showed it to Slade, the flat blade displayed in his
palm.

The white-haired seaman thrust his keen old face toward Conroy's, so
that the other could see the flash of the white of his eyes.

"And he kicked you, didn't he?" said Slade tensely. "You fool!"

He struck the knife to the deck, where it rattled and slid toward the
scupper.

"Eh?" Conroy gaped, not understanding. "I don't see what----"

"Pick it up!" said Slade, with a gesture toward the knife. He spoke,
as though he strangled an impulse to brandish his fists and scream,
in a nasal whisper. "It's safe to kick you," he said. "A woman
could do it."

"But----" Conroy flustered vaguely.

Slade drove him off with a wave of his arm and turned away with the
abruptness of a man disgusted beyond bearing.

Conroy stared after him and saw him pick up his broom where he had
dropped it and join the others. His intelligence limped; his
thrashing had stunned him, and he could not think--he could only
feel, like fire in his mind, the passion of the feeble soul resenting
injustice and pain which it cannot resist or avenge. He stooped to
pick up his knife and went forward to the tub under the head-pump, to
wash his cuts in cold sea-water, the cheap balm for so many wrongs of
cheap humanity.

It was an accident such as might serve to dedicate the day to the
service of the owners of the Villingen. It was early and sudden; but,
save in these respects, it had no character of the unusual. The men
who plied the brooms and carried the buckets were not shocked or
startled by it so much as stimulated; it thrust under their noses the
always imminent danger of failing to satisfy the mate's ideal of
seaman-like efficiency. They woke to a fresher energy, a more
desperate haste, under its suggestion.

It was after the coffee interval, which mitigates the sourness of the
morning watch, when daylight had brought its chill, grey light to the
wide, wet decks, that the mate came forward to superintend the "pull
all round," which is the ritual sequel to washing down.

"Lee fore-brace, dere!" his flat, voluminous voice ordered, heavy
with the man's potent and dreaded personality. They flocked to obey,
scurrying like scared rats, glancing at him in timid hate. He came
striding along the weather side of the deck from the remote, august
poop; he was like a dreadful god making a dreadful visitation upon
his faithful. Short-legged, tending to bigness in the belly, bearded,
vibrant with animal force and personal power, his mere presence cowed
them. His gross face, the happy face of an egoist with a sound
digestion, sent its lofty and sure regard over them; it had a kind of
unconsciousness of their sense of humility, of their wrong and
resentment--the innocence of an aloof and distant tyrant, who has not
dreamed how hurt flesh quivers and seared minds rankle. He was bland
and terrible; and they hated him after their several manners, some
with dull tear, one or two--and Slade among them--with a ferocity
that moved them like physical nausea.

He had left his coat on the wheel-box to go to his work, and was
manifestly unarmed. The belief which had currency in the forecastle,
that he came on watch with a revolver in his coat-pocket, did not
apply to him now; they could have seized him, smitten him on his
blaspheming mouth, and hove him over the side without peril. It is a
thing that has happened to a hated officer more than once or ten
times, and a lie, solemnly sworn to by every man of the watch on
deck, has been entered in the log, and closed the matter for all
hands. He was barer of defense than they, for they had their sheath-
knives; and he stood by the weather-braces, arrogant, tyrannical,
overbearing, and commanded them. He seemed invulnerable, a thing too
great to strike or defy, like the white squalls that swooped from the
horizon and made of the vast Villingen a victim and a plaything. His
full, boastful eye traveled over them absently, and they cringed like
slaves.

"Belay, dere!" came his orders, overloud and galling to men surging
with cowardly and insufferable haste. "Lower tobsail--haul! Belay!
Ubber tobsail--haul, you sons of dogs! Haul, dere, blast you! You
vant me to come over and show you?"

Servilely, desperately, they obeyed him, spending their utmost
strength to placate him, while the naked spirit of murder moved in
every heart among them. At the tail of the brace, Conroy, with his
cuts stanched, pulled with them. His abject eyes, showing the white
in sidelong glances, watched the great, squat figure of the mate with
a fearful fascination.

Eight bells came at last, signaling the release of the port watch
from the deck and the tension of the officer's presence. The
forecastle received them, the stronghold of their brief and limited
leisure. The unkempt, weather-stained men, to whom the shifting seas
were the sole arena of their lives, sat about on chests and on the
edges of the lower bunks, at their breakfast, while the pale sunlight
traveled to and fro on the deck as the Villingen lurched in her gait.
Conroy, haggard and drawn, let the coffee slop over the brim of his
hook-pot as he found himself a seat.

"Well, an' what did he punch ye for this time?"

It was old Slade who put the question, seated on a chest with his
back against the bulkhead. His pot was balanced on his knee, and his
venerable, sardonic face, with the scanty white hair clinging about
the temples, addressed Conroy with slow mockery.

Conroy hesitated. "It was over coilin' away some gear," he said.
Slade waited, and he had to go on. He had misunderstood the mate's
order to coil the ropes on the pins, where they would be out of the
way of the deck-washing, and he had flemished them down on the poop
instead. It was the mistake of a fool, and he knew it.

Slade nodded. "Ye-es," he drawled. "You earned a punch an' you got
it. But he kicked you, too, didn't he?"

"Kicked me!" cried Conroy. "Why, I thought he was goin' to kill me!
Look here--look at this, will you?"

With fumbling hands he cast loose his belt and flung it on the floor,
and plucked his shirt up so as to leave his side bare. He stood up,
with one arm raised above his head, showing his naked flank to the
slow eyes of his shipmates. His body had still a boyish delicacy and
slenderness; the labor of his trade had not yet built it and
thickened it to a full masculinity of proportion. Measured by any of
the other men in the watch, it was frail, immature, and tender. The
moving sunlight that flowed around the door touched the fair skin and
showed the great, puffed bruises that stood on it, swollen and
horrid, like some vampire fungus growing on the clean flesh.

A great Greek, all black hair and eyeball, clicked softly between his
teeth.

"It looks like--a hell!" he said softly, in his purring voice.

"Dem is kicks, all right--ja!" said some one else, and yet another
added the comment of a heavy oath.

Old Slade made no comment, but sat, balancing his hook-pot of coffee
and watching the scene under his heavy white brows. Conroy lowered
his arm and let the shirt fall to cover the bruises.

"You see?" he said to Slade.

"I see," answered the other, with a bitter twist of his old,
malicious lips. Setting down the pot which he held, he stooped and
lifted the belt which Conroy had thrown down. It seemed to interest
him, for he looked at it for some moments.

"And here's yer knife," he said, reaching it to the youth, still with
his manner of mockery. "There's some men it wouldn't be safe to
kick, with a knife in their belts."

He and Conroy were the only Englishmen there; the rest were of the
races which do not fight bare-handed. The big Greek flashed a smile
through the black, shining curls of his beard, and continued to smile
without speaking. Through the tangle of incomprehensible conventions,
he had arrived at last at a familiar principle.

Conroy flushed hotly, the blood rising hectic on his bruised and
broken face.

"If he thinks it's safe with me," he cried, "he'll learn different. I
didn't have a chance aft there; he came on me too quick, before I was
expecting him, and it was dark, besides. Or else----"

"It'll be dark again," said Slade, with intent, significant eyes
fixed on him, "and he needn't be expecting you. But--it don't do to
talk too much. Talk's easy--talk is."

"I'll do more than talk," responded Conroy. "You'll see!"

Slade nodded. "Right, then; we'll see," he said, and returned to his
breakfast.

His bunk was an upper one, lighted and aired by a brass-framed port-
hole. Here, when his meal was at an end, he lay, his pipe in his
mouth, his hands behind his head, smoking with slow relish, with his
wry old face upturned, and the leathery, muscular forearms showing
below the rolled shirt-sleeves. His years had ground him to an edge;
he had an effect, as he lay, of fineness, of subtlety, of keen and
fastidious temper. Forty years of subjection to arbitrary masters had
left him shrewd and secret, a Machiavelli of the forecastle.

Once Conroy, after seeming to sleep for an hour, rose on his elbow
and stared across at him, craning his neck from his bunk to see the
still mask of his face.

"Slade?" he said uncertainly.

"What?" demanded the other, unmoving.

Conroy hesitated. The forecastle was hushed; the seamen about them
slumbered; the only noises were the soothing of the water overside,
the stress of the sails and gear, and the irregular tap of a hammer
aft. It was safe to speak, but he did not speak.

"Oh, nothing," he said, and lay down again. Slade smiled slowly,
almost paternally.

It took less than eight hours for Conroy's rancor to wear dull, and
he could easily have forgotten his threat against the mate in twelve,
if only he had been allowed to. He was genuinely shocked when he
found that his vaporings were taken as the utterance of a serious
determination. Just before eight bells in the afternoon watch he went
forward beneath the forecastle head in search of some rope-yarns, and
was cutting an end off a bit of waste-line when the Greek, he of the
curly beard and extravagant eyeballs, rose like a demon of pantomime
from the forepeak. Conroy had his knife in his hand to cut the rope,
and the Greek's sudden smile seemed to rest on that and nothing else.

"Sharp, eh!" asked the Greek, in a whisper that filled the place with
dark drama.

Conroy paused, apprehending his meaning with a start.

"Oh, it's all right," he growled, and began to saw at the rope in his
hand, while the Greek watched him with his fixed, bony smile.

"No," said the latter suddenly. "Dat-a not sharp--no! Look-a 'ere;
you see dis?"

He drew his own knife, and showed it pointing towards Conroy in a
damp, swarthy hand, whose knuckles bulged above the haft. His rough,
spatulate thumb rasped along it, drawing from it the crepitation that
proves an acute edge.

"Carve him like-a da pork," he said, in his stage-conspirator's
whisper. "And da point--now, see!"

He glanced over his shoulder to be sure that none overlooked them;
then, with no more than a jerk of his hand beside his hip, threw the
keen blade toward the wooden door of the bo'sun's locker. It traveled
through the air swiftly and stuck, quivering on its thin point, in
the stout teak. The Greek turned his smile again for a moment on
Conroy before he strode across and recovered it.

"You take 'im," he whispered. "Better dan your little knife--yais."

By the mere urgency of his proffering it the exchange was made, and
Conroy found himself with a knife in his hand that fell through the
strands of the manila line as though they had been butter, an
instrument made and perfected for a murder.

"Yes, but look here----" he began, in alarm.

The broad, mirthless smile was turned on him.

"Just like-a da pork," purred the Greek, and nodded assuringly before
he turned to go aft.

The bull-roar of the mate, who was awaiting his return with the rope-
yarns, roused Conroy from a scared reverie over the knife. He
started; the mate was bustling furiously forward in search of him,
full of uproar and anger.

"Dam' lazy schwein, you goin' to schleep dere? You vant me to come
an' fetch you?? You vant anodder schmack on de maul to keep you
avake--yes?"

He stamped into view round the forward house, while Conroy stood,
convicted of idleness by the rope in his hand only half cut through.
At the same moment a population of faces came into being behind him.
A man who had been aloft shuffled down to the rail; a couple of
others came into view on the deck; on top of the house, old Slade
kneeled to see under the break of the forecastle head. It seemed as
though a skeptical audience had suddenly been created out of his
boast of the morning, every face threatening him with that shame
which vanity will die rather than endure. In a panic of his faculties
he took one step toward the mate.

"Hey?" The mate halted in his stride, with sheer amazement written on
his face. "You vant yer head knocked off--yes?"

"No, I don't," said Conroy, out of a dry mouth.

According to the usage of ships, even that was defiance and a
challenge.

He had forgotten the revolver with which the mate was credited; he
had forgotten everything but the fact that eyes were on him. Even the
knife in his hand passed from his mind; he was a mere tingling
pretence at fortitude, expending every force to maintain his pose.

"Put dat knife avay!" ordered the mate suddenly.

He arrested an automatic movement to obey, fighting down a growing
fear of his opponent.

"I've not finished with it yet," he answered.

The mate measured him with a practiced eye. Though he had the crazy
courage of a bulldog, he was too much an expert in warlike
emergencies to overlook the risk of trying to rush a desperate man
armed with a knife, the chances of the grapple were too ugly. There
was something lunatic and strange in the youth's glare also; and it
will sometimes happen that an oppressed and cowed man in his
extremity will shrug his meekness from him and become, in a breath, a
desperado. This had its place in the mate's considerations.

"Finish, den!" he rasped, with no weakening of his tone or manner.
"You don't t'ink I'm goin' to vait all night for dem rope-yarns--
hey?"

He turned his back at once lest Conroy should venture another retort,
and make an immediate fight unavoidable. Before his eye the silent
audience melted as swiftly as it had appeared, and Conroy was alone
with his sick sense of having ventured too far, which stood him in
place of the thrill of victory.

The thrill came later, in the forecastle, where he swelled to the
adulation of his mates. They, at any rate, had been deceived by his
attitude; they praised him by word and look; the big Greek infused a
certain geniality into his smile. Only Slade said the wrong thing.

"I was ready for him as soon as he moved," Conroy was asserting. "And
he knew it. You should ha' seen how he gaped when I wouldn't put the
knife away."

The men were listening, crediting him. Old Slade, in the background,
took his pipe from his lips.

"An' now I suppose you're satisfied," he inquired harshly.

"How d'you mean, satisfied?" demanded Conroy, coloring. "You saw what
happened, didn't you?"

"You made him gape," said Slade. "That was because he made you howl,
eh? Well, ain't you calling it quits, then--till the next time he
kicks you?"

Some one laughed; Conroy raised his voice.

"He'll never kick me again," he cried. "His kicking days are over.
He's kicked me once too often, he has. Quits--I guess not!"

Slade let a mouthful of smoke trickle between his lips; it swam in
front of his face in a tenuous film of pale vapor.

"Well, talkin' won't do it, anyhow," he said.

"No," retorted Conroy, and collected all eyes to his gesture. "But
this will!"

He showed them the thin-bladed knife which the Greek had given him,
holding it before them by the hilt. He let a dramatic moment elapse.

"Like that!" he said, and stabbed at the air. "Like that--see? Like
that!"

They came upon bad weather gradually, drawing into a belt of half-
gales, with squalls that roared up from the horizon and made them for
the time, into whole gales. The Villingen, designed and built
primarily for cargo capacity, was a wet ship, and upon any point of
sailing had a way of scooping in water by the many tons. In nearly
every watch came the roar, "Stand by yer to'gallant halliards!" Then
the wait for ten seconds or ten minutes while the wind grew and the
big four-masted barque lay over and bumped her bluff bows through
racing seas, till the next order, shriller and more urgent, "Lower
avay!" and the stiff canvas fought and slatted as the yards came
down. Sea-boots and oilskins were the wear for every watch; wet decks
and the crash of water coming inboard over the rail, dull cold and
the rasp of heavy, sodden canvas on numb fingers, became again
familiar to the men, and at last there arrived the evening, gravid
with tempest, on which all hands reefed top-sails.

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