Born to be Hanged, But—/Chapter 6

APTAIN WHIBLEY came in. He was big, with a gaunt dark face. A very direct man, the captain.

He asked in so many words who I was, what I was doing on board his ship, and his general attitude was unfavorable.

Thrope fairly bounded to his chance. I was perfectly willing that he should play his hand first.

He told the captain, but not without having edged into a position almost putting the captain nearest my gun—in case I drew—that I was a dirty tin-horn gambler, wanted for murder; and that I had evidently slipped on board the Jessie Darling to escape the police; that I was trying to bluff him, Thrope, with a cock-and-bull story about having known the girl—or rather of having pretended that she came from a good home and wasn't a Barbary Coast creature. Probably the girl was something to me; probably she had helped me on board. Thrope therefore ordered the captain to place me in irons, and as owner of the ship furthermore ordered him to go about and head for San Francisco.

"I have told you once before," said Captain Whibley, slowly, deliberately and with evident aversion for Thrope, "that Collins is the only owner I recognize."

"Collins is only a bookkeeper for me. I'm Thrope, Thomas Thrope."

"I know that," said Whibley, "but if you were King of England I would be the captain of my own ship—at sea. And sail her as my owner directed."

Thrope was set back. He looked it. But his spirit soon rose. Whibley was a firm man and turned his attention to me.

"You are armed?"

I barely nodded.

"Put your gun on the table."

I barely shook my head.

"You heard me say 'Put your gun on that table!'"

Captain Whibley was a strong man, in a way that a man is by his personality powerful. It was only with a psychological effort that I refused.

"No, captain—not yet. I'll break the gun and give it to you at the proper time. But I may want to plug that skunk without having to search around for something to do it with."

Evidently he sympathized with my feeling toward Thrope; and perhaps, too, he recognized that I would not give up the gun.

"What do you mean?" he asked, firmly but inquiringly rather than challengingly.

"Did you see the girl at all?"

"Yes. I saw her. She was very beautiful." He said it simply.

I did not tell the captain all I knew. Helen would not tell him all she had told me. Thrope would not tell all that he knew either. Then I did not know so much as I thought I did—not even after having read the letter which was carefully deposited in my own pocket.

I will try to be brief, for important things happened later on.

The captain went to Helen himself. He questioned her, but not as a sea captain might have been expected to do by those who have rarely met the type of Whibley. He was a strong and lonely man, with a fine sense of justice and an implacable honor.

He returned where I kept vigil over Thrope. And what he told Thrope did my heart good. With dignity, without profanity, with something of religious indignation but no mention of God—for, after all, such manhood as Whibley's is a higher religion than the maundering eye-rolling of the self-consciously holy, who can do nothing decent without calling His attention to their merits—Captain Whibley told the man of millions, the literal owner of that ship, the man powerful and unscrupulous enough to wreck any captain's career, exactly what kind of a dog he was. And Whibley said that as soon as the Jessie Darling reached port the full story of the affair would be made public.

"And I'll ruin you!" yelled Thrope.

I touched Thrope on the shoulder. It was something a little more than a touch perhaps, for he wheeled involuntarily and looked into my face.

"You forget," I reminded him, "that my affairs have first claim on your attention!"

It was then that Thrope appealed to Captain Whibley to have me disarmed. Whibley's sense of justice required him to make demands for the gun. I gave one over to him.

"He has another," shouted Thrope.

The captain asked if that was true. He said to hand it over. I refused, politely as possible. The captain, furious at this defiance of authority, reached for the one I had laid on the table; but I threw back the breast of my coat, and with a slight jerk of my wrist he was covered.

I apologized, but I was insistent. In fact I reached out and recovered the other gun.

I was sorry for Captain Whibley. I liked him. I would have liked him less had he not been so determined to disarm me: he had no fear, but turned his back on me and walked from the cabin.

Thrope and I were alone, but we did not talk. That is, he talked but I scarcely listened. He was offering "peace," he was suggesting an "offensive and defensive" alliance. If that story, which Whibley had declared was for the public, should reach its destination—Thrope's political honors would go glimmering, if his political influence would not be entirely destroyed.

Swanson and four men came to the cabin door. Their orders were to disarm and bind me. But I—I merely pointed toward Thrope and said—

"That's the man!"

With rough summary hands they searched him, and found nothing of firearms; they bound him in spite of his raving protest and stowed him on the bunk.

I rummaged through Thrope's effects and found a gun. I removed one of my own, took the shells from the two of them and told Swanson to take them and the report to Whibley.

The men knew very well that they had not been sent to tie up Thrope. But as a chief conspirator and a ringleader of the proposed mutiny which was already due, I was immune from their violence.

HAT is, I was immune just then. That night Sam Tyler gave me the ship news. First, Helen Curwen had been given other quarters than those offered by the steward, and placed under the protection of Captain Whibley.

Tyler had been at the wheel early in the evening when Helen, frightened and desperate, rushed from the companionway and asked where was the steward, the Chinese steward.

"He promised to help me! To hide me! Tell them you saw me jump!" She waved a frantic hand toward the black molten water.

Tyler thought she was fleeing from a dog to a snake by running from a white man to a yellow man. The average Chinaman may be trusted implicitly any place but at a gambling-table and with a woman. But this old silent steward was of a different fiber than most men, white or yellow.

But the important thing that Tyler told me was that the mates, Swanson and the second officer, were spreading the feeling among the ruffians that there was no reason for allowing me to cut on their treasure trove.

That meant a certain danger, but I do not mind admitting that I welcomed it.

My room had been searched and I had been watched. Swanson wanted to find the copies of the maps. Perhaps he thought I had too much sense to keep them on my person, as that would probably be the first place anybody would have the first impulse to look. Perhaps he and his men would have tried to overpower me, to search me, when so ordered by the captain, but Tyler had spread my name and reputation—and Tyler had a vivid imagination. Too, that name and reputation was not unknown to some of them. Moreover, I had in that cabin given them no chance to take me off my guard. A man has to use up about half of his fife's blood writing a record of loyalty and true faith before I trust him. I liked Tyler, for instance; I believed in him, but I wouldn't have trusted him very far—though so far as I ever learned he was as good a friend as a man could want.

I play a lone game—go just as far alone as it is possible.

It was well into the morning when I lay down, again in the steward's cubbyhole. I did not undress, for dawn would come in an hour and I wanted to be up and see what was going on, though I had nothing in particular in mind to do.

I did not go to sleep. There was too much movement about; not too much to disturb sleep, but too much to disturb the peace of mind of one suspicious as myself. Feet were shuffling about, voices muttering.

A quiet rap came on my door.

I started to answer, but caught the words back. The approach to the door had been rather stealthy. I would wait. The door opened. Whispers. There was more than one person there. My name was softly called. I did not answer.

I was lying on my left side; my hand touched the handle of the gun that nestled in a skeleton holster on my stomach. I was ready—or thought I was, but a terrific blow fell through the darkness and nearly shattered my right shoulder. I was at once almost smothered beneath the weight of men. I can shoot as well with my left as with my right hand.

This dexterity has been acquired by the left hand after long effort, chiefly because it is the right hand that fellows, looking for an excuse to shoot first, watch. But I could use neither. I was in a bad way and very foolishly struggled. A few years ago a similar surprize was made on me, and I pretended to be unconscious, and presently two of my assailants were themselves unconscious—permanently so. But in that cabin I struggled, foolishly. And I was choked and beaten and gouged, and it seemed as if my clothes were being literally torn from me. There is nothing, nothing that can be done to me personally that is so infuriating as for people to paw me. I don't want anybody's hands to touch me at any time. And when I am manhandled, my temper swells up like the poisonous throat of a cobra. But my gun had been taken away, and I have no doubt but that the handle of it is what some fellow used to strike me on what he thought was the head, but which was only my already pained shoulder.

I have never been knocked unconscious more than two or three times in my life. That was one of them.

When I came to I found the old withered steward staring down into my face. In his hand he held a tumbler of brandy. Much of it had been poured on my face, and some of it trickled between my teeth, and I felt almost strangled. I don't know how long he had worked with me, but he seemed to think his duties had just begun.

He offered me the rest of the brandy but said nothing.

"Why don't you talk?" I demanded.

He opened his mouth: he was a mute.At some time or other his tongue had been cut out. In China precautions are taken to keep secrets.

On board the Jessie Darling Yang Li and I became friends. Eventually, in years that followed, we were to become brothers. I was to find that for cunning and loyalty that Chinaman was incomparable. Why he had taken a fancy to me then, I do not know. I never did know. Not even Chinese wizardry could foretell that some months later my gun was to clear his trail of enemies. But that does not belong to this story.

I was washed and bandaged. My body was sore, but I was not weak. I was furious, but as my ferocity is never emotional, I said little and displayed patience. I asked if he knew who had attacked me.

He did. I repeated what names I knew, but he nodded at one only. Swanson's. I was unarmed. He offered me a long knife, refined of edge to a razor's sharpness. I took it, though what I know of handling a knife is about the same as any other man knows—nothing except to grasp the handle and thrust. A knife in the hand of an expert is about the deadliest weapon made.

I ask [sic] him if he thought he could steal the gun of mine that had been given the captain the night before. He shook his head and tried to tell me something important.

The mutineers had broken loose; but it was not a mutiny according to the previous plan. Thrope wanted to turn back to San Francisco. He was the owner of the ship. He was rich. His name was known to every man. He was the big boss—and he was to give them protection for putting back, and later, so he promised, to fit them out with a ship of their own for the gold hunt.

The upshot of the thing was that I had been attacked and left for dead, not so much to secure the maps which I was supposed to have, as to secure the letter which Thrope wanted. Events had taken a sudden whirl.

I learned all that later. Yang tried to tell me, but he was not very successful. He could write a bit of English, but I found it hard to read his writing. However, he did make it clear to me that I had been thrown overboard.

Yang, Tyler and another seaman had dumped overboard a form made of a blanket and weighted with brides out of the galley.

Captain Whibley, badly wounded, was barricaded in his cabin with Helen Curwen. The captain was no coward and he was armed, but he did not stand a chance. Swanson wanted to kill him and intended to, especially as Thrope had much the same wish. With Whibley dead and myself overboard, Thrope and the crew could tell any kind of a story and have it believed. Thrope was not the sort of man who would hesitate to take such measures as seemed necessary to silence Helen.

The situation was rather twisted.

Yang painfully wrote out the question—

I found he meant Swanson. I told him that I would take pleasure in relieving Swanson of further earthly troubles at the first opportunity.

But Yang protested. He made me understand that it would be a particular favor to him if he were allowed the pleasure of settling with Mr. Swanson.

"Can you use this thing?" I asked, holding up the long, lean knife.

He snatched it up. His wrist was like a swivel. His arm flashed in and out and up and down. Balanced on his toes, his thin body swayed right and left, ducked, with dazzling rapidity the long blade played with thrust and feint. Then he stopped abruptly and held his arm upraised, poised to throw.

"I guess you had better keep it," I told him. "Bring me a meat cleaver or something I know more about." He took my half-jesting words at face value. I was furnished with a heavy cleaver.