Hurricane Williams/Chapter 13

T HAD been time for supper, but all hands were kept on deck, pulling at the braces, tugging, heaving the great yards around, though there was not a hair's-weight breath of wind.

Adams was angry and the crew were paying. The faintest of ripples had stirred the water and Adams had let it pass without an order. But Matt Ward happened to come out of the companion at that moment, and bawled at him, wanting to know what kind of a mate he thought he was.

That the breeze had not been enough to fill a Dutchman's cap and lasted no longer than a match burns made no difference to Matt Ward, who seemed after any kind of a chance to row the mate, and made the most of it.

He went below again unsteadily.

So Adams in a stormy mood set the crew box-hauling in a dead calm. That was one way of punishing them for grinning at him. The hazing went on and on. Adams, right down among the men, cursed and struck. He was in a mood for a fight and something about his mood kept the men from striking back.

Jeanne came up and leaned watchfully over the rail. She wore a vivid dress of purple and black; a brilliant pin glittered on the left of her breast. Her bright-red hair flared in bushy curls. She was a beautiful creature and knew it; just then she was fascinated by the racket and cries and blows beneath her.

Some man said venomously in an undertone:

“There's that woman—he'll show off now.”

Adams, unexpectedly near, smote the fellow on the base of the head from behind; and Clobb, without a second's pause, crashed a pin he had been carrying inside of his shirt on the back of the mate's skull.

The mutiny was on.

Adams was dead before he fell, but Clobb bent over and pounded his skull to fragments.

Sam-O, as if he had been waiting for a signal, drove his knife into the barrel-like body of Juggins, who had stood shocked to a moment's inaction by the death of the mate.

The plot had been well laid: Swanson was on the top-gallant forecastle and without a chance to defend himself. Before he knew what was up he had been thrown overboard with a knife sticking into his back. His terrible cry was choked by the water.

Juggins yelled, his face aft. He tried with the last of his life to warn his captain. A second blow from Sam-O ripped him between groin and ribs. The boatswain tried to run and fell.

The big negro released all of his passion into his voice and face. The half-pleasant, thick-featured, negroid countenance seemed to have been a mask that fell away. His nose dilated, the thick lips curled back quivering and his eyes, widened by excited rage, exposed a bloodshot white area that gave the face a startling aspect. He yelled, scarcely forming words, but communicating his frenzy to other men—and threatening them.

Jeanne, alone on the poop, stared. She did not move. She could not cry out.

Not all were in the plot. Not all would have been daring enough to have been in it, though there was none that had mercy for Ward. Men to whom the attack was unexpected looked about uneasily.

“I knowed it!”

Old Tom called shrilly, though he had known nothing about it; but he knew what he meant. The Heraldr officers had been asking for trouble and it had come.

Dicer with the instinct suggested by his vulturine thin face swooped at Adams's body, his nimble gambler's fingers going into the pockets. Brundage's hand closed on his arm:

“That key!”

The cold sudden voice frightened Dicer so that he jerked to get away, spilling the loot.

“That's just what Hi 'us hafter!” he whined.

Brundage picked out the key from the gore it lay in. Dicer hastily regathered the scattered trinkets and loose money.

Men were tensely gaping; they stood in distorted attitudes, surprised, confused, dazed, thick-witted at best. Men are seldom warmed into excitement in a moment and the mutiny came unexpectedly to most of them. The ringleaders roared, cursing, trying to tell in tumbled words what fools they were to have stood the Heraldr so long; bawled, “We're all in this!” and raised a mad babble of oaths, pleas, threats and promises.

Sam-O was in a frenzy. Primal savagery was perhaps a very little closer to his skin than in the other men. It showed itself a little more readily. He bellowed fearful things, brandishing his knife; then yelling something about “white men” he killed one of the Kanakas who had started forward as though running away. The native had been going toward Brundage and McGuire, just emerging from the carpenter-shop. The warning reached every man who saw the negro bound on to the Kanaka's back, encircle him with a python-like arm and draw a knife across his throat.

Clobb bawled hoarsely. He caught a man that edged frightenedly from him by the hair, yanked him face to the poop and kicked him; then, half crouching, extended an arm toward Jeanne and cried:

“Him that gets her—keeps 'er!”

Scattered cheers answered that.

Gorvhalsen appeared on the poop. His huge body swayed in awkward hurry. His head was bare, his coat off, and the massive beard blotted out the front of his white silk shirt. Before he saw the bloody work that had been done he shouted derisively: “What's the racket now?”

Yells went at him. Men who had been dully staring came to life.

Jeanne too broke through her daze. She turned away, an arm pointing behind her toward the body of the mate. She was answering with a gesture Gorvhalsen's question.

He had already seen. His yelled curse, its roar, its tone, its insult, filled some men with dread. Rage seemed to swell his enormous body, and the arms came away from his side, half-curved and partly extended as though to close them all in a mighty crushing grip. He came swaying challengingly to the starboard poop ladder.

“At him, men!” Clobb yelled and started.

But Sam-O passed in a bound and leaped the ladder; Clobb turned and headed for the port ladder where already men were scrambling. The negro's mouth was fringed with foam. The rush of hot blood to his face gave the blackness a sheen and the white rows of fine teeth were visible like an animal's as it leaps to kill.

Gorvhalsen, confident, at once infuriated and cool, drew back and let the negro get clear on to the poop. Their bodies met like the shock of bulls. Sam-O slashed with the knife, then his arm was caught, his body gripped crushingly; and over and down the negro's back Gorvhalsen twisted and pulled the arm till there was snap and crunching of broken bone. Sam-O had slashed and cut and paid for it out of his own broken bone and muscle. He writhed in the embrace, helplessly.

Gorvhalsen swayed the negro clear from his feet, lifted him, carried him, raised him and lurching forward let him go head-first and backward down the ladder. Gorvhalsen straightened up. He was bleeding and gashed; he looked down into the waist and laughed. He must have felt that the duel was decisive, that these low-bred brutes would slink off as they had done the night before. He glared down in triumphant mockery, laughter flying through his beard.

But Jeanne screamed.

Four men had leaped the port ladder and were grappling among themselves for her. Clobb was beating the other three off when he saw the negro had been thrown away. He left them and rushed Gorvhalsen, who met him, fist to jaw. The other three in blinding woman-hunger closed on Jeanne.

Clobb went backward and down, dazed by the two blows, the second of his head against the deck. The knife dropped from his hand, clattering, and fell from the poop.

Gorvhalsen turned on the three who had paused for Jeanne, ravishingly. If they had thought at all, it was that Sam-O and Clobb would win the deck for them, and their fight was between themselves for the woman. Shring's arms were about her. And not feeling the blows of his fellows, his face with his lips back breathlessly over the dirty broken teeth pressed to meet her own as though a kiss would give him ownership.

Gorvhalsen roared and struck with fingers spread claw-like. His strength was great. One man was jerked backward and thrust down to meet Gorvhalsen's upraised knee, then fell with a snapped neck. Another, called Janz, dropped from the group, afraid, untouched, and crawled toward the shelter of a skylight.

Bodily, by hair and belt, Gorvhalsen lifted Shring head-high and threw him to the deck.

Jeanne fled, sobbing as if still being strangled, and half-falling into the companionway to rush below, she stumbled against Matt Ward, who was coming up with a revolver in each hand. She was covering her face with her arms as she went below, trying to shut out what her eyes had just seen and her flesh still felt—her bold eyes were for once averted.

Ward looked hard at her. He was half-drunk, but passed without a word. He too had found her bizarre beauty irresistible; but either from a latent decency or timidity had not done anything more than be angry toward his mates for the attention they had from her. Before his feet were over the coaming he fired across the top of the port ladder, killing a man; and the knowledge that firearms were being used checked the crew for a moment, but increased their desperation.

Monty had rushed for the cabin door, but a shot came through it and he leaped to one side. Clobb had crawled to the break of the poop and dropped below; but did not pause. The ship had to be taken over or he would dangle by his neck from a yard arm. He may not have thought of that, probably did not. He was merely an angry, desperate, cruel man, carrying the fight to people whom he did not think could stand against the crew; the reward was to be the privilege of doing as the men pleased, as they drunkenly pleased.

Ward knew that this was mutiny, real and deadly; something savage within him welcomed it and the right to kill. There was no pause and no parley. Shouts and curses with men jostling and scrambling, were everywhere. Some were breaking into the galley. Some crouched on the ladders, others lurked under the break of the poop. A few inactively watched.

Sam-O, after lying bent and crumpled, came to his knees, stood up unsteadily, shook himself, fingered his broken arm curiously, then jabbering curses, stealthily crawled up the starboard ladder, at the top of which Clobb already crouched. Together they watched Janz, who had dropped to the deck when Gorvhalsen turned on the three men about Jeanne.

Janz had crept to the skylight. He was taking out an ax stowed in a case there. His movements were concealed from Matt Ward by the skylight itself.

Gorvhalsen was bending over Shring, ready to stamp out what trace of life might be left in him, and had looked up as Matt Ward shot. He shouted hearteningly at the captain, turning toward him.

A moment later Gorvhalsen was struck in the back by the ax, and crumpled as he was trying to wheel around. Janz in excited haste had hit with the head of the ax instead of with the blade and Gorvhalsen took the blow just above the hips. Beaten down to less than half his height, helpless from the waist to his feet, he was as full of fight still as a wolf with a broken back.

Janz struck a second blow, aiming for the head—to split it. At the same time Clobb and Sam-O went on to the poop, yelling for the crew to follow. Ward shot rapidly.

Gorvhalsen snatched the descending ax from the man's hand, and the jerk of seizing it drew Janz almost off his feet and so close that Gorvhalsen grabbed an ankle, tripped and pulled him near, then chopped into his head with the ax-blade which he used like a chisel.

Ward shot right and left. His aim was poor, but the bullets flew alarmingly.

Finding themselves unsupported in the rush, Sam-O leaped off the poop; and Clobb dodged down on to the quarter-deck, making for the cabin door; but a bullet came through as he opened it.

Monty, sheltered beside the door, laughed as Clobb jumped back. A moment before he had jumped in the same way too. Clobb peered through a window, and Corydon awkwardly pointed a gun at him. He ducked again, cursing. Corydon scarcely knew what bullets were like, but he was using his uncle's revolver.

Chips was jumping about in the cabin with no idea of what to do or what he was doing, but whined shrilly that they would all be murdered. He was too frightened to remember that the small-arms locker was in the captain's stateroom, or to make use of it if he did remember. The petty officers had turned in their guns the night before after the galley trouble quieted.

When the mutiny started, Chips had stared out on deck until his distended eyes were almost protruding. When he saw the men rush toward the cabin door, he had started to run for the stairway. But Corydon shot.

Gorvhalsen had been in his stateroom; and at the first yells he went bounding out. His wife met and tried to beg him not to go.

Corydon began to follow, but Mrs. Gorvhalsen called him.

“They are killing men,” she said.

Her face was white as the lace about her throat, but she did not seem excited. Eve ran to her brother, clung to him, saying that he must not go. The clamor on deck was terrifying. Corydon had no clear idea of what he might do with his uncle's revolver; but he had bolted back into the stateroom and snatched it from a cabinet drawer. Eve had followed, and again clutched at his arm, begging him not to shoot. He could hardly talk, and as he pulled away from her his voice had quavered brokenly:

“I—I don't—want—want—to hurt any—anybody—but—but—” and he stuck stubbornly at the “but.”

He returned to the cabin with Eve behind him, and when he saw the door open, he shot.

Eve screamed and ran into Gorvhalsen's state-room. She fell, half into a big chair, her knees on the floor and her arms tightly crossed before her face. Jeanne, too, rushed into that room. Somehow the girls must have felt that being there more nearly put them under Gorvhalsen's immediate protection.

If Corydon had been given time to think he would probably have said that he was frightened, for he trembled and cold sweat was all over him. His jaw quivered as if he were half-frozen and a dizzying leaden sensation had settled in his stomach. He held the revolver in front of him with both hands as far as he could reach, shut his eyes tightly as he pulled the trigger and flinched at the noise of the shot. He shouted frantically:

“Don't come in here—don't come in here—” over and over, not knowing what he said.

The noise of terrible voices grew. The crew was becoming as drunken with blood-excitement as if rum were overflowing into scupperways. They were hard men. They had been galled and hazed. The lives of most of them were worth nothing more than two fathoms of hemp if they did not take over the ship.

The shooting on the deck above continued. Sound of the guns and Ward's curses came through the skylight. There were blows and falling glass as men broke the windows looking into the cabin from the quarter-deck and things were thrown through. Wild daring faces peered in, shrieking threats at Corydon, who unsteadily pointed a revolver toward them, but did not shoot for the faces would vanish—then reappear.

Mrs. Gorvhalsen stood in the door of the room where the carpenter had been working. She held her hands tightly together like one who suffers intense pain without crying out. Her face was strained, haggard. Age seemed to have drawn, of a sudden, heavy lines there. She said, “Oh, my God,” once, and it was like the beginning of a prayer. It may have been, but she did not close her eyes. Then she shrieked. Everything that terror and a broken heart puts into the voice was in her cry. It rose piercingly above the shouting and yells, the pounding and Matt Ward's guns.

Jeanne heard and frightenedly slammed shut the door of the stateroom, bolting it. Her face had the crazed look of fear. She thought the men had rushed into the cabin; she screamed and tore at Eve, who tried to get out.

The isolation of the closed door terrified Eve. She wanted to be near her aunt, uncle, brother. They fought, each struggling as if for the life of the other. Eve was also frightened by Jeanne's mad face; but her strength was not equal to Jeanne's, which had the terror of Shring's arms and kiss to help.

Mrs. Gorvhalsen as she cried had run across the cabin to where Gorvhalsen was coming down the stairs with lifeless body dragging behind him. He crawled like a monstrous human-headed lizard—as a dog crawls when its back is broken.

Chips, meeting him on the steps, was retreating slowly, stupidly staring and asking monotonously what was the matter.

Gorvhalsen did appear unreal and was frightfully grotesque. His white shirt was blotched and splattered with blood. His long beard swept the stairs, and the deep black eyes glowed from pain, rage, the baffled passions of a strong man made helpless. He snarled at the carpenter to get from his way.

Mrs. Gorvhalsen tried to lift him and cried in pleading reproach at Chips:

“Help—help him!”

Chips bent awkwardly.

“Get 'way, both of you,” Gorvhalsen muttered in a voice of pain.

“David!” She was trying to raise him.

“Let me alone. My back—hurt.”

Mrs. Gorvhalsen lifted her face for a moment as though questioning God for having been heedless to her prayers; but instantly bent again to put her hands to him.

Corydon, flinching as before, shot at the door. He was jeered savagely by men he could not see. Dicer's shrill voice rose loudest through the broken windows: he was crouching below.

Gorvhalsen swayed his head to one side and raising himself as high as he could on his arms, looked long at Corydon. It was not possible to know what he thought, for he said nothing, but stared at the boy, just stared, expressionless. Then he began crawling heavily across the cabin deck. Mrs. Gorvhalsen tugged to help, bending low over him; but her delicate hands were as futile on his big body as if trying to grip a wounded horse by the shoulder and help it.

Corydon saw him; but the boy was already too shocked and strained to feel more emotion. He gazed dully at Gorvhalsen, then hastily pointed his revolver toward the door again but did not shoot.

Faces were peering in through the windows with wonder on them to see Gorvhalsen's huge body broken; but there was no lull, no quiet.

The men who had smashed into the galley to get at the butcher-knives and cleavers were torturing the Chinamen—the yellow-bellies; and shrill screams went up. The steward, in the galley to see about the evening meal for the cabin, had been killed promptly.

Gorvhalsen fell over on his side. He said to his wife:

“Go there—lock the door. When the lock breaks you must”

She would hear nothing more.

“I will stay,” she said, and meant that she would not leave him.

Her voice was not agitated, but low, steady. Her slender delicate hands were pressed against his head. He looked slowly about. Blood trickled on his mouth from biting his lips. He lay on a forearm; his big hands opened and closed, the fingers writhing, perhaps around imaginary necks. He too was unagitated, even thoughtful; but there was great pain in his eyes, and ever and ever they fell on Corydon, staring at him blankly as though not quite sure that it was Corydon.

There was sudden trampling of feet overhead. Matt Ward was no longer shooting. He had emptied his guns and he would not turn, run, try to get away, but snatched up the ax. The shadows of bodies moving fell on the skylight. Men were crowding on to the poop. A new note was in their yells.

Gorvhalsen asked where the girls were, but his question was unnoticed. On that instant the yelling stopped and the abrupt silence struck those in the cabin into attitudes of strained listening suspense.

The silence ended with the heavy thud of a fallen body. The men had thrown Matt Ward clear from the poop, swinging him over the rail by feet and arms as a sack of wheat is flung from pier to lighter. He had died fighting. Some of the fellows jumped on the body, or kicked it, saying what they thought of him. He was dead before they flung him, but the dead body was abused and talked to cursingly. They had worked themselves into a blood-passion and loosened the savagery never deeply concealed.

Faces peered down the skylight and feet rushed on the companion. A grinning Portuguese stuck one of Matt Ward's revolvers against the skylight. Chips fearfully ducked and cried for Corydon to shoot. The Portuguese was having a little joke. The gun was empty. He vanished as Corydon lifted the revolver; and he did shoot at the stairs, checking the rush there.

Gorvhalsen, slowly turning his head, said:

“We must get from here.”

Chips looked about to find a hole that would hide him and whined that the locks wouldn't hold.

“Nail the door,” said Corydon, his voice thin and high. He spoke without looking around.

Mrs. Gorvhalsen was stooping low to her husband's head and talking quietly. She must have known how to move the impulses in that great wild body else life would hardly have been endurable for her those many years she had loved and been with him. He crawled for the open door of the nearest stateroom, the one where the carpenter had been at work, and she kept by his side, bending over, trying to help him, not even looking behind her though the crew were yelling, pounding deck and bulkheads and throwing things.

Chips crowded in after them, and Corydon backed toward the door, too. The men were afraid of his revolver, but more and more boldly so as to confuse him, they feinted to rush in. Missiles came through the broken windows. The yelling was turned directly at him; and some men jeered and said the evilest things they knew.

“We'll catch 'im 'fore he gets in there!” a voice screamed, hoping to make the boy turn and run.

But Corydon was stubborn. He stopped, looking about with the revolver extended in his two hands. A belaying-pin struck him in the face. He reeled, stumblingly.

“They killed 'im!” Chips howled and banged shut the door, leaving the boy alone to face the crew.

Corydon was dazed, but the sound of the closing door struck one thought in his consciousness:

“Nail—nail—” he shouted confusedly, crying to the carpenter who could not hear him, for the cabin was in an uproar.

From the stairs and quarter-deck men rushed. There was pounding behind the closed door. Chips, half-crazed by fear, was driving nails into it.

Men, especially those behind the leaders, yelled as loudly as they could, pressing forward.

Corydon shot. The bullet went into the deck almost in front of him, but slowed the rush for an instant. He was screaming hysterically:

“Nail door—nail—nail—don't let—nail—nail— nail!”

His words could not be understood; even his voice could not be recognized behind the door where the pounding went on.

Men were surging across the cabin. Those safely behind pressed hard against those in front. The negro with an arm dangling loose came on. Clobb too; French Monty sneaked from the side, crouching, ready to spring. Twenty others were behind them.

Corydon shot again, and a fellow well to the back of the crowd was found by the poorly aimed bullet.

The boy tried to shoot once more as he cried for nails in the door, but the trigger clicked. He threw the emptied gun awkwardly, harmlessly as a girl would have thrown it, and put up his hands in a futile way, his fingers outspread as if to scratch. He knew nothing of blows and knotted fists.

Clobb struck with a cleaver at the helpless boy's shoulder and neck; and scarcely paused, but wheeled and lunged against the door of the stateroom where through the after skylight the girls had been seen. He bucked it twice; then he and Sam-O together threw their bodies against the lock, and Monty pressed beside them. But the lock held.

Clobb stood back and chopped fiercely. The door was made of oak.

Men huddled about, eager, talking loud. Some beat against the nailed door, shouting threats. Others, most of the others, were already looting the pantry and unlocked rooms, plundering everything, decorating themselves.

McGuire stooped to Corydon. The boy was dying, unconscious. He recognized nothing, but his lips were trying to move. McGuire laid his ear low to them. The faintest of whispers:

“Nail—na—” and the lips were still.

He had given his life for the man he feared and hated.

There was a rush of bodies against the door where Clobb had chopped; a chorus of howls—splintering and crashing. The door gave way. The men rushed through.