Hurricane Williams/Chapter 18

HE man, moving watchfully, came with slow steps down the topgallant forecastle ladder on to the darkened deck. Voices from aft reached him. He looked about carefully, a lone figure, quietly, alertly making his way over the ship.

He peered into the forecastle, into the deck-house, into the wrecked galley and saw dead bodies in the moonlight. His feet were soundless. From the shadows of the deck-house he looked aft at the lighted cabin. The door was open. The voices were more easily heard, the words not clearly understood.

He went on quietly. There was nothing furtive in his manner. He was alert, tense, like an animal that moves among strange dangers.

Water trickled from his hair and short trousers, running down his body, marking the places where he paused. From time to time he looked aloft at the canvas loose in the breeze as if thinking of the good wind thrown away, and sometimes he stared out across the sea, peering hard toward the southwest. The schooner was out of sight.

He looked about the deck with slow steady appraisal, seeing, knowing about what he saw. The clank of glass and growled words with flurries of many men talking together came from the cabin.

A cutlas lay in a streak of moonlight and he stooped, peered at the black stain on the blade, but he did not pick it up. His hands were empty. There was no knife at his belt.

He walked in shadows to the mainmast and stood behind it, watching, listening. Inside the cabin men were grouped about the table, pressed together, bending over something, talking earnestly, drinking.

Following the shadows again he went to the starboard bulwarks and came along to the break of the poop. He stood by a cabin window, listening, but not looking through. He was without nervousness and was patient.

He stood for a long time, then, soundless, walked to the cabin door and stood in the light, his eyes on the men within.

A man caught sight of him, gasped noisily and straightened up with eyes glazed. Others looked. Some turned, some gaped over their shoulders, some lifted their faces as if frozen. The chart they had been holding down, its corners released, rolled itself into a cylinder. Eyes stared blankly. They were not seeing a strange man, but a figure that in no way known to them had come on board.

He stood naked and tense, glaring at them. In his face, short-bearded, hard, tense, black with sunburn, each man read what he most feared; the eyes were ferocious. That strange figure seemed capable of anything, the more ominous because his hands were empty, and he looked at them as though a word, a gesture, would be blasting without need of lead or metal.

Coming out of the night, dripping and wet with a touch of the sea on him, they were moved to an uneasiness that nothing more natural would have stirred; and he did not speak. Slowly, step by step he came into the cabin and looked about him, at dead men on the deck, at men dead drunk, and he seemed indifferent toward the living, turning his back in deliberate unhurried survey of what was about him.

A fellow near the cabin door slipped out with swift stealth and returned almost at once, terrified. As far as he could see there had not been wood or sail. He tiptoed back and told it in broken whispers and gestures, and they, confirmed in fear, stared at the man in renewed puzzlement and dread.

He had crossed the cabin, looking this way and that and back to them. As there was nothing like curiosity in his gaze, so there was no alarm in his glance at them; but they felt an unmistakable purpose in his manner, knew something was coming and waited.

“Who—who—are you?” Clobb asked unevenly.

The man jerked his head to face Clobb and looked at him, just stared; but gave no other answer.

More clearly than if he had spoken they knew that he was not to be questioned; but his eyes, the poise and movement, the way he stared about, his bearing and tenseness, conveyed that they were answerable to him.

As ever a rabble knew its master, they felt his presence and did not try to understand; they felt only that manner sustained by energy, repressed but evident, that carried a threat in the least movement, was redoubled when motionless.

The illogic of one man assuming a bearing of the kind toward so many did not arouse them. There could be no cool reasoning when there had been no natural means of his boarding the Heraldr and at such a time when it guiltily seemed an avenger had been called from the ocean's black depth.

The appearance of any mysterious figure would have made them fearful; but the mystery of how he had come was less disturbing than the awing dominance of his presence. There was so much more than a physical menace in his bearing that their fancies were unnerving. He seemed aware of being able to do anything that he wanted to do, and the contempt of his empty hands was like an insult that they were afraid to resent lest there be some trick about it.

He stopped, staring down. Brundage lay before him. The dead body told its epic story. Three blades were buried in him, had been left there, as though the murderers feared lest the body would rise again. Brundage lay wearily, back to bulkhead, arm extended with his cutlas still in his fingers. He was covered with the blood of many wounds from head to thigh. Men, dead where they had fallen, lay about beyond his feet. Still, numbers had butchered him.

The man stooped low, peering into the blood covered face, wrinkled, still grim, dead, but that was all, otherwise unchanged. He had gone out to meet whatever there was to meet as he had gone through life, unafraid and unhumbled.

He was stooped so long, motionlessly staring into the old wrinkled dead face, that the men about the table began to look uneasily, one at the other.

It suddenly seemed that the whole manner of his coming had been that of one who searched, and that there he had found what he knew was to be seen.

They were variously drunken, both with liquor and with fancies. Some tried to whisper. Lips were thick. They dreaded to make sounds. The faint thud or scrape from any movement was disturbingly loud. There was nothing but slow restrained breathing, wide, uneasy eyes. Some gripped the handles of their weapons desperately, their hearts sodden with fear.

The man looked around at them and slowly rose. No doubt was left as to what he had found. His eyes gleamed with madness, but he did not appear to be about to rush at them. He was unhurried, deliberate. His gaze went slowly about the cabin, resting on lighted lamp after lamp, then came back to their faces.

The menace they felt was above blows. They knew something terrible was in his mind and that he was terrible enough to do it; but the mystery of his silence, his motionlessly rigid poise kept them awed: they were in the presence of the avenger and they had fear.

Without taking his eyes off them he began to move slowly toward the cabin door. They knew that he was not backing from them, not retreating; but they did not know what he was doing and were afraid. Their gaping faces followed his face on which they saw but could not read what was about to happen. Suspense and mystery are magicians that wait on fear. They had never seen anything so mysteriously fearful as the bronze-like figure that moved without sound and had come from they knew not where.

By the cabin door he stopped and pointed out on the deck in an unvoiced command.

His eyes did not leave them. He did not need to speak. He waited with the tense calmness of one who knows that he must and will be obeyed. They shifted from foot to foot, looked furtively from one to another, at Clobb; but their faces were empty of everything but dull wonder. They simply did not know what to do.

He was standing directly under a large oil lamp, secured on gimbals. Once he glanced up at it, then again waited with the immobility of one who knows that he will not fail in his purpose.

A Portuguese, with face averted downward, began to stumble toward the door. Another man, staring, followed. As the Portuguese came to the door the cutlas in his belt was jerked out and flung to the deck. The little black fellow went out of the doorway with a screech.

The men stirred as though half-aroused to fight. The next man paused, put his hand to his cutlas; his eyes were on the bronze figure that was looking past him toward the others who fingered weapons and glared dully, wishing for the daring to rush.

The bronze stranger stood motionless, but with an arm upraised, fingers resting against the lamp bottom.

The man nearest threw down his cutlas and passed on.

Others were coming, discarding their weapons before they got near, the better to indicate their lack of a wish for trouble. They could not have told why; they had only a great and overpowering dread of what he might do. They knew it would be something terrible and at once, and were the more fearful because they could not imagine what.

They were cowed; but not all moved so readily. Some quite plainly had no wish to disarm themselves, to discard the last little security that is given to men in danger. They looked at Clobb. It was for him to do something if any one did. He knew it.

Leadership carries its burdens. Somehow he felt chilled. All the hot rum he had taken into himself had turned cold. He had never met anything like that silent, nearly naked, motionless figure.

Clobb moved. Men gave way from beside him, opening a path. He could not resist doing what was expected of him. He had to go on alone. They might help him in the fight, but he had to start. He was their leader.

Clobb went forward with a cutlas poised across his breast ready to slash. Men cleared their throats nervously, moved, craned necks, but stood where they were. They wanted first to see what would happen before doing anything themselves.

Clobb advanced with head drawn in and shoulders rounded. His heavy face glowered, distorting his bruised features to strike terror—as an animal shows fangs, as the savage marks himself hideously. He came with cautious stealth, ready to guard or leap. Some feet away he stopped, and loudly:

“Who in hell are you?”

There was no answer except out of the glaring eyes, not the tremor of a movement. The man was rigid as if cast in metal.

Clobb came closer. The muscles of his arm bulged from strain of gripping the cutlas. His head sank lower. He was going through with it. He approached near, stopped and savagely:

“I said who in”

It happened before their eyes but they did not know what had been done—only that Clobb staggered back and went down as if dead.

Some thought the man had not touched him at all; but had just leveled an arm and the gesture struck Clobb down.

Whether it was that or whether it was a blow made no great difference. Whoever by choice used fingers against steel when the steel was in Clobb's strong hand, had the devil with him.

Clobb had not even struck, had not lifted or thrust with the cutlas. His hand had been gripped before he could move. The grip was like the pressure of rope under a Spanish windlass, and a blow had fallen at the top of his ear. That was all.

But men who had tried to watch could not tell what had happened, the movements had been so swift, the blow so hard that they could not believe that it had been a blow. He had just touched Clobb with fingers. It was easier to believe that than that Clobb, the powerful fighter, had been knocked senseless with one fist stroke, quickly, easily given. The unnatural is often more readily accepted.

Clobb lay in their way to the door. They thought him dead and stepped carefully over his body as they went, one after the other, empty-handed lest they too lie down beside Clobb and perhaps not rise again.

Out they went, all of them, one following the lead of the other. They stumbled and staggered to the deck. Some of them shivered. The night seemed cold. They huddled around the mainmast and peered through the open door, wondering, afraid.

Alone except for the dead about the cabin, the man moved with unhurried swiftness.

The watchers did not know what he was about; but they had fear, as much and of the kind they would have had in watching a wizard prepare to summon devils, and soon their fear grew to cries. Panic put its feverish touch on some that ran blindly forward, not knowing why except to get farther away. Others made for the boat falls. Some stood and gaped in breathless fright for a moment more, then too rushed for the boats.

He had reached down the heavy oil lamp from over his head, knocked off the chimney, with a puff put out the light, and unscrewing the top was scattering the oil over the cabin. He was indifferent to who might be innocent, who most guilty, and nothing they could do would stop him. At any time after he saw the impaled body of Brundage, had they rushed him, he could have thrown and broken a lamp. He had been in no fear of them one at a time.

They could not escape him. They might take to the boats, as they did, jamming falls, cutting tackle, swamping boats, getting them cleared and into them. He was satisfied. They were going away without food, without water, without compass or a word to guide them, and there was not a shore within a thousand miles where cannibals did not wait their coming.

The two filled boats stood off, watching, waiting, listening, thinking every moment to see smoke boiling through the skylight and flames leaping from the cabin door.

In the cabin was silence. The man, after emptying the lamp, held a lighted one in his hand and moved quietly as a shadow, peering down. Those whose faces were averted he rolled with his foot; and when the head was covered he pulled away hat or cloth. He was looking for some one. Where Brundage was, there should be another. The silence was deadly as though some great presence was holding its breath. Even drunken men seemed to grow suddenly quiet in sleep.

Then a faint sharp click. The man straightened up and looked toward the door, holding the lamp high enough above his head to keep the glare out of his eyes.

Slowly, cautiously, the door opened, and the face for which he had been searching among the dead peered out.

“Great God!” came chokingly from McGuire. He staggered weakly with hands to eyes, pulling at them, holding them open:

“The Hurricane!—Hurricane!”