Plundered Cargo/Chapter 8

HITE-HOT day drew to a close with an explosion of celestial fireworks behind the ragged line of mountains marking the peninsula, hot furnace red illuminating the plumes of horse-tail clouds, then cooling to umber and ice green. With up-creeping shadows the mountain tips remained each a burning carbon point of incandescence slowly cindering to blackness. The wind had fallen with evening, and the Lonney Lee was drifting lazily under puffy airs. The Isle of Carmen,  a broad-backed water monster rising from the slime of a prehistoric sea, was so close off the port bow the white of its surf line winked through gathering dusk.

Doctor Chitterly was set for the first watch, taking his place at the wheel; for Captain Judah now trusted him to con the vessel when no weather was abroad. Horn was lookout in the bow; occasionally the doctor could see the youth's blocky figure silhouetted against the stars by the schooner's lift to a long roller. Hansen and the skipper both were below. Before five bells light which had streamed up through the cabin skylight was snuffed out. A sound of snores succeeded.

The hours following the doctor's joining of a conspiracy with the rash Spike Horn had become increasingly freighted with misery for him. He felt he was flirting with the working parts of a volcano. He was positive that before another sunrise he would be shot or hanged by the competent Captain Judah. And to die in this desolate Vermilion Sea with no sepulcher but the alimentary tract of a shark would be a taking-off of a downright melancholiness beyond the power of imagination to conjure. Absently the worthy physician felt of the heavy gold links of his watch chain and wondered how much digestive trouble they would give a shark.

Time and again as the hours marched toward the moment of tryst set with Spike an hysteria of panic seized the elderly gentleman at the wheel, and he was on the point of lashing the spokes and rushing down to awaken Captain Judah to a recital of treachery planned. Yet a fine spark of honor burned to prevent his doing that thing. He had given his word to the rash youth from Goldfield. Old Doctor Chitterly's word was of greater worth than the printed promises on his bottles of nostrums. Perhaps in his inner soul the fine old fraud held to the integrity of his word as somehow redeeming the shams of his years with the medicine wagon.

Ah, that medicine wagon! Now on the eve of his sudden demise the doctor visioned it as a faithful servant dumbly awaiting the return of the master to the San Francisco livery stable where it had been stored. He saw it in its black and gold body, like the body of a hotel bus without a top; the shining brass rail running along its sides to the brass-treaded steps at the back. Letters of gold spelled “Squaw Root Tonic” over its wheels. Two sleek black horses, wearing black fly nets in summer time like hearse horses, were at the pole.

The gasoline flare beneath the elevated drum; crowd of shirt-sleeved men, and women in summer organdies, pressing close under the flare's radiance; the chart on its rack with its movable flaps which came away in a horrid succession of revelations concerning the human mechanism

“—And now the liver, friends—that treacherous organ which the ancient Romans believed to house the seat of human emotions”

Spike Horn, up forward, struck eight bells. Mr. Hansen came on deck to take the wheel and the watch. Doctor Chitterly went below to his bunk with the step of an early Christian martyr who knows there will be no rain checks at the Colosseum the day of his engagement with the lions. He lay in a profuse perspiration awaiting the striking of two bells, which would mark the moment of his rendezvous with death.

At the first stroke of the fatal bell Doctor Chitterly was out of his bunk, and in shirt and stockinged feet he tiptoed into the cabin. Captain Judah's measured snoring reassured his fluttering heart beats. He groped his way to the locker seat beneath which he had seen the guns stowed. The seat lifted easily. A swift exploratory hand encountered the outlines of rifle barrels. The doctor lifted two from the pile, lowered the locker seat and stepped to the short flight leading to the deck.

The figure of Spike Horn was glued against the coaming of the hatch. The doctor passed him one of the rifles without a word.

“You handle Hansen,” Spike whispered. “Keep him at the wheel and covered; and stand off any rush of the Chinks—maybe they'll start somethin' if there's any fracas. Me, I'll settle Storrs' hash.”

Spike slipped like a shadow down the steps into the cabin. Just that chilling instant of action a little bell struck warningly under Chitterly's snowy thatch. Shells! He had forgotten to put shells into the two rifles which were to accomplish a mutiny!

Doctor Chitterly vented a low groan; then he threw down his head and advanced, rifle to shoulder and cheek laid professionally along the stock, upon the spot where the binnacle threw a light upon the torso of Mr. Hansen behind the wheel.

“Throw up your hands—no—keep them on the wheel!” The doctor amended his order hurriedly. Sighting along the rifle barrel into the wooden countenance of the first mate, Doctor Chitterly was a little dashed to read no sign of surprise there. Mr. Hansen's expression was the normal one of a cigar store Indian. He said nothing. He just let his small blue eyes turn once to the star dappled darkness beyond the bowsprit. Doctor Chitterly was decidedly disappointed. He'd felt the moment called for some very stern words from him.

But this mutiny business was not to pass dully.

Suddenly there was a crash of splintered wood from the cabin beneath their feet. Then a shot—another.

Doctor Chitterly knew those shots must come from Captain Judah's revolver. The miserable Horn—so lightning calculation ran with the doctor—was shot down with his useless rifle.

The white haired mutineer swayed a little in his tense pose of alertness. His back was to the hatchway. He would not hear that third shot which inevitably must be fired at him any instant now.

But there was no third shot. Instead, through the open gratings of the deckhouse came sounds of desperate struggle in the black pit below, thud of blows, coughing grunts of men struck, creak and smash of cabin fittings splintered under the impact of locked bodies, all the bestial noises of brute men in battle.

Diversion came from for'ard. At the first shot the Chinese lookout on the fo'c's'le head emitted a thin yell and dived down the companionway into the sleeping hole beneath. Straightway the other Chinks of the crew, plus the Iron Man and Angelo the flute player, erupted thence. Through the tail of his eye the doctor thought he saw knives in the hands of the yellow men as they edged uncertainly down past the foremast.

Suddenly the doctor jumped to the top of the deckhouse and half turned so that his rifle might menace any rush from for'ard while still keeping the mate in its hollow threat. He called to the two white men from the fo'c's'le:

“Men, this is mutiny! Watch those Chinamen and don't let them rush me or we'll all hang together at dawn.”

The intrepid flute player ducked like a cat for a windlass bar and turned to face the Chinamen. The Iron Man dropped his craven bulk back through the fo'c's'le hatch to the security of his bunk.

The issue on the Lonney Lee's deck might have been decidedly hazardous, what with the doctor and his useless rifle and Angelo's stave against a Swede and six Chinamen, had not the balance been unexpectedly turned. A sudden dropping of the uproar in the cabin below was followed by the flash of light through the gratings in the house. After a moment Spike Horn stepped on deck.

He took a step forward toward the huddle of Chinese, dropped on a knee and sent two bullets whining over their skulls. They whirled and scurried like rats for the fo'c's'le.

Horn mounted the deckhouse where Doctor Chitterly had relaxed his guard over the unperturbed Hansen.

“Doc, you ding-donged ole rooster! How come you sent me up against Storrs with no shells in my gun an' left me to find 'em when the fun was over? But at that I guess you've got some thanks comin'. I had to beat him unconscious with my own two lily-white mitts.”

Doctor Chitterly threw open the ejector of his rifle to show an empty chamber. “I thought it more worthy to have our mutiny without violence,” he lied magnificently.

“'Thout violence?” Spike boomed exultantly. “What you think I been doin': teachin' a Chinese lady the language of flowers?”

In ten minutes the stolid Mr. Hansen was tied in his bunk. Captain Judah, still unconscious from a terrific drubbing, lay similarly bound behind a door which Spike had been forced to splinter to bring the combat to the skipper. The Chinese crew, quick to accept change of masters, was docile.

Angelo suddenly dived into his galley and, returning to the deck, seated himself on a rope coil.

Into the still night of the Vermilion Sea went winging the first shrill notes of a Spanish bolero. Angelo was christening his new flute made out of a bamboo broom handle.