CHAPTER XVIII
THE LOOMING SHADOW
Old Captain Briggs, meanwhile, absorbed in the most cheerful speculations, was putting his best foot forward on the road to Hadlock’s Wharf. A vigorous foot it was, indeed, and right speedily it carried him. With pipe in full eruption, leaving a trail of blue smoke on the late afternoon air, and with boots creaking on the hard, white road, the captain strode along; while the Airedale trotted ahead as if he, too, understood that Master Hal was coming home.
He made his way out of the village and so struck into the road to Endicutt itself. “The mingled scents of field and ocean” perfumed the air, borne on a breeze that blent the odors of sea and weedy foreshore and salt marsh with those of garden and orchard, into a kind of airy nectar that seemed to infuse fresh life into the captain’s blood. His blue eyes sparkled almost as brightly as the harbor itself, where gaily painted lobster-pot buoys heaved on the swells, where dories labored and where gulls spiraled.
Briggs seemed to love the sea, that afternoon, almost as he had never loved it – the wonderful mystery of tireless, revivifying, all-engendering sea. Joy filled him that Hal, in whose life lived all the hopes of his race, should have inherited this love of the all-mother, Ocean.
Deeply the captain breathed, as he strode onward, and felt that life was being very good to him. For the most part, rough hillocks and tangled clumps of pine, hemlock and gleaming birch hid the bay from him; but now and again these gave way to sandy stretches, leaving the harbor broad-spread and sparkling to his gaze. And as the old man passed each such place, his eyes sought the incoming canvas of the Sylvia Fletcher, that seemed to him shining more white, uprearing itself with more stately power, than that of any other craft.
Now and then he hailed the boy as if Hal could hear him across all that watery distance. His hearty old voice lost itself in the ebbing, flowing murmur of the surf that creamed up along the pebbles, and dragged them down with a long, rattling slither. Everything seemed glad, to Captain Briggs – dories hauled up on the sand; blocks, ropes and drying sails; lobster-pots and fish-cars; buoys, rusty anchors half-buried – everything seemed to wear a festive air. For was not Hal, now homeward bound, now almost here?
So overflowing were the old man’s spirits that with good cheer even beyond his usual hearty greeting he gave the glad news to all along the road, to those he met, to those who stopped their labors or looked up from their rest in yards and houses, to give him a good-evening.
“It is a good evening for me, neighbor,” he would say, with a fine smile, his beard snowy in the sun now low across the western hills. “A fine, wonderful evening! Hal’s coming home to-night; he’s on the Sylvia Fletcher, just making in past the Rips, there – see, you can sight her, yourself.”
And then he would pass on, glad, triumphant. And as he went, hammers would cease their caulking, brushes their painting; and the fishers mending their russet nets spread over hedge or fence would wish him joy.
Here, there, a child would take his hand and walk with him a little way, till the captain’s stout pace tired the short legs, or till some good mother from a cottage door would call the little one back for supper. Just so, fifty years ago, yellow-skinned Malay mothers had called their children within doors, at Batu Kawan, lest Mambang Kuning, the demon who dwelt in the sunset, should do them harm. And just so the sunset itself, that wicked night at the Malay kampong, had glowered redly.
A mist was now rising from the harbor and the marshland, like an exhalation of pale ghosts, floating vaguely, quite as the smoke had floated above Batu Kawan. The slowly fading opalescence of the sky, reddening over the hills, bore great resemblance to those hues that in the long ago had painted the sky above the jagged mountain-chain in that far land. But of all this the captain was taking no thought.
No, nothing could enter his mind save the glad present and the impending moment when he should see his Hal again, should feel the boy’s hand in his, put an arm about his shoulder and, quite unashamed, give him a kiss patriarchal in its fine simplicity and love.
“It is a good evening!” he repeated. “A wonderful evening, friends. Why, Hal’s been gone nearly six months. Gone since last Christmas. And now he’s coming back to me, again!”
So he passed on. One thing he did not note: this – that though all the folk gave him Godspeed, no one inquired about Hal. That after he had passed, more than one shook a dubious head or murmured words of commiseration. Some few of the fisherfolk, leaning over their fences to watch after him, talked a little together in low tones as if they feared the breeze might bear their words to the old man.
Of all this the captain remained entirely unaware. On he kept, into the straggling outskirts of Endicutt. Now he could see the harbor only at rare intervals; but in the occasional glimpses he caught of it, he saw the Sylvia Fletcher’s tops’ls crumpling down and perceived that she was headed in directly for the wharf. He hurried on, at a better pace. Above all things Hal must not come, and find no grandfather waiting for him. That, to the captain’s mind, would have been unthinkable treason.
The captain strode along the cobblestoned main street, past the ship-chandlers’ stores, the sail-lofts and quaint old shops, and so presently turned to the right, into Hadlock’s Wharf. Here the going was bad, because of crates and barrels of iced fish and lobsters, and trucks, and a miscellany of obstructions. For a moment the captain was entirely blocked by a dray across the wharf, backing into a fish-shed. The driver greeted him with a smile.
“Hello, cap!” cried he. “Gee, but you’re lookin’ fine. What’s up?”
“It’s a great day for me,” Briggs answered. “A rare fine day. Hal, my boy, is coming home. He’s on the Sylvia Fletcher, just coming in from Boston. Can’t you let me past, some way?”
“Why, sure! Back up!” the driver commanded, savagely jerking at the bit. “You can make it, now, I reckon.”
Then, as Briggs squeezed by, he stood looking after the old, blue-clad figure. He turned a lump in his cheek, and spat.
“Gosh, ain’t it a shame?” he murmured. “Ain’t it a rotten, gorrammed shame?”
By the time Captain Briggs, followed by the faithful Ruddy, reached the stringpiece of the wharf, the schooner was already close. The captain, breathing a little fast, leaned against a tin-topped mooring-pile, and with eager eyes scrutinized the on-coming vessel. All along the wharf, the usual contingent of sailors, longshoremen, fishers and boys had already gathered. To none the captain addressed a word. All his heart and soul were now fast riveted to the schooner, from whose deck plainly drifted words of command, and down from whose sticks the canvas was fast collapsing.
With skilful handling and hardly a rag aloft, she eased alongside. Ropes came sprangling to the wharf. These, dragged in by volunteer hands, brought hawsers. And with a straining of hemp, the Sylvia hauled to a dead stop, groaning and chafing against the splintered timbers.
Jests, greetings, laughter volleyed between craft and wharf. The captain, alone, kept silent. His eager eyes were searching the deck; searching, and finding not.
“Hello, cap’n! Hey, there, Cap’n Briggs!” voices shouted. The mate waved a hand at him, and so did two or three others; but there seemed restraint in their greetings. Usually the presence of the captain loosened tongues and set the sailormen glad. But now —
With a certain tightening round the heart, the captain remained there, not knowing what to do. He had expected to see Hal on deck, waving a cap at him, shouting to him. But Hal remained invisible. What could have happened? The captain’s eyes scrutinized the deck, in vain. Neither fore nor aft was Hal.
Briggs stepped on the low rail of the schooner and went aboard. He walked aft, to the man at the wheel. Ruddy followed close at heel.
“Hello, cap’n,” greeted the steersman. “Nice day, ain’t it?” His voice betrayed embarrassment.
“Is my boy, Hal, aboard o’ you?” demanded Briggs.
“Yup.”
“Well, where is he?”
“Below.”
“Getting his dunnage?”
“Guess so.” The steersman sucked at his cob pipe, very ill at ease. Briggs stared at him a moment, then turned toward the companion.
A man’s head and shoulders appeared up the companionway. Out on deck clambered the man – a young man, black-haired and blue-eyed, with mighty shoulders and a splendidly corded neck visible in the low roll of his opened shirt. His sleeves, rolled up, showed arms and fists of Hercules.
“Hal!” cried the captain, a world of gladness in his voice. Silence fell, all about; every one stopped talking, ceased from all activities; all eyes centered on Hal and the captain.
“Hal! My boy!” exclaimed Briggs once more, but in an altered tone. He took a step or two forward. His hand, that had gone out to Hal, dropped at his side again.
He peered at his grandson with troubled, wondering eyes. Under the weathered tan of his face, quick pallor became visible.
“Why, Hal,” he stammered. “What – what’s happened? What’s the meaning of – of all this?”
Hal stared at him with an expression the old man had never seen upon his face. The boy’s eyes were reddened, bloodshot, savage with unreasoning passion. The right eye showed a bruise that had already begun to discolor. The jaw had gone forward, become prognathous like an ape’s, menacing, with a glint of strong, white teeth. The crisp black hair, rumpled and awry, the black growth of beard – two days old, strong on that square-jawed face – and something in the full-throated poise of the head, brought back to the old captain, in a flash, vivid and horrible memories.
Up from that hatchway he saw himself arising, once again, tangibly and in the living flesh. In the swing of Hal’s huge fists, the squaring of his shoulders, his brute expression of blood-lust and battle-lust, old Captain Briggs beheld, line for line, his other and barbaric self of fifty years ago.
“Good God, Hal! What’s this mean?” he gulped, while along the wharf and on deck a staring silence held. But his question was lost in a hoarse shout from the cabin:
“Here, you young devil! Come below, an’ apologize fer that!”
Hal swung about, gripped both sides of the companion, and leaned down. The veins in his powerful neck, taut-swollen, seemed to start through the bronzed skin.
“Apologize?” he roared down the companion. “To a lantern-jawed P. I. like you? Like hell I will!”
Then he stood back, lifted his head and laughed with deep-lunged scorn.
From below sounded a wordless roar. Up the ladder scrambled, simian in agility, a tall and wiry man of middle age. Briggs saw in a daze that this man was white with passion; he had that peculiar, pinched look about the nostrils which denotes the killing rage. Captain Fergus McLaughlin, of Prince Edward’s Island, had come on deck.
“You – !” McLaughlin hurled at him, while the old man stood quivering, paralyzed. “If you was a member o’ my crew, damn y’r lip – ”
“Yes, but I’m not, you see,” sneered Hal, fists on hips. “I’m a passenger aboard your rotten old tub, which is almost as bad as your grammar and your reputation.” Contemptuously he eyed the Prince Edward’s Islander, from rough woolen cap to sea-boots, and back again, every look a blistering insult. His huge chest, rising, falling, betrayed the cumulating fires within. The hush among the onlookers grew ominous. “There’s not money enough in circulation to hire me to sign articles with a low-browed, sockless, bean-eating – ”
McLaughlin’s leap cut short the sentence. With a raw howl, the P. I. flung himself at Hal. Deft and strong with his stony-hard fists was McLaughlin, and the fighting heart in him was a lion’s. A hundred men had he felled to his decks, ere now, and not one had ever risen quite whole, or unassisted. In the extremity of his rage he laughed as he sprang.
Lithely, easily, with the joy and love of battle in his reddened eyes, Hal ducked. Up flashed his right fist, a sledge of muscle, bone, sinew. The left swung free.
The impact of Hal’s smash thudded sickeningly, with a suggestion of crushed flesh and shattered bone.
Sprawling headlong, hands clutching air, McLaughlin fell. And, as he plunged with a crash to the planking, Hal’s laugh snarled through the tense air. From him he flung old Briggs, now in vain striving to clutch and hold his arm.
“Got enough apology, you slab-sided herring-choker?” he roared, exultant. “Enough, or want some more? Apologize? You bet – with these! Come on, you or any of your crew, or all together, you greasy fishbacks! I’ll apologize you!”
Snarling into a laugh he stood there, teeth set, neck swollen and eyes engorged with blood, his terrible fists eager with the lust of war.
CHAPTER XIX
HAL SHOWS HIS TEETH
Fergus McLaughlin, though down, had not yet taken the count. True, Hal had felled him to his own deck, half-stunned; but the wiry Scot, toughened by many seas, had never yet learned to spell “defeat.” For him, the battle was just beginning. He managed to rise on hands and knees. Mouthing curses, he swayed there. Hal lurched forward to finish him with never a chance of getting up; but now old Captain Briggs had Hal by the arm again.
“Hal, Hal!” he entreated. “For God’s sake – ”
Once more Hal threw the old man off. The second’s delay rescued McLaughlin from annihilation. Dazed, bleeding at mouth and nose, he staggered to his feet and with good science plunged into a clinch.
This unexpected move upset Hal’s tactics of smashing violence. The Scot’s long, wiry arms wrapped round him, hampering his fist-work. Hal could do no more than drive in harmless blows at the other’s back. They swayed, tripped over a hawser, almost went down. From the crew and from the wharf ragged shouts arose, of fear, anger, purely malicious delight, for here was battle-royal of the finest. The sound of feet, running down the wharf, told of other contingents hastily arriving.
“By gum!” approved the helmsman, forgetting to chew. He had more than once felt the full weight of McLaughlin’s fist. “By gum, now, but Mac’s in f’r a good takin’-down. If that lad don’t fist him proper, I miss my ’tarnal guess. Sick ’im, boy!”
Blaspheming, Hal tore McLaughlin loose, flung him back, lowered his head and charged. But now the Scot had recovered a little of his wit. On deck he spat blood and a broken snag of tooth. His eye gleamed murderously. The excess of Hal’s rage betrayed the boy. His guard opened. In drove a stinging lefthander. McLaughlin handed him the other fist, packed full of dynamite. The boy reeled, gulping.
“Come on, ye college bratlin’!” challenged the fighting Scot, and smeared the blood from his mouth. “This here ain’t your ship – not yet!”
“My ship’s any ship I happen to be on!” snarled Hal, circling for advantage. Mac had already taught him to be cautious. Old Captain Brigg’s imploring cries fell from him, unheeded. “If this was my ship, I’d wring your neck, so help me God! But as it is, I’ll only mash you to a jelly!”
“Pretty bairn!” gibed McLaughlin, hunched into battle-pose, bony fists up. “Grandad’s pretty pet! Arrrh! Ye would, eh?” as Hal bored in at him.
He met the rush with cool skill. True, Hal’s right went to one eye, closing it; but Hal felt the bite of knuckles catapulted from his neck.
Hal delayed no more. Bull-like, he charged. By sheer weight and fury of blows he drove Mac forward of the schooner, beside the deck-house. Amid turmoil, the battle raged. The jostling crowd, shoved and pushed, on deck and on the wharf, to see this epic war. Bets were placed, even money.
McLaughlin, panting, half-blind, his teeth set in a grin of rage, put every ounce he had left into each blow. But Hal outclassed him.
A minute, two minutes they fought, straining, sweating, lashing. Then something swift and terrible connected with Mac’s jaw-point in a jolt that loosened his universe. Mac’s head snapped back. His arms flung up. He dropped, pole-axed, into the scuppers.
For the first time in five-and-twenty years of fighting, clean and dirty, Fergus McLaughlin had taken a knockout.
A mighty shout of exultation, fear and rage loosened echoes from the old fish-sheds. Three or four of the crew came jostling into the circle, minded to avenge their captain. Sneering, his chest heaving, but ready with both fists, Hal faced them.
“Come on, all o’ you!” he flung, drunk with rage, his face bestial. A slaver of bloody froth trickled from the corner of his mouth. “Come on!”
They hesitated. Gorilla-like, he advanced. Back through the crowd the overbold ones drew. No heart remained in them to tackle this infuriated fighting-machine.
Hal set both fists on his hips, flung up his head and panted:
“Apologize, will I? I, a passenger on this lousy tub, I’ll apologize to a bunch of down-east rough-necks, eh? If there’s anybody else wants any apology, I’m here!”
None caught up the gage of battle. Bursting with fury that had to vent itself, Hal swung toward McLaughlin. The Scot had landed on a coil of hawser in the scuppers, that had somewhat broken his fall. Hal reached down, hauled him up and flung him backward over the rail. Thrice he struck with a fist reddened by McLaughlin’s blood. He wrenched at the unconscious man’s arm, snarling like an animal, his face distorted, eyes glazed and staring. A crunching told of at least one broken bone.
Shouts of horror fell unheeded from his ears. He glared around.
“My Gawd, he’s a-killin’ on him!” quavered a voice. “We can’t stan’ by an’ see him do murder!”
Old Briggs, nerved to sudden action, ran forward.
“Hal! For God’s sake, Hal!”
“You stand back, grandad! He’s my meat!”
Hal raised McLaughlin high above his head, with a sweep of wonderful power. He dashed the Scot to the bare planks with a horrible, dull crash, hauled back one foot and kicked the senseless man full in the mangled, blood-smeared face.
A communal gasp of terror rose up then. Men shrank and quivered, stricken with almost superstitious fear. All had seen fights aplenty; most of them had taken a hand in brawls – but here was a new kind of malice. And silence fell, tense, heart-searching.
Hal faced the outraged throng, and laughed with deep lungs.
“There’s your champion, what’s left of him!” cried he. “He won’t bullyrag anybody for one while, believe me. Take him – I’m through with him!”
Of a sudden the rage seemed to die in Hal, spent in that last, orgiastic convulsion of passion. He turned away, flung men right and left, and leaped down the companion. Swiftly he emerged with a suit-case. To his trembling, half-fainting grandfather he strode, unmindful of the murmur of curses and threats against him.
“Come on, grandpop!” he said in a more normal tone. His voice did not tremble, as will the voice of almost every man after a storm of rage. His color was fresh and high, his eyes clear; his whole ego seemed to have been vivified and freshened, like a sky after tempest. “Come along, now. I’ve had enough of this rotten old hulk. I’ve given it what it needed, a good clean-up. Come on!”
He seized Captain Briggs by the elbow – for the old man could hardly stand, and now was leaning against the hatchway housing – and half guided, half dragged him over the rail to the wharf.
“Shame on you, Hal Briggs!” exclaimed an old lobsterman. “This here’s a bad day’s work you’ve done. When he was down, you booted him. We wun’t fergit it, none of us wun’t.”
“No, and he won’t forget it, either, the bragging bucko!” sneered Hal. “Uncle Silas, you keep out of this!”
“Ef that’s what they l’arn ye down to college,” sounded another voice, “you’d a durn sight better stay to hum. We fight some, on the North Shore, but we fight fair.”
Hal faced around, with blazing eyes.
“Who said that?” he gritted. “Where’s the son of a pup that said it?”
No answer. Cowed, everybody held silence. No sound was heard save the shuffling feet of the men aboard, as some of the crew lifted McLaughlin’s limp form and carried it toward the companion, just as Crevay had been carried on the Silver Fleece, half a century before.
“Come on, gramp!” exclaimed Hal. “For two cents I’d clean up the whole white-livered bunch. Let’s go home, now, before there’s trouble.”
“I – I’m afraid I can’t walk, Hal,” quavered the old man. “This has knocked me galley-west. My rudder’s unshipped and my canvas in rags. I can’t navigate at all.” He was trembling as with a chill. Against his grandson he leaned, ashen-faced, helpless. “I can’t make Snug Haven, now.”
“That’s all right, grampy,” Hal assured him. “We’ll dig up a jitney if you can get as far as the street. Come on, let’s move!”
With unsteady steps, clinging to Hal’s arm and followed by the dog, old Captain Briggs made his way up Hadlock’s Wharf. Only a few minutes had elapsed since he had strode so proudly down that wharf, but what a vast difference had been wrought in the captain’s soul! All the glad elation of his heart had now faded more swiftly than a tropic sunset turns to dark. The old man seemed to have shrunken, collapsed. Fifteen little minutes seemed to have bowed down his shoulders with at least fifteen years.
“Oh, Hal, Hal!” he groaned, as they slowly made their way towards the street. “Oh, my boy, how could you ha’ done that?”
“How could I? After what he said, how couldn’t I?”
“What a disgrace! What a burning, terrible disgrace! You – just back from college – ”
“There, there, grandpop, it’ll be all right. Everybody’ll be glad, when they cool off, that I handed it to that bully.”
“This will make a terrible scandal. The Observer will print it, and – ”
“Nonsense! You don’t think they’d waste paper on a little mix-up aboard a coasting-schooner, do you?”
“This is more than a little mix-up, Hal. You’ve stove that man’s hull up, serious. There’s more storm brewing.”
“What d’you mean, more storm?”
“Oh, he’ll take this to court. He’ll sue for damages.”
“He’d better not!” snapped Hal, grimly. “I’ve got more for him, where what I handed him came from, if he tries it!”
“Hal, you’re – breaking my old heart.”
“D’you think, grandpa, I was going to stand there and swallow his insults? Do you think I, a Briggs, was going to let that slab-sided P.I. hand me that rough stuff? Would you have stood for it?”
“I? What do you mean? How could I fight, at my age?”
“I mean, when you were young. Didn’t you ever mix it, then? Didn’t you have guts enough to put up your fists when you had to? If you didn’t, you’re no grandfather of mine!”
“Hal,” answered the old man, still holding to his grandson as they neared the street, “what course I sailed in my youth is nothing for you to steer by now. Those were rough days, and these are supposed to be civilized. That was terrible, terrible, what you did to McLaughlin. The way you flung him across the rail, there, and then to the deck, and – kicked him, when he was down – kicked him in the face – ”
“It’s all right, I tell you!” Hal asserted, vigorously. He laughed, with glad remembrance. “When I fight a gentleman, I fight like a gentleman. When I fight a ruffian, I use the same tactics. That’s all such cattle understand. My motto is to hit first, every time. That’s the one best bet. The second is, hit hard. If you’re in a scrap, you’re in it to win, aren’t you? Hand out everything you’ve got – give ’em the whole bag of tricks, all at one wallop. That’s what I go by, and it’s a damn good rule. You, there! Hey, there, jitney!”
The discussion broke off, short, as Hal sighted a little car, cruising slowly and with rattling joints over the rough-paved cobbles.