Cursed. England George Allan

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      The canoe had already begun retreating from the place now marked by a worrying swirl of waters where the gathering sharks held revel. Back towards the main fleet it was circling as the paddlemen – their naked, brown bodies gleaming with sunlight on the oil that would make them slippery as eels in case of close fighting – bent to their labor.

      On the proa and the other sailing-canoes the mat sails had already been hauled up again. The proa was slowly lagging forward; and with it the battle-line, wide-flung.

      Briggs once more assured his aim. He seized the lanyard, stepped back, and with a shout of: “Take this, you black scum!” jerked the cord.

      The rusty old four-inch leaped against its lashings as it vomited half a bushel of heavy nuts, bolts, brass and iron junk in a roaring burst of smoke and flame.

      Fortune favored. The canoe buckled, jumped half out of the water, and, broken fair in two, dissolved in a scattering flurry of débris. Screams echoed with horrible yells from the on-drawing fleet. Dark, moving things, the heads of swimmers already doomed by the fast-gathering sharks, jostled floating things that but a second before had been living men. The whole region near the canoe became a white-foaming thrash of struggle and of death.

      “Come on, all o’ you!” howled Briggs with the laughter of a blood-crazed devil. “We’re ready, you surkabutchas! Ready for you all!”

      With an animal-like scream of rage, a Malay sprang from the capstan-bar where he had been sweating. On Crevay he flung himself. A blade, snatched from the Malay’s breech-clout, flicked high-lights as it plunged into Crevay’s neck.

      Whirled by a dozen warning yells, the captain spun. He caught sight of Crevay, already crumpling down on the hot deck: saw the reddened blade, the black-toothed grin of hate, the on-rush of the amok Malay.

      Up flung his revolver. But already the leaping figure was upon him.

       CHAPTER IX

      ONSET OF BATTLE

      The shot that Wansley fired, a chance shot hardly aimed at all, must have been guided by the finger of the captain’s guardian genius. It crumpled the Malay, with strangely sprawling legs. Kill him it did not. But the bullet through his lower vertebræ left only his upper half alive.

      With a grunt he crumpled to the hot deck, knife still clutched in skinny fist. Shouts echoed. Briggs stood aghast, with even his steel nerve jangling. The quivering Malay was a half-dead thing that still lived. He writhed with contorted face, dragging himself toward Briggs. The knife-blade clicked on the planking, like the clicking of his teeth that showed black through slavering lips.

      “Allah! il Allah!” he gulped, heaving himself up on one hand, slashing with the other.

      Why do men, in a crisis, so often do stupid, unaccountable things? Why did Briggs kick at him, with a roaring oath, instead of shooting? Briggs felt the bite of steel in his leg. That broke the numbing spell of unreason. The captain’s pistol, at point-blank range, shattered the yellow man’s skull. Blood, smeared with an ooze of brain, colored the stewing deck.

      “Allah! il Al – !”

      The cry ended in a choking gurgle on lips that drew into a horrible grin. And now completely dead even beyond the utmost lash of Islamic fanaticism, the Malay dropped face down. This time the captain’s kick landed only on flesh and bone past any power of feeling.

      At the capstan-bars it was touch-and-go. Crevay was down, groaning, his hands all slippery and crimson with the blood that seeped through his clutching fingers. For a moment, work slacked off. Wansley was shouting, with revolver leveled, his voice blaring above the cries, oaths, imprecations. Things came to the ragged edge of a rush, but white men ran in with rifles and cutlasses. Briggs flung himself aft, trailing blood.

      Crazed with rage and the burn of that wound, he fired thrice. Malays sagged down, plunged screaming to the deck. The captain would have emptied his revolver into the pack, but Wansley snatched him by the arm.

      “Hold on!” he shouted. “That’s enough – we need ’em, sir!”

      Prass, belaying-pin in hand, struck to right, to left. Yells of pain mingled with the tumult that drowned the ragged, ineffective spatter of firing from the war-fleet. The action was swift, decisive. In half a minute, the capstan was clicking again, faster than ever. Its labor-power, diminished by the loss of three men, was more than compensated by the fear of the survivors.

      “Overboard with the swine!” shouted Briggs. “Overboard with ’em, to the sharks!”

      “This here one ain’t done for yet, sir,” began Prass, pointing. “He’s only – ”

      “Overboard, I said!” roared Briggs. “You’ll go, too, by God, if you give me any lip!”

      As men laid hands on the Malays to drag them to the rail, Briggs dropped on his knees beside Crevay. He pulled away the man’s hands from the gaping neck-wound, whence the life was irretrievably spurting.

      “Judas priest!” he stammered, for here was his right-hand man as good as dead. “Doctor! Where the devil is Mr. Filhiol?”

      “In the cabin, sir,” Prass answered.

      “Cabin! Holy Lord! On deck with him!”

      “Yes, sir.”

      “And tell him to bring his kit!”

      Prass had already dived below. The doctor was haled up again, with his bag. A kind of hard exultation blazed in the captain’s face. He seemed not to hear the shouts of war, the spattering fusillade from the canoes. His high-arched chest rose and fell, pantingly. His hands, reddened with the blood of Crevay, dripped horribly. Filhiol, hustled on deck, stared in amazement.

      “A job for you, sir!” cried Briggs. “Prove yourself!”

      Filhiol leaned over Crevay. But he made no move to open his kit-bag. One look had told him the truth.

      The man, already unconscious, had grown waxen. His breathing had become a stertorous hiccough. The deck beneath him was terrible to look upon.

      “No use, sir,” said the doctor briefly. “He’s gone.”

      “Do something!” blazed the captain. “Something!”

      “For a dead man?” retorted Filhiol. As he spoke, even the hiccough ceased.

      Briggs stared with eyes of rage. He got to his feet, hulking, savage, with swaying red fists.

      “They’ve killed my best man,” he snarled. “If we didn’t need the dogs, we’d feed ’em all to the sharks, so help me!”

      “You’re wounded, sir!” the doctor cried, pointing at the blood-wet slash in the captain’s trouser-leg.

      “Oh, to hell with that!” Briggs retorted. “You, and you,” he added, jabbing a finger at two sailors, “carry Mr. Crevay down to the cabin – then back to your rifles at the rail!”

      They obeyed, their burden sagging limply. Already the dead and wounded Malays had been bundled over the rail. The fusillade from the war-canoes was strengthening, and the shouts had risen to a barbaric chorus. The patter of bullets and slugs into the sea or against the planking of the Silver Fleece formed СКАЧАТЬ