Part 3 (1/2)
CHAPTER V
PREMONITIONS BECOME REALITIES
At last, running back to the start, we tracked him down and with his discovery came disappointment. I had realized that she had been dressing a mere lay-figure in garments of idealized manhood and endowing an unknown with a panoply of the chivalric to which he could probably lay no rightful claim. Still it was disconcerting to realize that he had, in the flesh, contributed absolutely nothing to the picture. She had simply devised from the whole cloth of imagination a collaborative sum of Galahad the Pure and Richard the Lion-Hearted. She had seen him only once in later years--from the sidelines of a Yale-Harvard football game.
He was playing with the crimson and she was at the impressionable age.
There was the whole and meager foundation for his apotheosis. She did not state the year, but she gave the score, and by that I identified the occasion.
”I devoutly pray,” I confided to young Mansfield, ”that she never meets him. She has fed herself on dreams. I hope she doesn't wake up.”
Mansfield promptly took up the unknown hero's defense. He invariably held a brief for the idealist.
”Why do you a.s.sume that he's a bounder?” he demanded almost resentfully.
”He may be all she thinks.”
”I don't a.s.sume anything,” I retorted, ”but I happened to play on that team myself and I am compelled to admit, though with chagrin, that we had among us no knights from Arthur's Round Table. Warriors of ferocity we had; young gentlemen who played the game to the lasting glory of John Harvard; but this letter-perfect type of chivalry, valor and gentleness well, I'm afraid he failed to make the team.”
You remember the story of Bruce and the spider? In his ermine, surrounded by his stalwart barons, Robert would probably have learned no lesson from the weaving of filmy webs. Alone and in peril, it taught him how to conquer. To us, alone and in peril, this diary a.s.sumed an epochal importance entirely out of kelter with its face value.
Of course, there were many topics which we might have discussed to divert our minds from morbidly watching the cloud of impending mutiny spread and grow inky. But the cloud was present and human, and the diary was present and human, and we were present and human. Whether or not we were creatures of atrophied brains and distorted vision is an academic question. The fact remains. For us there was genuine relief in turning from the miasma of brooding doom which overhung the _Wastrel_ to the spiced fragrance of this self-revealed personality. It was a clean breeze into our asphyxiation. It was a momentary excursion out of a noisome dungeon into an old-fas.h.i.+oned garden, where roses nod and illusions bloom.
One steaming night when darkness had stopped our reading, the two of us were lying flat on our backs--and silent--in the enveloping shadows of the forward deck near the capstan. A group of men who were off watch had gathered near us, seeking the gratefulness of the uninterrupted breeze.
With no suspicion of our proximity, they fell into a low-pitched but violent conference.
Hoak held the floor as spokesman, and his deep whispering voice was raw with bitterness.
”We hain't no bloomin' galley-slyves,” he growled. ”Blyme me, I say, let's make a hend o' the 'ole b.l.o.o.d.y mess once and for hall.”
”How?” came the natural question from one of the more conservative.
”'Ow?” retorted the ringleader, ”W'at's the odds 'ow? Any way will do.
Rush the cabin. There's a stand of rifles at the for'ard bulkhead. Kill hoff the b.l.o.o.d.y lot of hofficers. Navigate the bloomin' ole 'ooker back ourselves and report whatever d.a.m.n thing we like.”
”How about these pa.s.sengers? They'd snitch,” suggested the same questioner.
”Aw no,” sarcastically a.s.sured Hoak, ”they won't snitch. They won't 'ave no more charnce to snitch than Coulter 'isself--d.a.m.n 'im.”
For a moment I felt a steaming throb in my throat. Then came a new sensation, something like relief that at last the clear outline was looming through the fog of maddening uncertainty. It did not seem to matter so much what the certainty was, so long as it brought an end to the suspense. There was some discussion in hushed voices. Caution had its advocates who opposed so desperate a course.
”Think it hover till to-morrow,” said Hoak at last. ”But hif you don't stand by me Hi'm going to cut loose a boat and tyke to the water. To 'ell with the _Wastrel_ an' her rotter of a captain.”
There was a sudden hush followed by a sort of low chorused groan. Around the superstructure of the forward cabin appeared Captain Coulter, his first officer and the chief engineer. For an instant they stood silently, flas.h.i.+ng electric torches into the terrified faces of the conspirators who, like schoolboys caught denouncing their teacher, shuffled their feet and remained speechless.
Hoak, alone, took a step forward. His face was working spasmodically in the bull's-eye glare which exaggerated the high lights on his snarling teeth and the black shadows of his scowl. He wavered for an instant between his personal dread of Coulter, and the knowledge that, with so much already known, caution was futile. While he hesitated the other men tacitly grouped themselves together at his back and stood sullenly eying the officers. Coulter and his two subordinates slipped their hands into their pockets. It was a tense moment and a noiseless one. When the captain broke silence his voice was cool, almost casual.
”Mr. Kirkenhead,” he ordered the chief engineer, ”take this man Hoak to the stokehold, and keep him there until we reach port. Give him double s.h.i.+ft and if he makes a false move--kill him.”
The giant made a pa.s.sionate start forward, and found himself looking down the barrel of Coulter's magazine pistol. From the glint of the raised weapon he bounced backward against the rail, where he leaned incoherently snarling like a cornered dog.
”Hi didn't sign as no blymed stoker,” he growled at last. ”Hi won't go----”
”The stokehold or h.e.l.l, it's up to you.” Coulter's reply came in an absolute monotony of voice strangely at variance with the pa.s.sionate stress of their labored breathing. Back of the tableau gleamed the phosph.o.r.escence of the placid sea. ”There's thirty seconds to decide.