Harrigan Part 40

With ear pressed close to the combination, he turned it slowly, by delicate degrees, waiting for the telltale click. They saw him set his teeth and grow eager as a hound on a scent of blood; they saw the fingers move rapidly and nervously, and then came a click which was audible through the entire room, and the door of the safe swung open.

Still no one stirred, no one breathed. He took out a small canvas bag, he untied the top, he spilled the contents out, and then they saw bright gold, gold which inspires, and gold which destroys, gold the tempter and the murderer.

A wild scramble followed. They swept the gold up in handfuls and tossed it into the air, laughing like madmen as the light gleamed on the yellow surfaces. And at length when they were wearied of touching it and caressing it, Hovey apportioned the spoils: to Cochrane, by common a.s.sent, the ten shares, a fortune; to Sam Hall, Kyle, and Flint, two shares each, for they had been leaders in the fight; to himself ten shares, also by universal voice, and to each of the others, forty in all, his portion.

There was no fighting or complaint over the division of the spoils.

What difference did a few hundred pieces here or there matter? Gold in floods, gold in oceans, was before them, and each man gathered his own share close.

But where there is gold there is death. One of the firemen said in the ear of Hovey: "The second a.s.sistant--Fritz Klopp--he is dying."

It was upon Klopp that they depended for the running of the Heron.

Hovey merely laughed: "Carry him in here. He'll come to life when he sees this!"

They had left Klopp lying on the deck. He had been one of the first to leap at White Henshaw, and a bullet from the captain's revolver had torn its way through his lungs; his eyes were glazing fast when two of the firemen carried him into the outer cabin of White Henshaw and placed him in an armchair beside the desk.

"How are you, Klopp?" asked Hovey.

"I am dying," answered the engineer, and a faint pink froth bubbled to his lips as he spoke.

Hovey merely laughed; he spilled Klopp's share of the gold across the surface of the table, a gleaming pile.

"How are you, Klopp?" he repeated.

"I will live," croaked the dying man, and instantly his clutches were among the hundreds of coins, and his red mouth grinned with a ghastly joy. He had forgotten death.

"You will live!" rumbled Sam Hall. "A man would be a fool to die when there's so much money in sight. Where's your hurt?"

"I have no hurt," whispered Klopp hoa.r.s.ely, "but I'm on fire inside.

Water! Something to drink!"

"Something to drink, but not water," responded Hovey. "Hey, Kamasura!

Drink! Whisky!"

Instantly Kamasura, who had evidently antic.i.p.ated the order, came staggering into the room with a literal armful of bottles. Hovey himself brought a gla.s.s and placed it in the hand of Klopp and filled it to the brim.

"Drink!" shouted Hovey, and sprang upon a chair so that all might see him. "Drink to Fritz Klopp! White Henshaw potted him, but he laughs at death, and he'll bring the old _Heron_ to sh.o.r.e. Here's to Fritz Klopp!"

Many a gla.s.s was raised high. They drank with a shout of applause to Fritz Klopp, who sat without stirring his gla.s.s, one hand upon it, and the other buried among the heaps of gold, his head resting against the back of the chair, and his red mouth still ajar in that horrible grin.

"What ye laughin' at?" yelled Sam Hall in his ear. "Are ye drunk at the sight of the money, man?"

There was no answer. Hall caught him by the shoulder to rouse him, but Klopp's head merely sagged far to one side, though his glazed eyes still seemed to be fixed upward upon the same spot on the ceiling at which he had been staring before.

"What is it?" cried one or two. "What does he see?"

"Death, you fools!" answered Hovey. "And how the devil will we bring the _Heron_ to land without an engineer?"

CHAPTER 33

"Make Campbell run the s.h.i.+p," said Cochrane.

"You can't _make_ a Scotchman do anything."

"Persuade him, then," went on Cochrane. "He'd sell his soul for a drink of that whisky. But if you can't persuade him, I'd trust to those fellows to make him do what you want."

And he pointed to the firemen.

"I'll let 'em play their little game till they're tired of it,"

answered Hovey, "an' then we'll bring up Campbell an' try what we can do with him."

The "little game" had now become a wild debauch. Except for the few unfortunates who had been detailed by Hovey to guard the prisoners and see that the fugitives in the wireless house made no attempt to rush the main cabin as a forlorn hope, every man of the crew was gathered in the captain's cabins or on the deck nearby. The fireroom was deserted; the engines stopped; the _Heron_ floated idly on the swell of the sea; but heedless of this the mutineers celebrated their victory.

They divided their attention between drinking and gambling. They seemed feverishly eager to throw away their piles of gold. Some of them flipped coins at ten dollars a throw. Others tossed dice. One group of four sat around a greasy pack of cards betting on which man would draw the first jack.

Those who lost did not envy the winners. They looked about; gold was on all sides, heaps of it; if their hands were empty, their eyes were rich. Sam Hall lost his entire share within an hour, betting recklessly. He approached a gigantic fireman who squatted by the wall with a canvas bag clutched in one hand and a broken bottle in the other. The whisky had run out on the floor, but the fellow was too far gone to know the difference, and from time to time he raised the empty bottle to his lips.

"Money gone," said Hall. "Gimme!" And he held out his hand.

The fireman, with a vast grin, delved his hand into the bag and brought it forth loaded with gold, which Hall took without a word and returned to his game of rolling dice, one throw at five hundred dollars a throw.

In ten minutes he went back to the fireman with a double handful of corns.

"Princ.i.p.al an' interest," grunted the big sailor, and dumped his gold into the canvas bag which, filled to overflowing, spilled a dozen coins upon the floor.

The fireman, with a groan of dull content, slipped p.r.o.ne on the floor and was instantly asleep, embracing the canvas bag in both arms. Every man in the crew was in a somewhat similar condition, saving Hovey, with his gray-blue, steady eyes, and Cochrane, with his glittering, s.h.i.+fty black. These two watched the rest descend toward swinish unconsciousness; they saw, and waited coolly, and now and then glanced at each other with faint smiles of understanding.

Somewhere in the waist of the s.h.i.+p Jacob Flint was singing shrill songs of infinite profanity, but otherwise there was no sound on the _Heron_ as the sun went down, and all night long the old freighter wallowed sluggishly up and down on the waves, as if she waited for dawn before resuming her journey toward the sh.o.r.e.

There was a wisdom, however, in Hovey's laxness of discipline during the first day of his mastery. The next morning the men slept late, sprawling about the deck, and Hovey and Cochrane first roused ominous Jacob Flint and Sam Hall and Kyle. With this nucleus of five mighty men, men to be feared on land or sea, Hovey started to rouse the rest of the mutineers. They woke cursing and sad of stomach and head, and to the first orders they responded with cursing; the reply was a sledge-hammer blow from the fist of Hall or Kyle, and while the man lay on the deck, it was explained curtly and forcibly to him that while the _Heron_ was at sea, he would have to obey Bos'n Hovey; but as soon as the s.h.i.+p reached land, each man could be his own master.

First of all the firemen were commanded to the hole to get up steam, but when this was done, it was found that there was some minor trouble with the machinery. An engineer was needed; Hovey, with Cochrane, Flint and Hall beside him, sent for Campbell, and retired to the cabin to await his coming.

There sat the body of Fritz Klopp as it had remained ever since the beginning of the revels the day before, grinning up at the ceiling.

Hall and Flint raised the body, and the clutching fingers were found to be frozen by death immovably around a whole handful of gold. As Hall suggested, this would serve as lead to take him to the bottom of the sea. The others applauded the thought, and with his hand still full of gold, they carried Fritz Klopp to the rail and dumped him into the water.

As they re-entered the cabin, Campbell was kicked in from the opposite door. His hands were manacled behind him, and the force of the kick, together with a sway of the s.h.i.+p, threw him off his balance. He crashed on his face at the feet of Hovey. The bos'n grew positively pale with pleasure. He selected a cigar from an open box on the table and lighted it leisurely.

At last he ordered: "Pick him up."

The chief engineer was jerked to his feet and stood with a trickle of blood running down from his split lip. His face was rather purple than red, and the dark pouches underneath his eyes told the horror of the night he had pa.s.sed. Nevertheless, the eyes themselves were bright.

Far away, half heard, and drowned by any noise near at hand, was a sound of singing. It was Black McTee in the wireless house, half maddened by thirst and hunger and despair, and singing in defiance songs of bonny Scotland.

"There's been trouble aboard, chief," he said, "but now trouble's over.

All over! We want you to take charge of the engines again and bring us to sh.o.r.e."

Campbell waited, not as if he had not heard. In spite of himself, Hovey stirred a trifle and grew uneasy. From a corner of the room he picked up a canvas bag and dropped it with a melodious jingling on the table in front of the engineer.