Harrigan Part 42

"Go inside an' let 'em rush the wireless house?" said McTee incredulously. "No, lad. We _got_ to stay an' watch. Besides, maybe this is the way we'll all die--after we're too weak to fight 'em. And I'm rather curious to learn just how I'll die; I've always been!"

They were binding Borgson face down on the hatch.

"Look," said Harrigan. "Maybe it ain't goin' to be so bad as we thought. They're just goin' to lick Borgson the way he licked the j.a.p."

"They'll do more," replied McTee, shaking his head. "Henshaw and Borgson and Van Roos have really put those wild men through h.e.l.l, and now they're going to get it back with interest."

In the meantime little Kamasura stepped out from the crowd. He was naked to the waist, for the raw incisions which the lash had left would not bear the weight of clothes. He carried the blacksnake in his hands, drawing it caressingly through his hands as Borgson had done. Now the tying of Borgson was completed, and the sailors spread back in a loose circle to watch their entertainment.

The j.a.panese took his distance carefully, s.h.i.+fting repeatedly a matter of inches to make sure that no stroke would be wasted. Then he whirled the blacksnake over his head. They could see Borgson wince as the lash sang above him, and the muscles of his bare back flexed and stood up in knots that glistened under the sunlight. But the stroke did not fall.

Kamasura had learned the lesson of creating suspense from the very man he was now about to torture. Harrigan bowed his head in his hands.

"I can't look, McTee," he muttered. "I'm sick inside--sick--sick!"

The last words came in a growl from the hollow of his throat. The blacksnake whirled through the air again and fell with a sharp slap like two broad hands clapped together, but Borgson did not cry out. His body writhed mutely, and down his back appeared a red mark. The whip whirled again and fell, this time bringing a stifled curse for a response. Once more it whirled, and this time merely cracked in the air. Again and again an idle snap in the air. Broken by that grim suspense, Borgson yelled in terror.

Kamasura laughed and glanced at the circle of sailors like a ringmaster in a circus in search of applause. The whip now whirled rapidly over his head and fell again and again, and every stroke brought a fresh and louder scream from the mate. Another sound, rhythmic and barbarous, punctuated those shrieks of anguish. It was the singing of Kamasura, who as he wielded the lash remembered a chant of his native land and shouted it now in time with the blows of the blacksnake.

On the upper deck Sloan lay p.r.o.ne on his face, sobbing with terror; Harrigan kept his face hid and clutched at his head with both hands; McTee stared straight down upon the scene of the torture with burning eyes. Inside the wheelhouse Kate crouched beside the bunk on which Henshaw was stretched, staring straight above his head. The fever had deprived him of the last of his senses.

"Your hands!" he muttered at length.

She placed them upon his forehead. She had done that repeatedly during the past day, and each time the effect had been marvelously soothing to the old man. Now at the touch he drew a deep breath of relief.

"Even in h.e.l.l," he whispered at length--"even in h.e.l.l you come to me, Beatrice! I knew you would!"

He caught her hands at the wrists; his fingers, despite his fever, were deadly cold, and a chill ate into her blood.

"I hear them yelling--the souls of the d.a.m.ned," he said quietly. "You can't hear it?"

"No, no!" she said. "I cannot hear!"

"Of course not," he went on with the same lack of emotion; "for, you see, you've come from heaven, and the coolness of heaven is in your hands, Beatrice. Put them against my temples, so! For every bit of the love I have given you you are permitted to repay me with coolness-- coolness and comfort in h.e.l.l!"

Suddenly he broke into exultant laughter, a sound more terrible than the wild wails from the deck.

"See!" he said, and his eyes twinkled as he stretched out a gaunt arm toward a corner of the room. "There's Johnny Carson lying naked on a bed of blue fire. Ha, ha, ha! Have you been waiting long for me to come, lad?"

She shut out the hungry, hideous light of his eyes with the palms of her hands. Now the screaming on the deck ceased abruptly.

"Beatrice!" he cried with a sudden terror.

"Yes," answered Kate.

"Ah," he said, and patted her hands endearingly. "When the silence came, I feared maybe you were leaving me. You won't do that?"

"No. I'll stay."

"So! Then I'll sleep. But waken me when they begin yelling again. They thought I'd come down to the same h.e.l.l I sent them to, and that they'd watch me burn. But I fooled 'em, Beatrice, by loving you. You're the chip of wood that keeps me afloat--afloat--afloat--"

And he drifted into sleep, while she leaned against the bunk, almost unconscious from fear and exhaustion.

CHAPTER 35

Kamasura, in nowise loath to bring his work to an end, stood back and laid on the whip with redoubled vigor. The lash spatted sharply against the raw and bleeding flesh. The screams sank into moans, and the moans in turn declined to a mere horrible gasping of the breath. Even this ceased at length, and the quivering of the body stopped. Kamasura leaned over and slipped his hand under the body in the region of the heart. When he straightened up again, he made a gesture of finality with his crimsoned hands. The mate was dead.

They cut his body loose at once and pitched him over the rail, then turned their attention to Van Roos. Sam Hall was the inspired man this time, and according to his directions they lashed the body of the big mate on the same blood-spotted hatch cover where Borgson had lain a moment before, but this time the victim was placed upon his back. Hall himself attended to the tying of Van Roos's head, and he performed his work so ably that the mate could not change his position in the least particle. He was literally swathed in ropes; so much so, in fact, that it was difficult to see how he could be tormented. Sam Hall, however, insisted that this was what he wanted, and the crew consented to let him do his work.

"You've heard something, an' you've seen something," said Hovey at this juncture to Campbell; "but what you've seen and heard isn't nothin' to what'll happen to you unless you start handling the engines of the _Heron_. Why, Campbell, I'm goin' to give you to the firemen!"

"Hovey," answered the engineer calmly, "the only place I'd run this s.h.i.+p would be down to h.e.l.l--your home port. That's final!"

The bos'n was white with rage.

"I'd like to tear your heart out an' feed it to the fish," he said, stepping close to Campbell, and then, remembering himself, he moved back and grinned: "But the men will find something better to do with you."

He crossed the deck and held up a bucket of water toward Harrigan and McTee. He raised a dipperful and allowed it to splash back in the bucket.

"Well?" asked Hovey.

They merely stared at him as if they had not heard him speak.

"All right," said Hovey, quite unmoved, "there's plenty of time for you to make up your minds. But if you wait too long--well, we'll come and get him. And the girl, too!"

He laughed and turned away.

"I thought," muttered McTee, "that we could end it by simply dying--but I forgot the girl."

"The girl," answered Harrigan, "and--and them! She's got to die before we're too far gone. You'll do that to save her from--them?"

McTee moistened his parched lips before he could speak.

"One of us has to do it, but it can't be me, Harrigan."

"Nor me, Angus. We'll wait till tonight. Maybe a s.h.i.+p'll pa.s.s and see us lyin' like a derelict and put a boat aboard, eh?"

"But if no s.h.i.+p comes, then we'll draw straws, eh?"

"Yes."

Two sharp, sudden cries now called their attention back to the waist of the s.h.i.+p to the blood-stained hatch cover where Van Roos lay.

Sam Hall had approached the big mate with a knife in his hand. He kneeled beside the prostrate body and fumbled at the face an instant.

No one had been able to make out the significance of his act. Then the knife gleamed, and twice he plucked with one hand and cut with the knife. The two sharp cries answered him. Then he rose; two little trickles of blood ran down the face of the mate.