Michael, Brother of Jerry Part 15

"Shut up that dog!" Nis.h.i.+kanta ordered Daughtry savagery. "If you don't . . . "

Michael, in Steward's arms, was snarling and growling intimidatingly, not merely at the cow whale but at all the hostile and menacing universe that had thrown panic into the two-legged G.o.ds of his floating world.

"Just for that," Daughtry snarled back, "I'll let 'm sing. You made this mess, and if you lift a hand to my dog you'll miss seeing the end of the mess you started, you dirty p.a.w.nbroker, you."

"Perfectly right, perfectly right," the Ancient Mariner nodded approbation. "Do you think, steward, you could get a width of canvas, or a blanket, or something soft and broad with which to replace this rope?

It cuts me too sharply in the spot where my three ribs are missing."

Daughtry thrust Michael into the old man's arm.

"Hold him, sir," the steward said. "If that p.a.w.nbroker makes a move against Killeny Boy, spit in his face, bite him, anything. I'll be back in a jiffy, sir, before he can hurt you and before the whale can hit us again. And let Killeny Boy make all the noise he wants. One hair of him's worth more than a world-full of skunks of money-lenders."

Daughtry dashed into the cabin, came back with a pillow and three sheets, and, using the first as a pad and knotting the last together in swift weaver's knots, he left the Ancient Mariner safe and soft and took Michael back into his own arms.

"She's making water, sir," the mate called. "Six inches--no, seven inches, sir."

There was a rush of sailors across the wreckage of the fore-topmast to the forecastle to pack their bags.

"Swing out that starboard boat, Mr. Jackson," the captain commanded, staring after the foaming course of the cow as she surged away for a fresh onslaught. "But don't lower it. Hold it overside in the falls, or that d.a.m.ned fish'll smash it. Just swing it out, ready and waiting, let the men get their bags, then stow food and water aboard of her."

Las.h.i.+ngs were cast off the boat and the falls attached, when the men fled to holding-vantage just ere the whale arrived. She struck the _Mary Turner_ squarely amids.h.i.+ps on the port beam, so that, from the p.o.o.p, one saw, as well as heard, her long side bend and spring back like a limber fabric. The starboard rail buried under the sea as the schooner heeled to the blow, and, as she righted with a violent lurch, the water swashed across the deck to the knees of the sailors about the boat and spouted out of the port scuppers.

"Heave away!" Captain Doane ordered from the p.o.o.p. "Up with her! Swing her out! Hold your turns! Make fast!"

The boat was outboard, its gunwale resting against the _Mary Turner's_ rail.

"Ten inches, sir, and making fast," was the mate's information, as he gauged the sounding-rod.

"I'm going after my tools," Captain Doane announced, as he started for the cabin. Half into the scuttle, he paused to add with a sneer for Nis.h.i.+kanta's benefit, "And for my one chronometer."

"A foot and a half, and making," the mate shouted aft to him.

"We'd better do some packing ourselves," Grimshaw, following on the captain, said to Nis.h.i.+kanta.

"Steward," Nis.h.i.+kanta said, "go below and pack my bedding. I'll take care of the rest."

"Mr. Nis.h.i.+kanta, you can go to h.e.l.l, sir, and all the rest as well," was Daughtry's quiet response, although in the same breath he was saying, respectfully and a.s.suringly, to the Ancient Mariner: "You hold Killeny, sir. I'll take care of your dunnage. Is there anything special you want to save, sir?"

Jackson joined the four men below, and as the five of them, in haste and trepidation, packed articles of worth and comfort, the _Mary Turner_ was struck again. Caught below without warning, all were flung fiercely to port and from Simon Nis.h.i.+kanta's room came wailing curses of announcement of the hurt to his ribs against his bunk-rail. But this was drowned by a prodigious smas.h.i.+ng and cras.h.i.+ng on deck.

"Kindling wood--there won't be anything else left of her," Captain Doane commented in the ensuing calm, as he crept gingerly up the companionway with his chronometer cuddled on an even keel to his breast.

Placing it in the custody of a sailor, he returned below and was helped up with his sea-chest by the steward. In turn, he helped the steward up with the Ancient Mariner's sea-chest. Next, aided by anxious sailors, he and Daughtry dropped into the lazarette through the cabin floor, and began breaking out and pa.s.sing up a stream of supplies--cases of salmon and beef, of marmalade and biscuit, of b.u.t.ter and preserved milk, and of all sorts of the tinned, desiccated, evaporated, and condensed stuff that of modern times goes down to the sea in s.h.i.+ps for the nourishment of men.

Daughtry and the captain emerged last from the cabin, and both stared upward for a moment at the gaps in the slender, sky-sc.r.a.ping top-hamper, where, only minutes before, the main- and mizzen-topmasts had been. A second moment they devoted to the wreckage of the same on deck--the mizzen-topmast, thrust through the spanker and supported vertically by the stout canvas, thras.h.i.+ng back and forth with each thrash of the sail, the main-topmast squarely across the ruined companionway to the steerage.

While the mother-whale expressing her bereavement in terms of violence and destruction, was withdrawing the necessary distance for another charge, all hands of the _Mary Turner_ gathered about the starboard boat swung outboard ready for lowering. A respectable hill of case goods, water-kegs, and personal dunnage was piled on the deck alongside. A glance at this, and at the many men of fore and aft, demonstrated that it was to be a perilously overloaded boat.

"We want the sailors with us, at any rate--they can row," said Simon Nis.h.i.+kanta.

"But do we want you?" Grimshaw queried gloomily. "You take up too much room, for your size, and you're a beast anyway."

"I guess I'll be wanted," the p.a.w.nbroker observed, as he jerked open his s.h.i.+rt, tearing out the four b.u.t.tons in his impetuousness and showing a Colt's .44 automatic, strapped in its holster against the bare skin of his side under his left arm, the b.u.t.t of the weapon most readily accessible to any hasty dip of his right hand. "I guess I'll be wanted.

But just the same we can dispense with the undesirables."

"If you will have your will," the wheat-farmer conceded sardonically, although his big hand clenched involuntarily as if throttling a throat.

"Besides, if we should run short of food you will prove desirable--for the quant.i.ty of you, I mean, and not otherwise. Now just who would you consider undesirable?--the black n.i.g.g.e.r? He ain't got a gun."

But his pleasantries were cut short by the whale's next attack--another smash at the stern that carried away the rudder and destroyed the steering gear.

"How much water?" Captain Doane queried of the mate.

"Three feet, sir--I just sounded," came the answer. "I think, sir, it would be advisable to part-load the boat; then, right after the next time the whale hits us, lower away on the run, chuck the rest of the dunnage in, and ourselves, and get clear."

Captain Doane nodded.

"It will be lively work," he said. "Stand ready, all of you. Steward, you jump aboard first and I'll pa.s.s the chronometer to you."

Nis.h.i.+kanta bellicosely shouldered his vast bulk up to the captain, opened his s.h.i.+rt, and exposed his revolver.

"There's too many for the boat," he said, "and the steward's one of 'em that don't go along. Get that. Hold it in your head. The steward's one of 'em that don't go along."

Captain Doane coolly surveyed the big automatic, while at the fore of his consciousness burned a vision of his flat buildings in San Francisco.

He shrugged his shoulders. "The boat would be overloaded, with all this truck, anyway. Go ahead, if you want to make it your party, but just bear in mind that I'm the navigator, and that, if you ever want to lay eyes on your string of p.a.w.nshops, you'd better see that gentle care is taken of me.--Steward!"

Daughtry stepped close.

"There won't be room for you . . . and for one or two others, I'm sorry to say."

"Glory be!" said Daughtry. "I was just fearin' you'd be wantin' me along, sir.--Kwaque, you take 'm my fella dunnage belong me, put 'm in other fella boat along other side."

While Kwaque obeyed, the mate sounded the well for the last time, reporting three feet and a half, and the lighter freightage of the starboard boat was tossed in by the sailors.

A rangy, gangly, Scandinavian youth of a sailor, droop-shouldered, six feet six and slender as a lath, with pallid eyes of palest blue and skin and hair attuned to the same colour scheme, joined Kwaque in his work.

"Here, you Big John," the mate interfered. "This is your boat. You work here."

The lanky one smiled in embarra.s.sment as he haltingly explained: "I tank I lak go along cooky."

"Sure, let him go, the more the easier," Nis.h.i.+kanta took charge of the situation. "Anybody else?"

"Sure," Dag Daughtry sneered to his face. "I reckon what's left of the beer goes with my boat . . . unless you want to argue the matter."

"For two cents--" Nis.h.i.+kanta spluttered in affected rage.

"Not for two billion cents would you risk a sc.r.a.p with me, you money-sweater, you," was Daughtry's retort. "You've got their goats, but I've got your number. Not for two billion billion cents would you excite me into callin' it right now.--Big John! Just carry that case of beer across, an' that half case, and store in my boat.--Nis.h.i.+kanta, just start something, if you've got the nerve."

Simon Nis.h.i.+kanta did not dare, nor did he know what to do; but he was saved from his perplexity by the shout: