The Blood Ship Part 19

"Ow, Gaw', 'ear me. Hi didn't mean no trouble!" c.o.c.kney bleated. "Hit was the nyme 'e called me. 'E myde me see red, that's wot."

"Would have been a d.a.m.n good job if he'd landed!" cried Boston's voice.

There was an emphatic chorus of approval of this sentiment from the hands, from squareheads and stiffs both. "We'd have been rid of one o'

them, anyhow!" piped up Blackie.

The backing gave c.o.c.kney heart. "Hi'd 'ave spliced 'is bleedin' 'eart but 'e spoiled me throw, the blarsted Bible shark, the----"

"That will do," said Newman quietly, and c.o.c.kney shut up.

"c.o.c.kney has the guts, anyway," says Boston.

"The bucko hain't; he backed down," says Blackie.

"That will do you," Newman threw over his shoulder, and they shut up.

"If I were sure--" said Newman to c.o.c.kney. He left the sentence unfinished, but he must have looked the rest for c.o.c.kney fell into a terrible funk.

"Ow, s' 'elp me, Hi didn't mean no trouble. Hit was the nyme 'e called--'e called me old mother hout o' 'er blinkin' nyme, that's wot!

Hi didn't mean for to do it--but me temper--the wy the blighter's used us blokes--hand the nyme on top o' that----"

"Well, remember, if I thought for a moment--" broke in Newman.

I thought c.o.c.kney would flop at the big fellow's feet this time. But he recovered quickly enough when Newman turned away, without further words, and without offering to thump him. He slouched forward, and immediately became the hero of the hour with the gang. Aye; I was even a bit envious. It took a hard case to heave a knife at a bucko--even at his back.

"But why didn't he shoot c.o.c.kney?" I asked Newman. "Didn't he see him?"

The big man glanced at Holy Joe, and smiled. "Perhaps he didn't want to see him," he replied.

And I was so thick-headed I didn't understand. But it really was a peaceful day. After Nils' chest went aft, we might have been a comfortable family s.h.i.+p so little were we troubled by the afterguard.

Lynch, of course, kept his watch busy while it was on deck, but he didn't haze; and Fitzgibbon all but forgot he had a watch. It was a queer rest. It got upon my nerves, this waiting for something--I didn't know what--to happen.

It carried over into the night, this unusual quiet. Aye, Captain Swope kept the deck that night in the first watch, as well as Fitzgibbon, and not a single man was d.a.m.ned or thumped. When we turned out for the middle watch, we found the port watch lads crowing that they had farmed away their hours on deck.

Well, we didn't farm, by a long shot. Trust Lynch to keep hands busy.

It was rule number one with him. He sweated us up in the usual style, yet his manner was milder than usual and he didn't lay a finger on even the most lubberly of the stiffs. Aye, for the first time during the voyage--perhaps for the first time in the life of the s.h.i.+p--a full day pa.s.sed in the _Golden Bough_ and not a man felt the weight of a boot or a fist. It was an occasion, I can tell you!

Yet, for all of the afterguard's surprising gentleness, that mid-watch was a nightmare to me. Newman disappeared.

Ever since the night at the beginning of the voyage when Captain Swope tried to snap us off the yardarm, I made it a practice to stick close to the big fellow during the night watches. I owed him my life, and, anyway I was eager to give him the service of a friend, of a mate. I was always dreading that Swope would try again some dark night, and with better success. It is so easy to do things in the dark, you see; get a man separated from the watch, beyond the reach of friendly eyes, give him a crack on the head and a boost over the rail, and then what proof, what trace, have you? Just a line in the logbook, "Man lost overboard in the night." Aye, many a lad--and many an officer--has had just that happen to him.

So it was that in the night watches I became Newman's shadow. It was literally shoulder to shoulder with us, we handed the same lines, bent over the same jobs. Newman never mentioned it, never asked me to stick close, but I knew he welcomed the attention. He knew the danger of walking alone in the dark in that s.h.i.+p. Mister Lynch kept his word and never again sent either of us aloft at night. In fact, the second mate did more than that; from that night on, whenever Newman had a night wheel, Lynch stayed aft on the p.o.o.p during the trick. Oh, there was no friends.h.i.+p between the two; I know that for certain. Lynch was an officer, and Newman just a hand. But he was a square man, and he was seeing to it that Newman got a square deal, at least in his watch.

And, I guessed, the lady had something to do with Lynch's att.i.tude.

She was not friendless in the cabin, as I had discovered.

This night Newman had no wheel. Neither had I. During the first half of the watch we touched elbows. As usual, the second mate worked sail and kept us dancing a lively jig. He made work, Lynch did. He would walk along the deck and jerk each buntline in pa.s.sing--and then order lads aloft to overhaul and stop the lines again. He would command a tug on this line, a pull on that; no sail was ever trimmed fine enough to suit him. Oh, aye, he was but following his nature and training; he could not bear being idle himself, and he knew that busy men don't brood themselves into trouble. And running a watch ragged was h.e.l.l-s.h.i.+p style.

We were aft on a job--brailling in the spanker, I recall--when I missed Newman. An instant before we were together, we had handed the same line; suddenly he was gone from my side. At first I thought he had pa.s.sed around to the other side of the mizzenmast, for we were coiling down gear that had been disarranged during the job, and I was not worried. But when the second mate ordered us forward to another job, my friend was not with the gang.

The second mate left one of his tradesmen aft, and during the remainder of the watch kept us forward of the waist of the s.h.i.+p. He drove us, kept us jumping, at perfectly useless jobs on the head sails. It was as plain as the nose on my face that he was purposely keeping us forward. Something was going on, aft there by the boat skids, by the break of the p.o.o.p; it was a moonless night, but once or twice I saw shadows flitting about the main deck.

I was in a quandary. Something was going on aft--but what? Newman was missing. The bucko knew he was absent from the gang, he must have known. Yet he ignored his absence. Was it treachery? Was Newman in trouble? Had he and I been mistaken in our judgment of Bucko Lynch?

Oh, I was tormented with fear--and with doubt. I wanted to gallop aft and lend him a hand, succor him, at least help him to put up a good fight. But I wasn't sure he was in trouble, that he would welcome my advertising his disappearance. Perhaps he was keeping a rendezvous, with the second mate's aid.

That was what the other lads thought. Oh, aye, they missed him too.

But they didn't have wit enough to realize that Lynch also had sharp eyes; they thought Lynch didn't know Newman was gone. They thought it was a great joke, a score against the cabin. They thought Newman had boldly slipped away from work to meet the lady.

"The Big Un's queenin', b'gawd, right under the Old Man's nose!"

That's how Boston put it.

I did nothing. I made no break. Luckily. At seven bells, Lynch marshaled us aft again, to set the spanker this time. As we worked, Newman slipped into the group as quietly and un.o.btrusively as he had slipped out nearly two hours before. Coiling down gear, I discovered that the running part of the spanker vang was off the pin, and trailing over the side. It dropped down past the open and lighted porthole of one of the cabin berths. Whose berth? Well, I thought that Boston had the right of it. Newman had been "queenin'," with his feet in the ocean, so to speak.

But he had been up to something else, as well. As he and I walked forward, after the watch was relieved, we were overtaken by Lindquist, who was coming from the helm.

"Vat you ban doing mit da longboat to-night?" he asked Newman, curiously.

"Nothing, lad. You must have dreamed at your Sybeel--understand?" was Newman's prompt reply.

It took a moment to filter into the squarehead's mind. But he got it.

"So--_ja_, it ban dream; I see noddings," he said.

"And you say nothing?"

"_Ja_, even to mineself I say noddings," promised Lindquist.

At the foc'sle door, Newman placed a detaining hand upon my shoulder and held me back.

"Was there much comment among the hands?" he asked.

I told him what Boston had said, and that it was the common opinion.

"That will do no harm," he remarked. "So long as they did not see, or guess--yes, it is a good blind."

I was a little resentful, and showed it. "You know I don't want you to tell me anything you don't want to tell me, but I think you might have dropped a hint In my ear. How was I to know that the greaser hadn't played a trick on you, and given you over to the Old Man? I don't know what game you're playing, and if you don't want to tell me I don't want to know--but I tell you I came pretty near spoiling it, whatever it is.

I was on the verge of going aft and raising a row, just to find out what had become of you."

"Jack, it isn't my mistrust that keeps you in the dark," says he. "You know I trust you absolutely. But I cannot explain--others have that right. But, lad, I can tell you this--things are moving, aft there, and the sky is brighter for me--and for her. And, you must not worry about me if this should happen again, some other night. I shall be safe; don't come hunting me, it might ruin everything. You will know soon just what is happening. And you already know, Jack, how I count upon you--and she, too. If things should go wrong, if he outwits me, it is your head and arm I count upon to aid her."

"Anything, any time," was my eager response. "Oh, I want to help."

I found my hand being tightly squeezed in his, and there was a little catch in his voice. "A thick-and-thin friend, eh, Jack? I've learned something about friends.h.i.+p since I have known you."

CHAPTER XVI

This strange peace, this interlude of quiet, lasted for several days.

It was a curious time, a period of uneasy suspense for me, for I could feel h.e.l.l simmering beneath the smooth surface of the s.h.i.+p's life, but I could not see it, or guess when or where it would bubble over.