A Man to His Mate Part 28

They were too purely physical, he told himself; he missed his old habits, the reading and discussion of books, new and old, the good restaurants of San Francisco, and the chat he had been used to hold over their tables, companionable, witty, the exchange and stimulation of ideas.

He missed the theaters, the concerts, the pa.s.sing show of well-dressed women, a hodge-podge of flesh-pots and mental uplift. He got to dreaming of these things nights.

Daytimes, he saw plainly that, in this environment at least, Lund was big, and the rest of them comparatively small. He believed that Lund could actually form a little kingdom of his own, as he had suggested, and make a success of it. But it would not be a kingdom that fostered the arts. It would cultivate the sciences, or at least encourage them and adopt results as applied to land development, and, if necessary, the defense of the kingdom.

Lund would be a figure in war and peace, peace of the practical sort, the kind of peace that went with plenty. He was no dreamer, but a utilitarian. Perhaps, after all, the world most needed such men just now.

As for Peggy Simms, she did not lose the polish of her culture, she was always feminine, even dainty at times, despite her work, that could not help but be coa.r.s.e to a certain extent. She was full of vigor, she showed unexpected strength, she was a source of encouragement to the men as she waited on them. And also a source of undisguised admiration, all of which she shed as a duck sheds water. She was filled with abounding health, she moved with a free grace that held the eye and lingered in the mind. She was eminently a woman, and she also was big.

Rainey gained an increasing respect in her prowess, and a swift conversion to the equality of the s.e.xes. There were times when he doubted his own equality. Had she met him on his own ground, in his own realm of what he considered vaguely as culture, he would have known a mastery that he now lacked. As it was, she averaged higher, and she had an attraction of s.e.x that was compelling.

Here was a girl who would demand certain standards in the man with whom she would mate, not merely accompany through life. There were times when Rainey felt irresistibly the charm of her as a woman, longed for her in the powerful s.e.x reactions that inevitably follow hard labor. There were times when he felt that she did not consider that he measured up to her gages, and he would strive to change the atmosphere, to dominate the situation in which Lund was the greater figure of the two men.

The rivalry that Lund had suggested between them as regards the girl, Rainey felt almost thrust upon him. There were moods which Peggy Simms turned to him for sharing, but there was scant time in the waking hours for love-making, or even its consideration.

Lund was centered on one achievement, the gold harvest. He ordered the girl with the rest; there were even times when he reprimanded her, while Rainey burned with the resentment she apparently did not share.

A little before dawn on the eighteenth day of the work upon the beach, Lund was out upon the floe examining the condition of the ice. He had declared that two days more of hard endeavor would complete their labors. What dirt remained at the end of that time they would transs.h.i.+p.

Rainey had joined the girl and Tamada at the cook fires.

The sky was bright with the aurora borealis that would pale before the sun. The men were not yet out of their bunks. They were bone and muscle tired, and Rainey doubted whether Lund, gaunt and lean himself, could get two days of top work out of them. Near the fires for the cooking, the melting of water and the forge, that were kept glowing all night, the tools were stacked, to help preserve their temper.

The aurora quivered in varying incandescence as Rainey watched Lund prodding at the floe ice with a steel bar. The girl was busy with the coffee, and Tamada was compounding two pots of stew and bubbling peas pudding for the breakfast, food for heat and muscle making.

Sandy appeared on deck and came swiftly over the side of the vessel and up the worn trail to the fires. He showed excitement, Rainey fancied, sure of it as the lad got within speaking distance.

"Where is Mr. Lund?" he panted.

Rainey pointed to Lund, now examining a crack that had opened up in the floe, a possible line of exit for the _Karluk_, later on. The men were beginning to show on the schooner. They, too, he noted somewhat idly, acted differently this morning. Usually they were sluggish until they had eaten, sleepy and indifferent until the coffee stimulated them, and Lund took up this stimulus and fanned it to a flame of work. This morning they walked differently, abnormally active.

"They're drunk, an' they're goin' on strike," said Sandy. "You know the big demijohn in the lazaretto?"

Rainey nodded. It was a two-handled affair holding five gallons, a reserve supply of strong rum from which Lund dispensed the grog allowances and stimulations for extra work toward the end of the s.h.i.+ft, the night-caps and occasional rewards.

"They've swiped it," he said. "Put an empty one from the hold in its place. We got plenty without usin' that one for a while, an' I only happened to notice it this morning by chance. They've bin drinkin' all night, I reckon. They're ugly, Mr. Rainey. It's the crew this time. They got the booze. The hunters are sober. Deming ain't in on this. They did it on their own. I don't know how they got it. I didn't get it for 'em, sir. They must have worked plumb through the hold an' got to it that way."

"All right, Sandy. Thanks. Mr. Lund can handle them, I guess. He's coming now."

The men had got to the ice, hidden from Lund, who was walking to the _Karluk_ on the opposite side of the vessel. The seamen were gesticulating freely; the sound of their voices came up to him where he stood, tinged with a new freedom of speech, rough, confident, menacing.

As they climbed the trail their legs betrayed them and confirmed the boy's story. Behind them came the four hunters, with Hansen, walking apart, watching the sailors with a certain gravity that communicated itself despite the distance.

Lund showed at the far rail of the schooner with his bar. He glanced toward the men going to work, went below, and came up with a sweater. He had left the bar behind him in the cabin, where it was used for a stove poker.

The men filed by Rainey, their faces flushed and their eyes unusually bright. They seemed to share a prime joke that wanted to bubble up and over, yet held a restraint upon themselves that was eased by digs in one another's ribs, in laughs when one stumbled or hiccoughed.

But Hansen was stolid as ever, and the hunters had evidently not shared the stolen liquor. Only Deming's eyes roved over the group of men as they gathered round for their cups and pannikins of food. He seemed to be calculating what advantage he could gain out of this unexpected happening.

Peggy Simms, under cover of pouring the coffee, sweetened heavily with condensed milk, found time to speak to Rainey.

"They're all drunk," she said.

"Not all of them. Here comes Lund. He'll handle it."

Lund seemed still pondering the problem of the floe. At first he did not notice the condition of the sailors. Then he apparently ignored it. But, after they had eaten, he talked to all the men.

"Two more days of it, lads, and we're through. The beach is nigh cleared. We can git out of the floe to blue water easy enough, an' we'll git a good start on the patrol-s.h.i.+p. We'll go back with full pockets an'

heavy ones. The shares'll be half as large again as we've figgered. I wouldn't wonder if they averaged sixteen or seventeen thousand dollars apiece."

Rainey had picked out a black-bearded Finn as the leader of the sailors in their debauch. The liquor seemed to have unchained in him a spirit of revolt that bordered on insolence. He stood with his bowed legs apart, mittened hands on hips, staring at Lund with a covert grin.

Next to Lund he was the biggest man aboard. With the rum giving an unusual coordination to his usually sluggish nervous system, he promised to be a source of trouble.

Rainey was surprised to see him shrug his shoulders and lead the way to the beach. Perhaps breakfast had sobered them, though the fumes of liquor still clung cloudily on the air.

Lund went down, with Rainey beside him, reporting Sandy.

"I'll work it out of 'em," said Lund. "That booze'll be an expensive luxury to 'em, paid for in hard labor."

They found the men ranged up in three groups. Deming and Beale, against custom, had gone down to the beach. They were supposed to help clean the food utensils, and aid Tamada after a meal, besides replenis.h.i.+ng the fires.

They stood a little away from the hunters and Hansen and the sailors.

The Finn, talking to his comrades in a low growl, was with a separate group.

There was an air of defiance manifest, a feeling of suspense in the tiny valley, backed by the frowning cone, ribbed by the two icy promontories.

Lund surveyed them sharply.

"What in h.e.l.l's the matter with you?" he barked. "Hansen, send up a man for the drills an' shovels. Yore work's laid out; hop to it!"

"We ain't goin' to work no more," said the Finn aggressively. "Not fo'

no sich wage like you give."

"Oh, you ain't, ain't you?" mocked Lund. He was standing with Rainey in the middle of the s.p.a.ce they had cleared of gravel, the seamen lower down the beach, nearer the sea, their ranks compacted. "Why, you booze-bitten, lousy hunky, what in h.e.l.l do you want? You never saw twenty dollars in a lump you c'u'd call yore own for more'n ten minnits.

You boardin'-house loafer an' the rest of you sc.u.m o' the seven seas, git yore shovels an' git to diggin', or I'll put you ash.o.r.e in San Francisco flat broke, an' glad to leave the s.h.i.+p, at that. _Jump!_"

The Finn snarled, and the rest stood firm. Not one of them knew the real value of their promised share. Money represented only counters exchanged for lodging, food and drink enough to make them sodden before they had spent even their usual wages. Then they would wake to find the rest gone, and throw themselves upon the selfish bounty of a boarding-house keeper.

But they had seen the gold, they had handled it, and they were inflamed by a sense of what it ought to do for them. Perhaps half of them could not add a simple sum, could not grasp figures beyond a thousand, at most. And the sight of so much gold had made it, in a manner, cheap. It was there, a heap of it, and they wanted more of that s.h.i.+ning heap than had been promised them.

"You talk big," said the Finn. "Look my hands." He showed palms calloused, split, swollen lumps of chilblained flesh worn down and stiffened. "I bin seaman, not G.o.ddam navvy."

Lund turned to the hunters.

"You in on this?" he asked. Deming and Beale moved off. Two of the others joined them. "Neutral?" sneered Lund. "I'll remember that."

Hansen and the two remaining came over beside Lund and Rainey.

"Five of us," said Lund. "Five men against twelve fo'c'sle rats. I'll give you two minnits to start work."

"You talk big with yore gun in pocket," said the Finn. "Me good man as you enny day."