Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas Part 20

Horble was plainly ill at ease. His face turned a deeper red. He was on the edge of blurting out a disagreeable remark, and then hesitated, making an inarticulate sound in his throat. Like everybody else, he was afraid of the labor captain.

"Crew's ash.o.r.e, too," said Gregory, glancing about the empty deck.

"There ain't no crew," muttered Horble.

"Thunder!" cried Gregory. "Do you do it with electricity, or what?"

"Me and Madge runs her," returned Horble.

"Do you mean to say she pully-hauls your d.a.m.n ropes?" exclaimed Gregory.

"Yes," said Horble. "What's twenty tons between the two of us?"

"And cooks?" said Gregory.

"And cooks," said Horble.

"You don't believe in lapping your wife in luxury!" exclaimed Gregory.

"Madge and I talked it over," said Horble. "I was for trading ash.o.r.e, but her heart was set on the schooner. I can make twice the money this way and please her in the bargain."

"I know she can sail a boat against anybody," said Gregory, wincing at the remark.

Horble spat in the water and said nothing. His fat, broad back said, plainer than words: "You're an intruder! Get out!"

"I believe she's aboard this very minute," said Gregory with a strange smile.

"She's ash.o.r.e, I tell you," said Horble sullenly.

"I'll just run below and make sure," said Gregory.

He slipped down the little companion way, looked about the empty cabin and peered into the semi-darkness of the only stateroom.

"Madge!" he cried. "Madge!"

Horble had not lied to him. There was not a soul below. But on the cabin table he saw Madge's sewing machine and a half-made dress of cotton print. She had always been fond of books, and there, in the corner, was her little bookcase, taken bodily from her old home in Nonootch.

Scattered about here and there were other things that brought her memory painfully back to him; that hurt him with their familiarity; that caused him to lift them up and hold them with a sort of despairing wonder: her guitar, her worn, lock-fast desk; the old gilt photograph alb.u.m he remembered so well. He sat down at the table and buried his face in his hands. What a fool he had been! What a fool he had been!

He was roused by the sound of Horble's footsteps down the ladder. With his head leaning on his hand, he looked at the big naked feet feeling for the steps, then at the uncouth clothes as they gradually appeared, then at the fat, weak, frightened face of the man himself. He grew sick at the sight of him. Would Horble strike him? Would Horble have the grit to order him off the s.h.i.+p? No; the infernal coward was getting out the gin--a bottle of square-face and two gla.s.ses.

"Say when," said Horble.

"When," said Gregory.

Horble tipped the bottle into his own gla.s.s. A second mate's grog! One could see what the fellow drank.

"Here's luck," said Gregory.

"Drink hearty," said Horble.

"Joe Horble," said Gregory, leaning both elbows on the table, "there's something you ought to know: I love Madge, and Madge loves me!"

Horble gasped.

"She's mine!" said Gregory.

Horble helped himself to some more gin, and then slowly wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

"You're forgetting she's my wife," he said.

"I'll give you a thousand pounds for her, cash and bills," said Gregory.

"You can't sell white women," said Horble. "She ain't labor."

"A thousand pounds!" repeated Gregory.

"I won't sell my wife to no man," said Horble.

The pair looked at each other. Horble's hand felt for the gin again. His speech had grown a little thick. He was angry and fl.u.s.tered, and a dull resentment was mantling his heavy face.

"I'll go the schooner," cried Gregory. "The _Northern Light_ as she lies there this minute, not a dollar owing on her bottom, with two hundred pounds of specie in her safe. Lock, stock, and barrel, she's yours!"

Horble shook his head.

"Madge ain't for sale," he said.

"Please yourself," said Gregory. "You'll end by losing her for nothing."

"Captain Cole," said Horble, "Madge has told me how near it was a go between you and her, and how, if you hadn't cleared out so sudden the way you did, she would have married you in spite of old Blanchard. But when you went away like that you left the field clear, and you mustn't bear me no malice for having stepped in and taken your leavings. What's done's done, and it's a sorry game to come back too late and insult a man who never did you no harm."

"Oh!" said Gregory.

"If you choose," continued Horble in his tone of wounded reasonableness, "you can make a power of mischief between me and Madge. I don't think it comes very well from you to do it; I don't think anything that calls himself a man would do it; least of all a genelman like yourself, whom we all respeck and look up to. Captain Cole, if you've lost Madge, you know you can only blame yourself."

"I don't call her lost," said Gregory.

"Captain Cole," said Horble, calmly but with a quiver of his lip, "we'll take another drink and then we'll say good-by."

"I'm not going till I see Madge," said Gregory.

Horble began to tremble.

"It's for Madge to decide," added Gregory.

"Decide what?" demanded Horble in a husky stutter.

"Between you and me, old fellow," said Gregory.