The Irishman rose and faced the Scotchman, his head thrust forward and a devil in his eyes.

"An' what if we were, Misther McTee?" he purred. "An' what if we wer-r-re, I'm askin'?"

Kate leaped to her feet and sprang between them.

"Is there anything we can do," she broke in hurriedly, "to get away from the island?"

"A raft?" suggested Harrigan.

McTee smiled his contempt.

"A raft? And how would you cut down the trees to make it?"

"Burn 'em down with a circle of fire at the bottom."

"And then set green logs afloat? And how fasten 'em together, even supposing we could burn them down and drag them to the water? No, there's no way of getting off the island unless a boat passes and catches a glimpse of our fire."

"Then we'll have to move this fire to the top of the hill," said Harrigan.

"Suppose we go now and look over the hill and see what dry wood is near it," said McTee.

"Good."

Something in their eagerness had a meaning for Kate.

"Would you both leave me?" she reproached them.

"It was McTee suggested it," said Harrigan.

McTee favored his comrade with a glance that would have made any other man give ground. It merely made Harrigan grin.

"We'll draw straws for who goes and who stays," said McTee.

Kate picked up two bits of wood.

"The short one stays," she said.

"Draw," said Harrigan in a low voice.

"I was taught manners young," said McTee. "After you."

They exchanged glares again. The whole sense of her power over these giants came home to her as she watched them fighting their duel of the eyes.

"You suggested it," she said to McTee.

He stepped forward with an expression as grim as that of a prize fighter facing an antagonist of unknown prowess. Once and again his hand hovered above the sticks before he drew.

"You've chosen the walk to the hill," she said, and showed the shorter stick. "Do you mind?"

"No," mocked Harrigan, "he always walks after meals."

Their eyes dwelt almost fondly upon each other. They were both men after the other's heart. Then the Scotchman turned and strode away.

Kate watched Harrigan suspiciously, but his eyes, following McTee, were gentle and dreamy.

"Ah," he murmured, "there's a jewel of a man."

"Do you like him so much?"

"Do I like him? Me dear, I love the man; I'll break his head with more joy than a shtarvin' man cracks a nut!"

He recovered himself instantly.

"I didn't mean that—I—"

"Dan, you and McTee have planned to fight!"

He growled: "If a man told me that, I'd say he was a liar."

"Yes; but you won't lie to a girl, Harrigan."

She rose and faced him, reaching up to lay her hands on his thick shoulders.

"Will you give me your promise as an honest man to try to avoid a fight with him?"

For she saw death in it if they met alone; certainly death for one, and perhaps for both.

"Kate, would you ask a tree to promise to avoid the lightning?"

She caught a little breath through set teeth in her angry impatience, then: "Dan, you're like a naughty boy. Can't you be reasonable?"

Despite her wrath, she noticed a quick change in his face. The blue of his eyes was no longer cold and incurious, but lighted, warm, and marvelously deep.

And she said rapidly, making her voice cold to quell the uneasy, rising fire behind his eyes: "If you have made McTee angry, aren't you man enough to smooth things over—to ask his pardon?"

He answered vaguely: "Beg his pardon?"

"Why is that so impossible? For my sake, Dan!"

The light went out of his face as if a candle had been snuffed.

"For you, Kate?"

Then she understood her power fully for the first time, and found the thing which she must do.

"For me. I—I—"

She let her head droop, and then glanced up as if beseeching him to ask no questions.

"Look me square in the eye—so!"

He caught her beneath the chin with a grip that threatened a bruise, and his eyes burned down upon her.

"Are ye playin' with me, Kate? Are ye tryin' to torment me, or do ye really care for McTee?"

She tried with all her might, but could not answer. The rumble and ring of his voice brought her heart to her throat.

"You're tremblin'," said Harrigan, and he released her. "So it's all true. McTee!"

He turned on his heel like a soldier, lest she should mark the change of his expression; but she must have noticed something, for she called: "Harrigan—Dan!"

He stopped, but would not face her.

"You have your hands clenched. Are you going out to hunt for McTee in that black mood?"

"Kate," said Harrigan, "by my honor I'm swearin' he's as safe in my hands as a child."



CHAPTER 13

Harrigan strode off through the trees. To loosen the tight, aching muscles of his throat he began to sing—old Irish songs with a wail and a swing to them. He had taken no certain direction, for he only wished to be alone and far away from the other two; but after a time he realized that he was on the side of the central hill to which McTee had gone to look for the dry wood. Above all things in the world he wished to avoid the Scotchman now, and as soon as he became conscious of his whereabouts, he veered sharply to the right. He had scarcely walked a minute in the new direction before he met McTee. The latter had seen him first, and now stood with braced feet in his position of battle, rolling the sleeves of his shirt away from his forearms. Harrigan stepped behind a tree.

"Come out," roared McTee. "I've seen you. Don't try to sneak behind and take me from the back."

With an exceeding bitterness of heart, Harrigan stepped into view again.

"You look sick," went on McTee. "If you knew what would happen when we met, why did you come? If you fear me, go back and hug the skirts of the girl. She'll take pity on you, Harrigan."

The Irishman groaned. "Think your thoughts an' say your say, McTee. I can't lay a hand on you today."

The latter stepped close, stupefied with wonder.

"Do I hear you right? Are you taking water, Harrigan?"

Harrigan bowed his head, praying mutely for strength to endure.

"Don't say it!" pleaded McTee. "I've hunted the world and worn the roads bare looking for one man who could stand up to me—and now that I've found him, he turns yellow inside!"

And he looked upon the Irishman with a sick horror, as if the big fellow were turning into a reptile before his eyes. On the face of Harrigan there was an expression like that of the starving man whom the fear of poison induces to push away food.

"There's no word I can speak to you, McTee. You could never understand. Go back to the girl. Maybe she'll explain."

"The girl?"

At the wild hope in that voice Harrigan shuddered, and he could not look up.

"Harrigan, what do you mean?"

"Don't ask me. Leave me alone, McTee."

"Here's a mystery," said the Scotchman, "and our little party is postponed. The date is changed, that's all. Remember!"

He stepped off through the trees in the direction of the shelter on the beach, leaving Harrigan to throw himself upon the ground in a paroxysm of shame and hate.

But McTee, with hope to spur him on—a vague hope; a thought half formed and therefore doubly delightful—went with great strides until he came to Kate where she sat tending the fire. He broke at once into the heart of his question.

"I met Harrigan. He's changed. Something has happened. Tell me what it is. He says you know."

He crouched close to her, intent and eager, his eyes ready to read a thousand meanings into the very lowering of her lashes; but she let her glance rove past him.

"Well?" he asked impatiently.

"It is hard to speak of it."

Cold doubt fell upon the captain; he moistened his lips before he spoke.

"Hit straight from the shoulder. There's something between you and the Irishman?"

She dropped a hand over his mighty fist.

"After all, you are our only friend, Angus. Why shouldn't you know?"

He stood up and made a few paces to and fro, his hands locked behind him and his leonine head fallen low.

"Yes, why shouldn't you tell me! I think I understand already."

All desire to laugh went from her, and deep fear took its place; her eyes were held fascinated upon his interlaced fingers, white under their own terrific pressure; yet she understood that she must go on. If she failed, this mighty force would be turned against Harrigan; and Harrigan, not less grim in battle, as she could guess, would be turned against him.

She said quickly, to conceal her fear: "I thought there was some trouble between you and Dan. I asked him to promise that he would not fight with you. But I don't need to ask you to promise not to fight with him, for now that you know—"

He leaped up and beat his hands together over his head.

"And that was why! I taunted him and all the time he was laughing to himself!"

He stopped and then whispered to himself: "Still, it's only postponed. The tune will come! The time will come!"

She understood the promise.

"Angus! What are you saying?"

He said quietly: "Harrigan's safe from me while you care for him. Do you think I'm fool enough to make a martyr of him? Not I! But when we get back to the world—"

He finished the sentence by slowly flexing his fingers.

"I love you, Kate, and until the strength goes out of my hands, I'll still love you. I want you; and what I want I get. You'll hate me for it, eh?"

He went off without waiting for an answer, stumbling as he walked like one who was dazed. Her strength held with her until he was out of sight among the trees, but then she sank to the ground, panting. Sooner or later they were sure to discover her ruse, and the moment one of them learned that she did not love the other, they would rush into battle. She only prayed that the discovery would not come till they were safely off the island. Once back in the world the strong arm of the law might suffice to keep them apart.

The falling of the fire roused her at last and she set about gathering wood to keep it alive. It was the Irishman who returned first. He waved her to the shade of the shelter and finished collecting the wood.



CHAPTER 14

Afterward he inquired, frowning: "Where's McTee? I met him an' he started back to find you."

"He's gone off with his thoughts, Dan."

Harrigan sighed, looking up to the stainless blue of the sky: "Aye, that's the way of the Scotch. When they're happy in love, they go off by themselves an' brood like a dog that's thinking of a fight. But were I he, I'd never be leavin' your side, colleen."

His head tilted back in the way she had come to know, and she waited for the soft dialect: "I'd be singin' songs av love an' war-r-r, an' braggin' me hear-rt out, an' talkin' av the sea-green av your eyes, colleen. Look at him now!"

For the great form of McTee left the circle of the trees and approached them.

"He's got his head down between his shoulders like a whipped cur. He's broodin', an' his soul is thick in a fog."

"Dan, I trust you to cheer him up; but you'll not speak of me?"

"Not I. He's a proud man, Black McTee, an' he'd be angered to the core of him if he thought you'd talked about him an' his love to Harrigan. Whisht, Kate, I'll handle him like fire!

"The wood," he began, as McTee came in. "Did you find it on top of the hill, lad?"

McTee rumbled after a pause, and without looking at Harrigan: "There's plenty of it there. I made a little heap of the driest on the crown of the hill."

"Then the next thing is to move our fire up there."

"Move our fire?" cried Kate. "How can you carry the fire?"

"Easy. Take two pieces of burnin' wood an' walk along holdin' them close together. That way they burn each other an' the flame keeps goin'. Watch!"

He selected two good-sized brands from the fire and raised them, holding one in either hand and keeping the ignited portions of the sticks together. McTee looked from Kate to Harrigan.

"Sit down and talk to Kate. I'll carry the sticks; I know where the pile of timber is."

Harrigan made a significant and covert nod and winked at McTee with infinite understanding.

"Stay here yourself, lad. I wouldn't be robbing you——"

Kate coughed for warning, and he broke off sharply.

"You've made one trip to the hill. This is my turn. Besides, you wouldn't know how to keep the stick burnin'. I've done it before."

McTee stared, agape with astonishment. The meaning of that wink still puzzled his brain. He turned to Kate for explanation, and she beckoned him to stay. When Harrigan disappeared, he said: "What's the meaning? Doesn't Harrigan want to be with you?"

She allowed her eyes to wander dreamily after Harrigan.

"Don't you see? He's like a big boy. He's overflowing with happiness and he has to go off to play by himself."

McTee watched her with deep suspicion.

"It's queer," he pondered. "I know the Irish like a book, and when they're in love, they're always singing and shouting and raising the devil. It looked to me as if Harrigan was making himself be cheerful."

He went on: "I'll take him aside and tell him that I understand. Otherwise he'll think he's fooling me."

"Please! You won't do that? Angus, you know how proud he is! He will be furious if he finds out that I've spoken to you about—about—our love. Won't you wait until he tells you of his own accord?"

He ground his teeth in an ugly fury.

"You understand? If I find you've been playing with me, it'll mean death for Harrigan, and worse than that for you?"

She made her glance sad and gentle.

"Will you never trust me, Angus?"

He answered, with a sort of wonder at himself: "Since I was a child, you are the first person in the world who has had the right to call me by my first name."

"Not a single woman?" and she shivered.

"Not one."

She pondered: "No love, no friendship, not even pity to bring you close to a single human being all your life?"

"No child has ever come near me, for I've never had room for pity. No man has been my friend, for I've spent my time fighting them and breaking them. And I've despised women too much to love them."

The tears rose to her eyes as she spoke: "I pity you from the bottom of my soul!"

"Pity? Me? By God, Kate, you'll teach me to hate you!"

"I can't help it. Why, if you have never loved, you have never lived!"

"You talk like a girl in a Sunday school! Ha, have I never lived? Men were made strong so that a stronger man should be their master; and women—"

"And women, Angus?"

"All women are fools; one woman is divine!"

The yearning of his eyes gave a bitter meaning to his words, and she was shaken like a leaf blown here and there by contrary winds. Unheeded, the sudden tropic night swooped upon them like the shadow of a giant bird, and as the dark increased, they saw the glimmering of the fire upon the hill. She rose, and he followed her until they reached the upward slope.

Then he said: "You will want to be alone with him for a time. Can you find the rest of the way?"

"Yes. You'll come soon?"

"I'll come soon, but I have to be by myself for a while. I may hate you for it afterward, but now I'm weak and soft inside—like a child—and I only wish for your happiness."

"God bless you, Angus!"

"God help me," he answered harshly, and stepped into the blank night of the shadow of the trees.

Harrigan shook his head in wonder when he saw her coming alone. He had built up the fire and heaped fresh fuel in towering piles nearby. The flames shot up twenty and thirty feet, making a wide signal across the sea.

"He's gone off by himself again?" questioned the Irishman.

She complained: "I can't understand him. Will he be always like this? What shall I do, Dan?"

He met her appeal with a smile, but the blue eyes went cold at once and he sighed. It would never do to have the two sitting silent beside that fire. The brooding of McTee would excite no suspicions in the mind of Harrigan, but the quiet of the Irishman would be sure to excite the suspicions of the other.

"Will you do something for me, Dan?"

He looked up with a whimsical yearning.

"Teach McTee manners? Aye, with all me heart!"

She laughed: "No; but cheer him up. You said that if you were in his place, you'd be singing all the time."

"And I would."

"Then sing for me—for Angus and me—tonight when we're sitting by the fire. He's fallen into a brooding melancholy, and I can't altogether trust him. Can you understand?"

"And I'm to do the cheering up?"

"You won't fail me?"

He turned and occupied himself for a moment by hurling great armfuls of wood upon the fire. The flames burst up with showering sparks, roaring and leaping. Then, as if inspired by the sight, he came to her with his head tilting back hi the way he had.

"I'll do it—I'll sing my heart out for you."

As McTee came up, the three sat down; a strange group, for the two men stared fixedly before them at the fire, conscientiously avoiding any movement of the eyes toward Kate and the other; and she sat between them, watching each of them covertly and humming all the while as if from happiness. Each of them thought the humming a love song meant for the ears of the other. Finally McTee turned and stared curiously, first at Kate and then at Harrigan. Manifestly he could not understand either their silence or their aloofness. It was for the Scotchman that she would have to play her role; Harrigan was blind. The Irishman also, as if he felt the eyes of McTee, turned his head. Kate nodded significantly and moved closer to him.

Obedient to his promise, he turned away again and raised his head to sing. Alternate light and shadow swept across his face and made fire and dark in his hair as the wind tossed the flame back and forth. At the other side of her McTee rested upon one elbow. Whenever she turned her head, she caught the steel-cold glitter of his eyes.

The first note from Harrigan's lips was low and faltering and off key; she trembled lest McTee should understand, but the Scotchman attributed the emotion to another cause. As his singing continued, moreover, it increased hi power and steadiness. One thing, however, she had not counted on, and that was the emotion of Harrigan. Every one of his songs carried on the theme of love in a greater or less degree, and now his own singing swept him beyond the bounds of caution; he turned directly to Kate and sang for her alone "Kathleen Mavourneen." There was love and farewell at once in his singing, there was yearning and despair.

She knew that a crisis had come, and that McTee was pressed to the limits of his endurance. The game had gone too far, and yet she dared not appear indifferent to the singing. That would have been too direct a betrayal, so she sat with her head back and a smile on her lips.

There was a groan and a stifled curse. McTee rose; the song died in the throat of Harrigan.



CHAPTER 15

"Is this what you feared?" said the Scotchman. "Is this what you wanted protection against? No; you're in league together to torture me, and all this time you've been laughing up your sleeves at my expense!"

"At your expense?" growled Harrigan, rising in turn. "Is it at your expense that I've been sittin' here breakin' me heart with singin' love tunes for you an' the girl?"

She sprang up in an agony of fear.

"Go! Go!" she begged of McTee. "If you doubt me, go, and when you come back calm, I will explain."

He brushed her to one side and made a step toward Harrigan.

"Love songs for me?" he repeated incredulously.

"Aye, love songs for you. Ye black swine, ye could not be happy till I was brought in to be the piper while you an' Kate danced!"

"While I and Kate danced?" thundered McTee. "My God, man—"

He broke off short, and a cruel light of understanding was in his eyes.

"Harrigan," he said quietly, "did Kate tell you she loved me?"

"Ye fool! Why else am I sittin' here singin' for your sake? Would I not rather be amusin' myself by takin' the hollow of your throat under my thumbs—so?"

McTee laughed softly, and Kate could not meet his eye.

"Well?" he said.

"Yes, I lied to you."

She turned to Harrigan: "And to you. Don't you see? I found you on the verge of a fight, and I knew that in it you would both be killed. What else could I do? I hoped that for my sake you would spare each other. Was it wrong of me, Dan? Angus, will you forgive me?"

Harrigan raised his arms high above his head and stretched like one from whose wrists the manacles have been unlocked after a long imprisonment.

"McTee, are ye ready? There's a weight gone off my soul!"

"Harrigan, I've been a driver of men, but this girl has put me under the whip. When I'm through with you, I'm coming back to her."

"It'll be your ghost that returns."

Kate hesitated one instant as if to judge which was the greatest force toward evil. Then she dropped to her knees and caught the hands of McTee, those strong, cruel hands.

"If you will not fight, I'll—I'll be kind to you, I'll be everything you ask of me—"

"You're pleading for him?"

"No, no! For him and for you; for your two souls!"

"Bah! Mine was lost long ago, and I'll answer that there's a claim on Harrigan filed away in hell. He's too strong to have lived clean."

"Angus, we're all alone here—on the rim of the world, you've said—and in places like this the eye of God is on you."

He laughed brutally: "If He sees me, He'll look the other way."

"Have done with the chatter," broke in Harrigan. "Ah-h, McTee, I see where my hands'll fit on your throat."

"Come," McTee answered without raising his voice; "there's a corner of the beach where a current stands in close by the shore. You've been a traveling man, Harrigan. When I've killed you, I'll throw your body into the sea, and the tide will take you out to see the rest of the world."

"Come," said Harrigan; "I'd as soon finish you there as here, and when you're dead, I'll sit you up against a tree and come down every day to watch you rot."

The girl fell to the ground between them with her face buried in her arms, silent. The two men lowered their eyes for a moment upon her, and then turned and walked down the hill, going shoulder to shoulder like friends. So they came out upon the beach and walked along it until they reached the point of which McTee had spoken.

It was a level, hard-packed stretch of sand which offered firm footing and no rocks over which one of the fighters might stumble at a critical moment.

"Tis a lovely spot," sighed Harrigan. "Captain, you're a jewel of a man to have thought of it."

"Aye, this is no deck at sea that can heave and twist and spoil my work."

"It is not; and the palms of my hands are almost healed. Had you thought of that, captain?"

"As you lie choking, Harrigan, think of the girl. The minute I've heaved you into the sea, I go back to her."

The hard breathing of the Irishman filled up the interval.

"I see one thing clear. It's that I'll have to kill you slow. A man like you, McTee, ought to taste his death a while before it comes. Come to me ar-rms, captain, I've a little secret to whisper in your ear. Whisht! 'Twill not be long in the tellin'!"

McTee replied with a snarl, and the two commenced to circle slowly, drawing nearer at every step. On the very edge of leaping forward, Harrigan was astonished to see McTee straighten from his crouch and point out to sea.

"The eye of God!" muttered the Scotchman. "She was right!"

Harrigan jumped back lest this should prove a maneuver to place him off his guard, and then looked in the indicated direction. It was true; a point of light, a white eye, peered at them from far across the water. Then the shout of McTee rang joyously: "A ship!"

"The fire!" answered Harrigan, and pointed back to the hill, for Kate had allowed the flames to fall in their absence.

All thought of the battle left them. They started back on the run to build high their signal light, and when they came to the top of the hill, they found Kate lying as they had left her. She started to her knees at the sound of their footsteps and stretched out her arms to them.

"God has sent you back to me!"

"A ship!" thundered McTee for answer, and he flung a great armful of wood upon the blaze. It rose with a rush, leaping and crackling, but all three kept at their work until the pile of wood was higher than their heads. Only when the supply of dry fuel was exhausted did they pause to look out to sea. In place of the one eye of white there were three lights, one of white, one of red, and one of green—the lights of a ship running in toward land.

In a moment the moon slipped up above the eastern waters, and right across that broad white circle moved a ship with the smoke streaming back from her funnel. Unquestionably the captain had seen the signal fire and understood its meaning.

They waited until the red light became fairly stationary, showing that the steamer had been laid-to. Then they ran for the beach and took up their position on the line between the glow of their fire and the position of the ship, guessing that in this way they would be on the spot where the ship's boat would be most likely to touch the shore.

"McTee," said Harrigan, "it may be half an hour before that boat reaches the beach. Is there any reason why both of us should go aboard it?"

"Harrigan, there is none! Stand up to me."

"If you do this," broke in Kate, "I will bring the sailors who come ashore to the spot where the dead man lies, and I'll tell how he died."

They looked at her, knowing that she could be trusted to fulfill that threat. The moon lay on the beauty of her face; never had she seemed so desirable. They looked to each other, and each seemed doubly hateful to the other.

"Kate, dear," said Harrigan hastily, "I see the boat come tossin' there over the water. Speak out like a brave girl. Neither of us will leave the other in peace as long as we have a hope of you. Choose between us before we put a foot in that boat, and if you choose McTee, I'll give you God's blessin' an' say no more nor ever raise my hand against ye. McTee, will ye do the like?"

"For the sake of the day of the fight and the wreck I will. If she chooses you now, I'll raise no hand against you."

A shout came faintly across the rush and ripple of the breakers.

"Speak out," said Harrigan.

"Hallo!" she screamed in answer to the hail from the boat, and then turning to them: "I choose neither of you!"

"McTee," growled Harrigan, "I'm thinkin' we've both been fools."

"Think what you will, I'll have her; and if you cross me again, I'll finish you, Harrigan."

"McTee, ten of your like couldn't finish me. But look! There's the girl wadin' out to the boat. Let's steady her through the waves."

They ran out and, catching her beneath the shoulders, bore her safe and high through the small rollers. When they were waist-deep, the boat swung near. A lantern was raised by the man in the bows, and under that light they saw the four men at the oars, now backing water to keep their boat from washing to the beach. The sailors cheered as the two men swung Kate over the gunwale and then clambered in after her. The man at the bows all this time had kept his lantern high above his head with a rigid arm, and now he bellowed: "Black McTee!"

"Right!" said McTee. "And you?"

"Salvain—put back for the ship, lads—Pietro Salvain. D'you mean to say you've forgotten me?"

"Shanghai!" said McTee, as light broke on his memory. "What a night that was."

"But you—"

"The Mary Rogers took a header for Davy Jones's locker; first mate drunk and ran her on a reef; all hands went under except the three of us; we drifted to this island."

"Black McTee shipwrecked! By God, if we get to port with our old tramp, I'll get a farm and stick to dry land."

"Your ship?"

"The Heron, four thousand tons, White Henshaw, skipper."

"White Henshaw?" cried McTee in almost reverent tones.

"The same. Old White still sticks to his wheel. He's as hard a man as you, McTee, in his own way."

They were pulling close to the freighter by this time, and Salvain gave quick orders to lay the boat alongside. In another moment they stood on the deck, where a tall man in white clothes advanced to meet them.

"Good fishing, sir," said Salvain. "We've picked up three shipwrecked people, with Angus McTee among them."

"Black McTee!" cried the other, and even in the dim light he picked out the towering form of the Scotchman.

"It took a wreck to bring us together, Captain Henshaw," said McTee, "but here we are, I've combed the South Seas for ten years for the sake of meeting you."

"H-m!" grunted Henshaw. "We'll drink on the strength of that. Come into the cabin."

They trooped after him, Salvain and the three rescued, and stood in the roomy cabin, the captain and the first mate dapper and cool in their white uniforms, the other three marvelously ragged. Barefooted, their hair falling in jags across their foreheads, their muscles bulging through the rents in their shirts, McTee and Harrigan looked battered but triumphant. Kate Malone might have been the prize which they had safely carried away. She was even more ragged than her companions, and now she withdrew into a shadowy corner of the cabin and shook the long, loose masses of her hair about her shoulders.



CHAPTER 16

The dark eye of Pietro Salvain was quick to note her condition. He was a rather small, lean-faced man with the skin drawn so tightly across his high cheekbones that it glistened. He was emaciated; his energy consumed him as hunger consumes other men.

"There is a berth for me below," he said to Kate. "You must take my room. And I have a cap, some silk shirts, a loose coat which you might wear—so?"

"This is Miss Malone, Salvain," said McTee before she could answer.

"You are very kind, Mr. Salvain," she said.

He smiled and bowed very low, and then opened the door for her; but all the while his glance was upon McTee, who stared at him so significantly that before following Kate through the door, Salvain shrugged his shoulders and made a gesture of resignation.

The captain turned to Harrigan. Henshaw was very old. He was always so erect and carried his chin so high that the loose skin of his throat hung in two sharp ridges. In spite of the tight-lipped mouth, the beaklike nose, and the small, gleaming eyes, there was something about his face which intensified his age. Perhaps it was the yellow skin, dry as the parchment from an Egyptian tomb and criss-crossed by a myriad little wrinkles.

"And you, sir?" he said to the Irishman.

"One of my crew," broke in McTee carelessly. "He'll be quite contented in the forecastle. Eh, Harrigan?"

"Quite," said Harrigan, and his glance acknowledged the state of war.

"Then if you'll go forward, Harrigan," said the captain, and his voice was dry and dead as his skin—"if you'll go forward and report to the bos'n, he'll see that you have a bunk."

"Thank you, sir," murmured Harrigan, and slipped from the room on his bare feet.

"That man," stated Henshaw, "is as strong as you are, McTee, and yet they call you the huskiest sailor of the South Seas."

"He is almost as strong," answered McTee with a certain emphasis.

Something like a smile appeared in the eyes of Henshaw, but did not disturb the fixed lines of his mouth. For a moment Henshaw and McTee measured each other.

The Scotchman spoke first: "Captain, you're as keen as the stories they tell of you."

"And you're as hard, McTee."

The latter waved the somewhat dubious compliment away.

"I was breaking that fellow, and he held out longer than any man I've ever handled. The shipwreck interrupted me, or I would have finished what I started."

"You'd like to have me finish what you began?"

"You read my mind."

"Discipline is a great thing."

"Absolutely necessary at sea."

Henshaw answered coldly: "There's no need for us to act the hypocrite, eh?"

McTee hesitated, and then grinned: "Not a bit. I know what you did twenty years ago in the Solomons."

"And I know the story of you and the pearl divers."

"That's enough."

"Quite."

"And Harrigan?"

"As a favor to you, McTee, I'll break him. Maybe you'll be interested in my methods."

"Try mine first. I made him scrub down the bridge with suds every morning, and while his hands were puffed and soft, I sent him down to the fireroom to pass coal."

"He'll kill you someday."

"If he can."

They smiled strangely at each other.

A knock came at the door, and Salvain entered, radiant.

"She is divine!" he cried. "Her hair is old copper with golden lights. McTee, if she is yours, you have found another Venus!"

"If she is not mine," answered McTee, "at least she belongs to no other man."

Salvain studied him, first with eagerness, then with doubt, and last of all with despair.

"If any other man said that I would question it—so!—with my life. But McTee? No, I love life too well!"

"Now," Henshaw said to Salvain, "Captain McTee and I have business to talk."

"Aye, sir," said Salvain.

"One minute, Salvain," broke in McTee. "I haven't thanked you in the girl's name for taking care of Miss Malone."

The first mate paused at the door.

"I begin to wonder, captain," he answered, "whether or not you have the right to thank me in her name!"

He disappeared through the door without waiting for an answer.

"Salvain has forgotten me," muttered McTee, balling his fist, "but I'll freshen his memory."

He flushed as he became aware of the cold eye of Henshaw upon him.

"Even Samson fell," said the old man. "But she hasn't cut your hair yet, McTee?"

"What the devil do you mean?"

Henshaw silently poured another drink and passed it to the Scotchman. The latter gripped the glass hard and tossed off the drink with a single gesture. At once his eyes came back to Henshaw's face with the fierce question. He was astonished to note kindliness in the answering gaze.

Old Henshaw said gently: "Tut, tut! You're a proper man, McTee, and a proper man has always the thought of some woman tucked away in his heart. Look at me! For almost sixty years I've been the King of the South Seas!"

At the thought of his glories his face altered, as soldiers change when they receive the order to charge.

"You're a rare man and a bold man, McTee, but you'll never be what White Henshaw has been—the Shark of the Sea! Ha! Yet think of it! Ten years ago, after all my harvesting of the sea, I had not a dollar to show for it! Why? Because I was working for no woman. But here I am sailing home from my last voyage—rich! And why? Because for ten years I've been working for a woman. For ourselves we make and we spend. But for a woman we make and we save. Aye!"

"For a woman?" repeated McTee, wondering. "Do you mean to say—"

"Tut, man, it's my granddaughter. Look!"

Perhaps the whisky had loosened the old man's tongue; perhaps these confidences were merely a tribute to the name and fame of McTee; but whatever was the reason, McTee knew he was hearing things which had never been spoken before. Now Henshaw produced a leather wallet from which he selected two pictures, and handed one to the Scotchman. It showed a little girl of some ten years with her hair braided down her back. McTee looked his question.

"That picture was sent to me by my son ten years ago."

It showed the effect of time and rough usage. The edges of the cheap portrait were yellow and cracked.

"He was worthless, that son of mine. So I shut him out of my mind until I got a letter saying he was about to die and giving his daughter into my hands. That picture was in the letter. Ah, McTee, how I pored over it! For, you see, I saw the face of my wife in the face of the little girl, Beatrice. She had come back to life in the second generation. I suppose that happens sometimes.

"I made up my mind that night to make a fortune for little Beatrice. First I sold my name and honor to get a half share and captaincy of a small tramp freighter. Then I went to the Solomon Islands. You know what I did there? Yes, the South Seas rang with it. It was brutal, but it brought me money.

"I sent enough of that money to the States to keep the girl in luxury. The rest of it I put back into my trading ventures. I got a larger boat. I did unheard-of things; and everything I touched turned into gold. All into gold!

"From time to time I got letters from Beatrice. First they were careful scrawls which said nothing. Then the handwriting grew more fluent. It alarmed me to notice the growth of her mind; I was afraid that when I finally saw her, she would see in me only a barbarian. So I educated myself in odd hours. I've read a book while a hurricane was standing my ship on her beam ends."

McTee, leaning forward with a frown of almost painful interest, understood. He saw it in the wild light of the old man's eyes; a species of insanity, this love of the old man for the child he had never seen.

"Notice my language now? Never a taint of the beach lingo in it. I rubbed all that out. Aye, McTee, it took me ten years to educate myself for that girl's sake. In the meantime, I made money, as I've said. Ten years of that!

"Beatrice was in college, and six months ago I got the word that she had graduated. A month later I heard that she was going into a decline. It was nothing very serious, but the doctors feared for the strength of her lungs. It made me glad. Now I knew that she would need me. An old man is like a woman, McTee; he needs to have things dependent on him.

"I turned everything I had into cash. I did it so hurriedly that I must have lost close to twenty per cent on the forced sales. What did I care? I had enough, and I made myself into a grandfather who could meet Beatrice's educated friends on their own level.

"I kept this old ship, the Heron, out of the list of my boats. I am going back to Beatrice with gold in my hands and gold in my brain! All for her. But is she not worth it? Look!"

He thrust the second portrait into McTee's hands. It showed a rather thin-faced girl with abnormally large eyes and a rather pathetic smile. It was an appealing face rather than a pretty one.

"Beautiful!" said McTee with forced enthusiasm.

"Yes, beautiful! A little pinched, perhaps, but she'll fill out as she grows older. And those are her grandmother's eyes! Aye!"

He took the photograph and touched it lightly.

His voice grew lower, and the roughness was plainly a tremolo now: "The doctors say she's sick, a little sick, quite sick, in fact. Twice every day I make them send me wireless reports of her condition. One day it's better—one day it's worse."

He began to walk the cabin, his step marvelously elastic and nervous for so aged a man.

"Is it not well, McTee? Let her be at death's door! I shall come to her bedside with gold in either hand and raise her up to life! She shall owe everything to me! Will that not make her love me? Will it?"

He grasped McTee's shoulder tightly.

"I'm not a pretty lad to look at, eh, lad?"

McTee poured himself a drink hastily, and drained the glass before he answered.

"A pretty man? Nonsense, Henshaw! A little weather-beaten, but a tight craft at that; she'll worship the ground you walk! Character, Henshaw, that's what these new American girls want to see in a man!"

Henshaw sighed with deep relief.

"Ah-h, McTee, you comfort me more than a drink on a stormy night! For reward, you shall see what I'm bringing back to her. Come!"

He rose and led McTee into his bedroom, for two cabins were retained for the captain's use. Filling one corner of the room was a huge safe almost as tall as a man.

He squatted before the safe and commenced to work the combination with a swift sureness which told McTee at once that the old buccaneer came here many times a day to gloat over his treasure. At length the door of the safe fell open. Inside was a great mass of little canvas bags. McTee was panting as if he had run a great distance at full speed.

"Take one."

The Scotchman raised one of the bags and shook it. A musical clinking sounded.

"Forty pounds of gold coin," said Henshaw, "and about ten thousand dollars in all. There are eighty-five of those bags, and every one holds the same amount. Also—"

He opened a little drawer at the top of the safe and took from it a chamois bag. When he untied it, McTee looked within and saw a quantity of pearls. He took out a small handful. They were chosen jewels, flawless, glowing. His hand seemed to overflow with white fire. He dropped them back in the bag, letting each pearl run over the end of his fingers. Henshaw restored the bag and locked the safe. Then the two men stared at each other. They had been opposite types the moment before, but now their lips parted in the same thirsty eagerness.

"If she were dead," said McTee almost reverently, "the sight of that would bring her back to life."

"McTee, you're a worthy lad. They've told me lies about you. Indeed it would bring her back to life! It must be so! And yet—" Sudden melancholy fell on him as they returned to the other room and sat down. "Yet I think night and day of what an old devil of a black magician told me in the Solomon Islands. He said I and my gold should burn together. I laughed at him and told him I could not die on dry land. He said I would not, but that I should burn at sea! Think of that, McTee! Suppose I should be robbed of the sight of my girl and of my gold at the same time!"

McTee started to say something cheerful, but his voice died away to a mutter. Henshaw was staring at the wall with visionary eyes filled with horror and despair.

"Lad, do you think ghosts have power?"

"Henshaw, you've drunk a bit too much!"

"If they have no power, I'm safe. I fear no living man!" He added softly: "No man but myself!"

"I'm tired out," said McTee suddenly. "Where shall I bunk, captain?"

"Here! Here in this room! Take that couch in the corner over there. It has a good set of springs. With gold in my hands. Here are some blankets. With gold in my hands and my brain. Though you don't need much covering in this latitude. I would raise her from the grave."

He went about, interspersing his remarks to McTee with half-audible murmurs addressed to his own ears.

"Is this," thought McTee, "the Shark of the South Seas?"

A knock came and the door opened. A fat sailor in an oilskin hat stood at the entrance.

"The cook ain't put out no lunch for the night watches, sir," he whined.

Henshaw had stood with his back turned as the door opened. He turned now slowly toward the open door. McTee could not see his face nor guess at its expression, but the moment the big sailor caught a glimpse of his skipper's countenance, he blanched and jumped back into the night, slamming the door behind him. That sight recalled something to McTee.

"One thing more, captain," he said. "What of Harrigan? Do we break him between us?"

"Aye, in your own way!"

"Good! Then start him scrubbing the bridge and send him down to the fireroom afterwards, eh?"

"It's done. Why do you hate him, McTee? Is it the girl?"

"No; the color of his hair. Good night."



CHAPTER 17

Long before this, Harrigan had reported to the bos'n, burly Jerry Hovey, and had been assigned to a bunk into which he fairly dived and fell asleep in the posture in which he landed. In the morning he tumbled out with the other men and became the object of a crossfire of questions from the curious sailors who wanted to know all the details of the wreck of the Mary Rogers and the life on the island. He was saved from answering nine-tenths of the chatter by a signal from the bos'n, who beckoned Harrigan to a stool a little apart from the rest of the crew. Jerry Hovey was a cheery fellow of considerable bulk, with an habitual smile. That smile went out, however, when he talked with Harrigan, and the Irishman became conscious of a pair of steady, alert gray eyes.

"Look here," said Hovey, and he talked out of the corner of his mouth with a skill which would have become an old convict of many terms, "I've had it put to me straight that you're a hard one. Is that the right dope?"

Harrigan smiled.

"Because if it is," said Hovey, "we're the best gang at bustin' up these hard guys that ever walked the deck of a ship. If you try any side steps and fancy ducking of your work, there'll be a disciplinin' comin' your way at a gallop. Are you wise?"

Harrigan still smiled, but the coldness of his eye made the bos'n thoughtful. He was not one, however, to be easily cowed. Now he balled his fist and smote it against the palm of his other hand with a slap that resounded.

"On my own hook," he stated, "I can sling my mitts with the best of them, an' I'm always lookin' for work in that line. Now I'm sayin' all this in private, sonny, to let you know that Black McTee has wised up the skipper about you, and I'm keepin' a weather eye open. If you make one funny move, I'll be on your back."

"All right, Jerry."

"Don't call me Jerry, you swab! I'm the bos'n."

"Look me in the eye, Jerry Hovey, me dear. If you so much as bat the lashes av wan eye in lookin' at me, I'll bust ye in two pieces like a sea biscuit, Jerry, an' I'll eat the biggest half an' throw the rest into the sea. Ar-r-re ye wise?"

Now, Jerry Hovey was a very big man, and he had thrashed men of larger bulk than Harrigan. But there was something about the Irishman's thickness of shoulder and length of arm that gave him pause. So first of all Jerry grew very thoughtful indeed, and then his habitual smile returned. Nevertheless, Harrigan did not forget those gray, alert eyes.

The bos'n went on in a gentler voice: "I was tryin' you out, Harrigan. I'll lay to it that the cap'n has the wrong idea about you. But will you tell me why he's ridin' you?"

"Sure. It's Black McTee. Before the Mary Rogers went down, McTee was tryin' to break me. I guess he's asked this White Henshaw to try a hand. What have they got lined up for me?"

"You're to scrub down the bridge an' while your hands are still soft you go down to the fireroom an' pass coal. It'll tear your hands off, that work."

Harrigan was gray, but he answered. "That's an old story. McTee worked me like that all the time."

"An' you didn't break?" gasped Hovey.

Harrigan grinned, but his smile stopped when he noticed a certain calculation in the face of the bos'n.

"Mate," said Hovey, "I guess you're about ripe for something I'm goin' to say to you one of these days. Now go up to the bridge an' scrub it down."

With the prospect of the long torture before him once more, Harrigan in a daze picked up the bucket of suds to which he was pointed and went with his brush toward the bridge. Through the mist which enveloped his brain broke wild thoughts—to steal upon McTee at the first meeting and hurl his hated body overboard. Yet even in his bewildered condition he realized what such an act would mean. Murder on land is bad enough, but murder at sea is doubly damned by the law. It was in the power of White Henshaw to hang him up to the mast.

Revolving these dismal prospects with downward head, he climbed from the waist of the ship to the cabin promenade, and there a voice hailed him, and he turned to see Kate Malone approaching. She was all in white—cap, canvas shoes, silk shirt absurdly lose at the throat, and linen coat with the sleeves turned far back so that her hands would not be enveloped. The duck trousers were also taken up several reefs.

"Good morning," she said, and held out her hand.

He watched her smile wistfully, and then made a little gesture with his own hands, one burdened with the scrubbing brush and the other with the bucket.

"What does it mean?"

"Hell," said Harrigan.

"Explain."

"It's McTee again, damn his eyes!"

"Do you mean to say they've started to treat you as they did on the Mary Rogers? The scrubbing and then the work in the fireroom?"

"Right."

She stamped her foot in impotent fury.

"What manner of man is he, Dan? He's not all brute; why does he treat you like this?"

The Irishman smiled.

She cried with increasing anger: "What can I do?"

"Make your skin yellow an' your hair gray an' walk with no spring in your step. He wants to break me now because of you."

There was moist pity in her eyes, yet they gleamed with excitement at the thought of this battle of the Titans for her sake.

"I will go to him," she said after a moment, "and tell him that you mean nothing to me. Then he will stop."

The cold, incurious eyes studied her without passion, and once more he smiled.

"He'll not stop. Whether you like me or not, Kate, doesn't count. One of us'll go down, an' you'll be for the one that's left. He knows it—I know it."

"Harrigan!" called the voice of McTee from the bridge, and the tall Scotchman lifted his cap to Kate.

"I'm the slave," said Harrigan, "and there's the whip. Good-by."

She stamped her foot with an almost childish fury, saying: "Someday he shall regret this brutal tyranny. Good-by, Dan, and good luck!"

She took his hand in both of hers, but her eyes held spitefully upon the bridge, as if she hoped that McTee would witness the handshake; the captain, however, had turned his back upon them.

Dan muttered to himself as he climbed the bridge: "Did she do that to anger McTee or to please me?" And the thought so occupied his mind that he paid no attention to the Scotchman when he reached the bridge. He merely dropped to his knees and commenced scrubbing. McTee, in the meanwhile, loitered about the bridge as if on his own ship. In due time Harrigan drew near, the suds swishing under his brush. The Irishman, remembering suddenly, commenced to hum a tune.

"The old grind, eh, Harrigan?" said McTee.

The Irishman, humming idly still, looked up, calmly surveyed the captain, and then went on as if he had heard merely empty wind instead of words.

"After the scrubbing brush the shovel," went on McTee, but still Harrigan paid no attention. He rose when his task was completed and made his eyes gentle as if with pity while he gazed upon McTee.

"I'm sorry for you, McTee; you've made a hard fight; it's strange you've got no ghost of a chance of winnin'."

"What d'you mean?"

"Couldn't you hear her when she talked to me?"

"I could not."

"Couldn't you see her face? It was written there as plain as print."

McTee cleared his throat.

"What was written there?"

"The thing you want to see. When she took my hand in both of hers—"

"Hell!"

"Ah-h, man, it was wonderful! The scrubbing brush an' the shovel—they mean nothin' to me now."

"Harrigan, you're lying."

The latter dropped his scrubbing brush into the bucket of suds and stood with arms akimbo studying the captain.

"For a smart man, McTee, you've been a fool. I could of gone down on me knees an' begged to do what you've done. Don't you see? You've thrown her with her will or against it into me arms. I'm poor Harrigan, brave and downtrodden; you're Black McTee once more, the tyrant. She looks sick at the mention of your name."

"I never dreamed you'd go whining to her. I thought you were a man; you're only a spineless dog, Harrigan!"

"Am I that? She pities me, McTee, an' from pity it's only one step to something bigger. Can you trust me to lead her that one step? You can!"

"If I went to her and told her how you boasted of having won her?"

"She wouldn't believe what you said about me if you swore it with both hands on the Bible. Be wise, McTee. Give up the game. You've lost her, me boy! For every day that I work in the fireroom I'll come to her an' show her the palms of me bleedin' hands an' mention your name. An' for every day I work in the hole the hate of you will burn blacker into her heart."

"I'd rather have her hate than her pity."

"You'll have both; her hate for torturin' Harrigan; her pity for lettin' the devil in you get the best of the man. You're done for, McTee."

Each one of the short phrases was like a whip flicked across the face of McTee, but he would not wince.

"You've said enough. Now get down to the fireroom. I've had Henshaw prepare the chief engineer for your coming."

Harrigan turned.

"Wait! Remember when you're in hell that the old compact still holds. Your hand in mine and a promise to be my man will end the war."

Only the low laughter of the Irishman answered as he made his way down to the deck.



CHAPTER 18

"There's times for truth an' there's times for lying," murmured Harrigan, as he stowed away the bucket and brush and started down for the fireroom, "an' this was one of the times for lyin'. He's sick for the love of her, an' he's hatin' the thought of Harrigan."

So he was humming a rollicking tune when he reached the fireroom. It was stifling hot, to be sure, but it was twice as large as that of the Mary Rogers. The firemen were all glistening with sweat. One of them, larger than the rest and with a bristling, shoebrush mustache like a sign of authority, said to the newcomer: "You're Harrigan?"

He nodded.

"The chief wants to see you, boss, before you start swingin' the shovel."

"Where's the chief's cabin?"

"Take him up, Alex," directed the big fireman, and Harrigan followed one of the men up the narrow ladder and then aft. He was grateful for this light respite from the heat of the hole, but his joy faded when the man opened a door and he stood at last before the chief, Douglas Campbell, who looked up at the burly Irishman in a long silence.

The scion of the ancient and glorious clan of the Campbells had fallen far indeed. His face was a brilliant red, and the nose, comically swollen at the end, was crossed with many blue veins. Like Milton's Satan, however, he retained some traces of his original brightness. Harrigan knew at once that the chief engineer was fully worthy of joining those rulers of the south seas and harriers of weaker men, McTee and White Henshaw.

"Stand straight and look me in the eye," said Campbell, and in his voice was a slight "bur-r-r" of the Scotch accent.

Harrigan jerked back his shoulders and stood like a soldier at attention.

"A drinkin' man," he was saying to himself, "may be hard an' fallen low, but he's sure to have a heart."

"So you're the mutineer, my fine buck?"

Harrigan hesitated, and this seemed to infuriate Campbell, who banged a brawny fist on a table and thundered: "Answer me, or I'll skin your worthless carcass!"

The cold, blue eyes of Harrigan did not falter. They studied the face of the Campbell as a fighter gauges his opponent.

"If I say 'yes,'" he responded at length, "it's as good as puttin' myself in chains; if I say 'no,' you'll be thinkin' I'm givin' in, you an' McTee, damn his eyes!"

Campbell grew still redder.

"You damn him, do you? McTee is Scotch; he's a gentleman too good to be named by swine!"

The irrepressible Harrigan replied: "He's enough to make swine speak!"

Amazement and then a gleam of laughter shone in the eyes of the chief engineer. He was seized, apparently, by a fit of violent coughing and had to turn away, hiding his face with his hand. When he faced the Irishman again, his jaw was set hard, but his eyes were moist.

"Look me in the eye, laddie. Men say a good many things about me; they call me a slave driver and worse. Why? Because when I say 'move,' my men have to jump. I've asked you a question, and I'm going to get an answer. Are you a mutineer or not?"

"I will not pleasure McTee by sayin' I'm not!"

The ponderous hand rose over the table, but it was checked before it fell.

"What the devil has McTee to do with this?" he bellowed.

"He's the one that sent me here." Harrigan was thinking fast as he went on: "And you're going to keep me here for the sake of McTee."

Campbell changed from red to purple and exploded: "I'll keep no man here to please another; not White Henshaw himself. He rules on deck, and I rule below. D'you hear? Tell me you're a liar! Speak up!"

"You're a liar," said Harrigan instantly.

The engineer's mouth opened and closed twice while he stared at Harrigan.

"Get out!" he shouted, springing to his feet. "I'll have you boxed up and sweated; I'll have you pounded to a pulp! Wait! Stay here! I'll bring in some men!"

Harrigan was desperate. He knew that what he had said was equivalent to a mutiny. He threw caution to the wind. Campbell had rung a bell.

"Bring your men an' be damned!" he answered; and now his head tilted back and he set his shoulders to the wall. "I'll be afther lickin' your whole crew! A man do ye call yourself? Ah-h, ye're not fit to be lickin' the boots ay a man! Slave driver? No, ye're an overseer, an' Henshaw kicks you an' you pass the kick along. But lay a hand on Harrigan, an' he'll tear the rotten head off your shoulders!"

The door flew open, and the second assistant engineer, a burly man, with two or three others, appeared at the entrance, drawn by the furious clamor of the bell.

"What—" began the second assistant, and then stopped as he caught sight of Harrigan against the wall with his hands poised, ready for the first attack.

"Who called you?" roared Campbell.

"Your bell—" began the assistant.

"You lie! Get out! I was telling a joke to my old friend Harrigan. Maybe I leaned back against the bell. Shake hands with Harrigan. I've known him for years."

Incredulous, Harrigan lowered his clenched fist and relaxed it to meet the hesitant hand of the assistant.

"Now be off," growled the chief, and the others fled.

As the door closed, Harrigan turned in stupid amazement upon the Scotchman. The latter had dropped into his chair again and now looked at Harrigan with twinkling eyes.

"You'd have fought 'em all, eh, lad?"

He burst into heavy laughter.

"Ah, the blue devil that came in your eyes! Why did I not let them have one whirl at you? Ha, ha, ha!"

"Wake me up," muttered Harrigan. "I'm dreamin'!"

"There's a thick lie in my throat," said Campbell. "I must wash it out and leave a truth there!"

He opened a small cupboard, exposing a formidable array of black and green bottles. One of the black he pulled down, as well as two small glasses, which he filled to the brim.

"To your bonny blue eyes, lad!" he said, and raised a glass. "Here's an end to the mutiny—and a drop to our old friendship!"

Harrigan, still with clouded mind, raised the glass and drank. It was a fine sherry wine.

"How old would you say that wine was?" queried the Scotchman with exaggerated carelessness.

The carelessness did not deceive Harrigan. His mind went blanker still, for he knew little about good wines.

"Well?" asked the engineer.

"H-m!" muttered Harrigan, and racked his brain to remember the ages at which a good vintage becomes a rare old wine. "About thirty-five years."

"By the Lord!" cried Campbell. "It never fails—a strong man knows his liquor like a book! You're almost right. Add three years and you have it! Thirty-eight years in sunshine and shadow!"

He leaned back and gazed dreamily up to the ceiling.

"Think of it," he went on in a reverent murmur. "Men have been born and grown strong and then started toward the shady side of life since this wine was put in the bottle. For thirty-eight years it has been gathering and saving its perfume—draw a breath of it now, lad!—and when I uncork the bottle, all the odor blows out to me at once."

"True," said Harrigan, nodding sagely. "I've thought the same thing, but never found the words for it, chief."

"Have you?" asked Campbell eagerly. "Sit down, lad; sit down! Well, well! Good wine was put on earth for a blessing, but men have misused it, Harrigan—but hear me preaching when I ought to be praying!"

"Prayin'?" repeated the diplomatic Harrigan. "No, no, man! Maybe you've drunk a good store of liquor, but it shines through you. It puts a flush on your face like a sun shinin' through a cloud. You'd hearten any man on a dark day!"

He could not resist the play on the words, and a shadow crossed the face of the engineer.

"Harrigan," he growled, "there's a double meaning in what you say, but I'll not think of it. You're no fool, lad, but do not vex me. But say your say. I suppose I'm red enough to be seen by my own light on a dark night. What does Bobbie say?

"Oh, wad some power the giftie gie us To see oursels as others see us!

"Well, well! I forgave you for the sake of Bobbie! Do you know his rhymes, lad?"

A light shone in the eye of Harrigan. He began to sing softly in his musical, deep voice: "Ye banks and braes of bonny Doon—"

"No, no, man!" cried Campbell, raising his hand in horror at the sound of the false accent. "It should go like this!"

He pulled a guitar out of a case and commenced to strum lightly on it, while he rendered the old song in a voice roughened by ill usage but still strong and true. A knock at the door interrupted him at the climax of his song, and he glared toward the unseen and rash intruder.

"What will ye hae?" he roared, continuing the dialect which the song had freshened on his tongue.

"The shift in the fireroom is short-handed," said the voice. "That fellow Harrigan has not shown up. Shall we search for him?"

"Search for the de'il!" thundered Campbell. "Harrigan is doing a fine piece of work for me; shall I let him go to the fireroom to swing a shovel?"

"The captain's orders, sir," persisted the voice rashly.

Campbell leaped for the door and jerked it open a few inches.

"Be off!" he cried; "or I'll set you passin' coal yourself, my fine lad! What? Will ye be asking questions? Is there no discipline? Mutiny, mutiny—that's what this is!"

"Aye, aye, sir!" murmured a rapidly retreating voice.

Campbell closed and locked the door and turned back to Harrigan with a grin.

"The world's a wide place," he said, "but there's few enough in it who know our Bobbie, God bless him! When I've found one, shall I let him go down to the fireroom? Ha! Now tell me what's wrong between you and McTee."

"I will not talk," said Harrigan with another bold stroke of diplomacy, "till I hear the rest of that song. The true Scotch comes hard on my tongue, but I'll learn it."

"You will, laddie, for your heart's right. Man, man, I'm nothing now, but you should have heard me sing in the old days—"

"When we were in Glasgow," grinned Harrigan.

"In Glasgow," repeated Campbell, and then lifted his head and finished the song. "Now for the story, laddie."

Harrigan started, as though recalled from a dream built up by the music. Then he told briefly the tale of the tyranny aboard the Mary Rogers, now apparently to be repeated.

"So I thought," he concluded, "that it was to be the old story over again—look at my hands!"

He held them out. The palms were still red and deeply scarred. Campbell said nothing, but his jaw set savagely.

"I thought it was to be this all over again," went on Harrigan, "till I met you, chief. But with you for a friend I'll weather the storm. McTee's a hard man, but when Scot meets Scot—I'll bet on the Campbells."

"Would you bet on me against Black McTee?" queried the engineer, deeply moved. "Well, lad, McTee's a dour man, but dour or not he shall not run the engine room of the Heron."

And he banged on the table for emphasis.

"Scrub down the bridge every morning, as they tell you, but when they send you below to pass the coal, come and report to me first. I'll have work for you to do—chiefly practicing the right accent for Bobbie's songs. Is not that a man's work?"



CHAPTER 19

To make good this promise, Campbell straightway sang for Harrigan's delectation two or three more of his favorite selections. It was evening, and the shift in the fireroom was ended before Harrigan left the engineer's room. On his way to the deck he passed the tired firemen from the hole of the ship. They stared at the Irishman with wide eyes, for it was known that he had been hi the chief engineer's room for several hours; they looked upon nun as one who has been in hell and has escaped from thence to the upper air.

He was, in fact, a marked man when he reached the forecastle. Rumor travels through a ship's crew and it was already known that Black McTee hated the Irishman and that White Henshaw had commenced to persecute him in a new and terrible manner.

This would have been sufficient tragedy to burden the shoulders of any one man, however strong, and when to this was added the fact that he had been kept by the grim chief engineer for several hours in the chief's own room, and finally considering that this man had passed through a shipwreck, one of three lone survivors, it is easy to understand why the sailors gave him ample elbow room.

It was evidently expected that he would break out into a torrent of abuse, and when he, perceiving this, remained silent, their awe increased. All through supper he was aware of their wondering glances; above all he felt the gray, steady eyes of Jerry Hovey, the bos'n, yet he ate without speaking, replying to their tentative questions with grunts. Before the meal was finished and the pipes and cigarettes lighted, he was a made man. Persevering in his role, as soon as he had eaten he went out on deck and sat down in the corner between the rail and the forecastle upon a coil of rope.

As deep as the blue sea in the evening light was the peace which lay on the soul of Harrigan, for the day had brought two great victories, one over McTee and the other over the chief engineer. It was not a stolid content, for he knew the danger of the implacable hate of McTee, but with the aid of Campbell he felt that he would have a fighting chance at least to survive, and that was all he asked.

So he sat on the coil of rope leaning against the rail, and looked ahead. It was almost completely dark when a hand fell on his shoulder and he looked up into the steady, gray-blue eyes of the bos'n.

"I promised to talk to you tonight," said that worthy, and sat down uninvited on a neighboring coil of rope.

He waited for a response. As a rule, sailors are glad to curry favor with the bos'n. Harrigan, however, sat without speaking, staring through the gloom.

"Well?" said Hovey at length. "You're a silent man, Harrigan."

There was no response.

"All right; I like a silent man. In a way of speakin', I need 'em like you! If you say little to me, you're likely to say little to others.

"I don't talk much myself," went on Hovey, "until I know my man. I ain't seen much of you, but I guess I figure you straight."

He grew suddenly cautious, cunning, and the steady, gray-blue eyes reminded Harrigan of a cat when she crouches for hours watching the rathole.

"You ain't got much reason for standing in with White Henshaw?" he purred.

"H'm," grunted the Irishman, and waited.

"Sure, you ain't," went on Hovey soothingly, "because McTee has raised hell between you. They say McTee tried his damnedest to break you?"

The last question was put in a different manner; it came suddenly like a surprise blow in the dark.

"Well?" queried Harrigan. "What of it?"

"He tried all the way from Honolulu?"

"He did."

"Did he try his fists?"

"He did."

Jerry Hovey cursed with excitement.

"And?"

"I carried him to his cabin afterward," said Harrigan truthfully.

"Would you take on McTee again? Black McTee?"

"If I had to. Why?"

"Oh, nothin'. But McTee has started White Henshaw on your trail. Maybe you know what Henshaw is? The whole South Seas know him!"

"Well?"

"You'll have a sweet hell of a time before this boat touches port, Harrigan."

"I'll weather it."

"Yes, this trip, but what about the next? If Henshaw is breakin' a man, he keeps him on the ship till the man gives in or dies. I know! Henshaw'll get so much against you that he could soak you for ten years in the courts by the time we touch port. Then he'll offer to let you off from the courts if you'll ship with him again, and then the old game will start all over again. You may last one trip—other men have—one or two—but no one has ever lasted out three or four shippings under White Henshaw. It can't be done!"

He paused to let this vital point sink home. Only the same dull silence came in reply, and this continued taciturnity seemed to irritate Hovey. When he spoke again, his voice was cold and sharp.

"He's got you trapped, Harrigan. You're a strong man, but you'll never get his rope off your neck. He'll either hang you with it or else tie you hand and foot an' make you his slave. I know!"

There was a bitter emphasis on the last word that left no doubt as to his meaning, and Harrigan understood now the light of that steady, gray-blue eye which made the habitual smile of good nature meaningless.

"Ten years ago I shipped with White Henshaw. Ten years ago I didn't have a crooked thought or a mean one in my brain. Today there's hell inside me, understand? Hell!" He paused, breathing hard.

"There's others on this ship that have been through the same grind, some of them longer than me. There's others that ain't here, but that ain't forgotten, because me an' some of the rest, we seen them dyin' on their feet. Maybe they ain't dropped into the sea, but they're just the same, or worse. You'll find 'em loafin' along the beaches. They take water from the natives, they do."

He went on in a hoarse whisper: "On this ship I've seen 'em busted. An' Henshaw has done the bustin'. This is a coffin ship, Harrigan, an' Henshaw he's the undertaker. He don't bring 'em to Davy Jones's locker—he does worse—he brings 'em to hell on earth, a hell so bad that when they go below, they don't notice no difference. Harrigan, me an' a few of the rest, we know what's been done, an' some of us have thought wouldn't it be a sort of joke, maybe, if sometime what Henshaw has done to others was done to himself, what?"

The sweat was standing out on Harrigan's face wet and cold. It seemed to him that through the darkness he could make out whole troops of those broken men littering the decks. He peered through the dark at the bos'n, and made out the hint of the gray-blue eyes watching him again as the cat watches the mousehole, and the heart of Harrigan ached.

"Hovey, are you bound for the loincloth an' the beaches, like the rest?"

"No, because I've sold my soul to White Henshaw; but you're bound there, Harrigan, because you can never sell your soul. I looked in your eyes and seen it written there like it was in a book."

He gripped the Irishman by the shoulder.

"There's some say this is the last voyage of White Henshaw, but me an' some of the rest, we know different. He can't leave the sea, which means that he won't take us out of hell. Now, talk straight. You stood up to McTee; would you stand up to Henshaw?"

Harrigan muttered after a moment of thought: "I suppose this is mutiny, bos'n?"

"Aye, but I'm safe in talkin' it. White Henshaw trusts me, he does, because I've sold my soul to him. If you was to go an' tell nun what I've said, he'd laugh at you an' say you was tryin' to incite discontent. What's it goin' to be, Harrigan? Will you join me an' the rest who can set you free an' make a man of you, or will you stay by McTee and White Henshaw and that devil Campbell?"

"How could you set me free?"

"One move—altogether—in the night—we'd have the ship for our own, an' we could beach her and take to the shore at any place we pleased."

Harrigan repeated: "One move—altogether—in the night! I don't like it, bos'n. I'll stand up to my man foot to foot an' hand to hand, but for strikin' at him in the dark—I can't do it."

He caught the sound of Hovey's gritting teeth.

"Think it over," persisted the bos'n. "We need you, Harrigan, but if you don't join, we'll help McTee and Henshaw and Campbell to make life hell for you."

"I've thought it over. I don't like the game. This mutiny at night—it's like hittin' a man who's down."

"That's final?"

"It is."

"Then God help you, Harrigan, for you ain't the man I took you for."



CHAPTER 20

He rose and left Harrigan to the dark, which now lay so thick over the sea that he could only dimly make out the black, wallowing length of the ship. After a time, he went into the dingy forecastle and stretched out on his bunk. Some of the sailors were already in bed, propping their heads up with brawny, tattooed arms while they smoked their pipes. For a time Harrigan pondered the mutiny, glancing at the stolid faces of the smokers and trying to picture them in action when they would steal through the night barefooted across the deck—some of them with bludgeons, others with knives, and all with a thirst for murder.

Sleep began to overcome him, and he fought vainly against it. In a choppy sea the bows of a ship make the worst possible bed, for they toss up and down with sickening rapidity and jar quickly from side to side; but when a vessel is plowing through a long-running ground swell, the bows of the ship move with a sway more soothing than the swing of a hammock in a wind. Under these circumstances Harrigan was lulled to sleep.

He woke at length with a consciousness, not of a light shining in his face, but of one that had just been flashed across his eyes. Then a guarded voice said: "He's dead to the world; he won't hear nothin'."

Peering cautiously up from under the shelter of his eyelashes, he made out a bulky figure leaning above him.

"Sure he's dead to the world," said a more distant voice. "After the day he must have put in with Campbell, he won't wake up till he's dragged out. I know!"

"Lift his foot and let it drop," advised another. "If you can do that to a man without waking him, you know he's not going to be waked up by any talkin'."

Harrigan's foot was immediately raised and dropped. He merely sighed as if in sleep, and continued to breathe heavily, regularly. After a moment he was conscious that the form above him had disappeared. Then very slowly he turned his head and raised his eyelids merely enough to peer through the lashes. The sailors sat cross-legged in a loose circle on the floor of the forecastle. At the four corners of the group sat four significant figures. They were like the posts of the prize ring supporting the rope; that is to say, the less important sailors who sat between them. Each of the four was a man of mark.

Facing Harrigan were Jacob Flint and Sam Hall. The former was a little man, who might have lived unnoticed forever had it not been for a terrible scar which deformed his face. It was a cut received in a knife fight at a Chinese port. The white, gleaming line ran from the top of his temple, across the side of his right eye, and down to the cheekbone. The eye was blind as a result of the wound, but in healing the cut had drawn the skin so that the lids of the eye were pulled awry in a perpetual, villainous squint. It was said that before this wound Flint had been merely an ordinary sailor, but that afterward he was inspired to live up to the terror of his deformed face.

Sam Hall, the "corner post," at Flint's right, was a type of blond stupidity, huge of body, with a bull throat and a round, featureless face. You looked in vain to find anything significant in this fellow beyond his physical strength, until your glance lingered on his eyes. They were pale blue, expressionless, but they hinted at possibilities of berserker rage.

The other two, whose backs were toward Harrigan, were Garry Cochrane and Jim Kyle. The latter might have stood for a portrait of a pirate of the eighteenth century, with a drooping, red mustache and bristling beard. The reputation of this monster, however, was far less terrible than that of any of the other three, certainly far less than Garry Cochrane. This was a lean fellow with bright black eyes, glittering like a suspicious wolf's.

Between these corner posts sat the less distinguished sailors. They might have been notable cutthroats in any other assemblage of hard-living men, but here they granted precedence willingly to the four more notable heroes.

Around the circle walked Jerry Hovey like a shepherd about his flock. It was apparent that they all held him in high favor. His chief claim to distinction, or perhaps his only one, was that he had served as bos'n for ten years under White Henshaw; but this record was enough to win the respect of even Garry Cochrane.

It was Jim Kyle who had peered into the face of Harrigan, for now he was pushing to one side the lantern he had used and settling back into his place in the circle. He gestured over his shoulder with his thumb.

"How'd you happen to miss out with the Irishman, Jerry?"

"Talk low or you may wake him," warned Hovey. "I lost him because the fool ain't sailed long enough to know White Henshaw. He has an idea that mutiny at night is like hittin' a man when he's down—as if there was any other way of hittin' Henshaw an' gettin' away with it!"

The chuckle of the sailors was like the rumble of the machinery below, blended and lost with that sound.

"So he's out—an' you know what that means," went on Hovey.

A light came into the pale eyes of Sam Hall, and his thick lips pulled back in a grin.

"Aye," he growled, "we do! He's a strong man, but"—and here he raised his vast arms and stretched them—"I'll tend to Harrigan!"

The voice of the bos'n was sharp: "None o' that! Wait till I give orders, Sam, before you raise a hand. We're too far from the coast. Let old Henshaw bring us close inshore, an' then we'll turn loose."

"What I don't see," said one of the sailors, "is how we make out for hard cash after we hit the coast. We beach the Heron—all right; but then we're turned loose in the woods without a cent."

"You're a fool," said Garry Cochrane. "We loot the ship before we abandon her. There'll be money somewhere."

"Aye," said Hovey, "there's money. That's what I got you together for tonight. There's money, and more of it than you ever dreamed of."

He waited for his words to take effect in the brains of the men, running his glance around the circle, and a light flashed in response to each eye as it met his.

He continued: "White Henshaw cashed in every cent of his property before he sailed in the Heron. I know, because he used me for some of his errands. And I know that he had a big safe put into his cabin. For ten years everything that White Henshaw has looked at turned into gold. I know! All that gold he's got in that safe—you can lay to that."

He turned to the sailor who had first raised the question: "Money? You'll have your share of the loot—if you can carry it!"

They drew in their breath as if they were drinking.

Hovey continued: "Now, lads, I know you're gettin' excited and impatient. That's why I've got you together. You've got to wait. And until I give the word, you've got to keep your eyes on the deck an' run every time one of the mates of White Henshaw—damn his heart!—gives the word. Why? Because one wrong word—one queer look—will tip off the skipper that something's wrong, and once he gets suspicious, you can lay to it that he'll find out what we're plannin'. I know!"

There was a grim significance in that repeated phrase, "I know," for it hinted at a knowledge more complete and evil than falls to the share of the ordinary mortal.

"Lads, keep your eyes on the deck and play the game until I give the word! If the wind of this comes to the captain, it's overboard for Jerry Hovey. I'd rather give myself to the sharks than to White Henshaw. That's all.

"Now, lads, it's come to the point where we've got to know what we'll do. There's two ways. One is to crowd all them what ain't in the mutiny into one cabin an' keep 'em there till we beach the boat."

"So that they can get out and tell the land sharks what we've done?" suggested Garry Cochrane in disgust.

"Garry," said Hovey with deep feeling, "you're a lad after my heart. And you're right. If one of them lives, he'll be enough to put a halter around the necks of each of us. We couldn't get away. If we're once described, there ain't no way we could dodge the law."

He grinned sardonically as he looked about the circle: "There's something about us, lads, that makes us different from other men."

The sailors glanced appreciatively at the scarred countenances of their fellows and laughed hoarsely.

"So the second way is the only way," went on Hovey, seeing that he had scored his point. "The rest of the crew that ain't with us has got to go under. Are you with me?"

"Aye," croaked the chorus, and every man looked down at the floor. Each one had picked out the man he hated the most, and was preparing the manner of the killing.

"Good," said Hovey; "and now that we've agreed on that, we've got to choose—"

He stopped, going rigid and blank of face. He had seen the open, chilling blue eye of Harrigan, who, drawn on into forgetfulness, had lain for some time on his bunk watching the scene without caution.



CHAPTER 21

"He's heard!" stammered Hovey, pointing. "Guard the door! Get him!"

"Bash in his head an' overboard with the lubber!" growled Sam Hall.

Not one of the others spoke; their actions were the more significant. Some leaped to the door and barred the exit.

Others started for Harrigan. The latter leaped off his bunk and, sweeping up a short-legged, heavy stool, sprang back against the wall. This he held poised, ready to drive it at the first man who approached. Their semicircle grew compact before him, but still they hesitated, for the man who made the first move would die.

"You fools!" said Harrigan, brandishing his stool. "Keep off!"

He was thinking desperately, quickly.

"Harrigan," said Hovey, edging his way to the front of the sailors, "you heard!"

"I did!"

They growled, infuriated. His death was certain now, but they kept back for another moment, astonished that this man would sign his own sentence of doom. From marlinspikes to pocketknives, every man held some sort of a weapon. Garry Cochrane, flattening himself against the wall at one side, edged inch by inch toward Harrigan.

"I heard it all," said the Irishman, "and until the last word I thought you were a lot of bluffin' cowards."

"You had your chance, Harrigan," said Hovey, "an' you turned me down. Now you get what's due you."

The sailors crouched a little as if at a command to leap forward in the attack. Cochrane was perilously near.

"If I get my due," said Harrigan coolly, "you'll go down on your knees. Stand back, Cochrane, or I'll brain ye! You'll go down on your knees an' thank God that I'm with ye!"

"Stand fast, Garry!" ordered Hovey. "What do you mean, Harrigan?"

The Irishman laughed. Every son of Erin is an actor, and now Harrigan's laughter rang true.

"What should I mean except what I said?" he answered.

"He's tryin' to save his head," broke in Kyle, "but with the fear of death lookin' him in the eye, any man would join us. Finish him, lads."

"You fool!" said Harrigan authoritatively. "Don't talk so loud, or you'll have White Henshaw down on our heads. Maybe he's heard that bull voice of yours already!"

It was a master stroke. The mention of the terrible skipper and the skillful insinuation that he was one of them, made them straighten and stare at him.

"Go guard the door," said Hovey to one of his sailors, "an' see that none of the mates is near. Now, Harrigan, what d'you mean? You'd hear no word of mutiny when I talked to you. Speak for your life now, because we're hard to convince."

"We can't be convinced," said Garry Cochrane, "but maybe it'll be fun to hear him talk before we dump him overboard."

Instead of answering the speaker, Harrigan looked upon Hovey with a cold eye of scorn.

He said: "I changed my mind. I'm not one of you. I thought the bos'n was a real captain for the gang, but I'll not follow a dog that lets every one of his pack yelp."

"I'm a dog, am I?" snarled Hovey furiously. "I'll teach you what I am, Harrigan. An' you, Cochrane, keep your face shut. I'll learn you who's boss of this little crew!"

"If you're half the man you seem," went on Harrigan, "this game looks good to me."

"You lie," said the bos'n. "You turned me down cold when I talked to you."

"You fool, that was because you said no word outright of wipin' out the officers an' takin' control of the ship. You sneaked up to me in the dark; you felt me out before you said a word; you were like a cat watchin' a rathole. Am I a rat? Am I a sneak? Do I have to be whispered to? No, I'm Harrigan, an' anyone who wants to talk to me has got to speak out like a man!"

The very impudence of his speech held them in check for another precious moment. He whirled the heavy stool.

"If you wanted me, why didn't you come an' say: 'Harrigan, I know you. You hate Henshaw an' McTee an' the rest. We're goin' to wipe 'em out an' beach the ship. Are you with us?' Why, then I'd of shook hands with you, and that would end it. But when you come whisperin' and insinuatin', sayin' nothin' straight from the shoulder, how'd I know you weren't sent by Henshaw to feel me out, eh? How do any of you know the bos'n ain't feelin' you out for the skipper he's sailed with ten years?"

The circle shifted, loosened; half the men were facing Hovey with suspicious eyes. They had not thought of this greater danger, and the bos'n was desperate in the crisis.

"Boys," he pleaded, "are you goin' to let one stranger ball up our game? Are you goin' to start doubtin' me on his say-so?"

The men glanced from him to Harrigan. Plainly they were deep in doubt, and the Irishman made his second masterful move. He stepped forward, dropping his stool with a crash to the floor, and clapped a hand upon Hovey's shoulder.

"I spoke too quick," he said frankly, "but you got me mad, bos'n. I know you're straight, an' I'm with you, for one. A man Harrigan will toiler ought to be good enough for the rest, eh?"

Jerry Hovey wiped his gleaming forehead. The kingdom of his ambition was rebuilt by this speech.

"Sit down, boys," he ordered. "The last man in the forecastle is with us now. We're solid. Sit down and we'll plan our game."

The plan, as it developed after the circle re-formed, was a simple one. They were to wait until the ship was within two or three days' voyage from the coast of Central America—their destination—and then they would act. They had secured to their side the firemen and the first assistant engineer. That meant that they could run the ship safely with the bos'n, who understood navigation, at the wheel. They would select a night, and then, on the command of Hovey, the men would take the arms which they had prepared.

One of the Japanese cabin boys, Kamasura, was a member of the plot. He would furnish butcherknives and cleavers from the kitchen. Besides this, there were various implements which could be used as bludgeons; and finally there were the pocketknives with which every sailor is always equipped, generally stout, long-bladed instruments. The advantage of firearms was with the officers of the ship, but apparently there were no rifles and probably very few revolvers aboard. Against powder and lead they would have the advantage of a surprise attack.

First, Sam Hall and Kyle were to go down to the hole of the ship and lead the firemen in their attack upon the oilers and wipers, most of whom had not been approachable with the plan of mutiny because they were newly signed on the ship. In this part of the campaign the most important feature would be the capturing of Campbell, who would be reserved for a finely drawn-out, tortured death. The firemen had insisted upon this.

In the meantime Hovey with Flint and the rest would attack the cabins of Henshaw, McTee, and the mates. Here they depended chiefly upon the effect of the surprise. If it were possible, Henshaw also was to be taken alive and reserved for a long death like Campbell. This done, they would lead the ship to an uninhabited part of the shore, beach her, and scatter over the mainland, each with his share of the booty.

Harrigan forced himself to take an active part in the discussion of the plans. Several features were his own suggestion, among others the idea of presenting a petition for better food to Henshaw, and beating him down while he was reading it; but all the time that the Irishman spoke, he was thinking of Kate.

When the crew turned into their bunks at last, he went over a thousand schemes in his head. In the first place he might go to Henshaw at once and warn him of the coming danger, but he remembered what the bos'n had said—in such a case he would not be believed, and both the crew and the commander would be against him.

Finally it seemed to him that the best thing was to wait until the critical moment had arrived. He could warn the captain just in time—or if absolutely necessary he could warn McTee, who would certainly believe him. In the mean-time there were possibilities that the mutiny would come to nothing through internal dissension among the crew. In any case he must play a detestable part, acting as a spy upon the crew and pretending enthusiasm for the mutiny.

With that shame like a taste of soot in his throat, he climbed to the bridge the next morning with his bucket of suds and his brush, and there as usual he found McTee, cool and clean in the white outfit of Henshaw. At sight of the Scotchman he remembered at once that he must pretend the double exhaustion which comes of pain and hard labor. Therefore he thrust out his lower jaw and favored McTee with a glare of hate. He was repaid by the glow of content which showed in the captain's face.

"And the hole of the Heron," he said, speaking softly lest his voice should carry to the man in the wheelhouse, "is it cooler than the fireroom of the Mary Rogers?"

Harrigan glanced up, glowering.

"Damn you, McTee!"

"The palms of your hands, lad, are they raw? Is the lye of the suds cool to them?"

Another black glance came in reply and McTee leaned back against the rail, tapping one contented toe against the floor.

"It was a fine tale you told me yesterday, Harrigan," he said at length, "but afterward I saw Kate, and she was never kinder. I spoke of you, and we laughed together about it. She said you were like a horse that's too proud—you need the whip!"

Harrigan was in doubt, but he concealed his trouble with a mighty effort and smiled.

"That's a weak lie, Angus. When I was a boy of ten, I would of hung me head for shame if I could not have made a better lie. Shall I tell you what really happened when you met Kate? You came up smilin' an' grinnin' like a baboon, an' she passed you by with a look that went through you as if you were just a cloud on the edge of the sky. Am I right, McTee?"

"You've seen her, and she's told you this," exclaimed the captain.

Harrigan chuckled his triumph and went on with the scrubbing of the bridge.

"No, Angus, me dear, I've not seen her, but when two souls are as close as hers and mine—well, cap'n, I leave it to you!"