Chapter XVII: Marooned

That it was important to control the after part of the ship, I was well aware, and though we were outnumbered two to one, I hoped that by good fortune we might win it.

I was not long in doubt of Roger's sharing my hope. He analyzed our opponents' position at a single glance, and ignoring their advantage in numbers, seized upon the only chance of taking them by surprise. Swinging his arm and crying, "Come, men! All for the cabin!" he flung himself headlong at Falk. I followed close at his heels--I was afraid to be left behind. I heard the cook grunt hoarsely as he apprehended the situation and sprang after us. Then the others met us with knives and pistols.

Our attack was futile and soon over, but while it lasted there was a merry little fight. As a man slashed at Roger with a case-knife, laying open a long gash in his cheek, Roger fired a shot from his pistol, and the fellow pitched forward and lay still except for his limbs, which twitched sickeningly. For my own part, seeing another who had run aft for a weapon swing at me with a cutlass, I threw myself under his guard and got my arms round both his knees. As something crashed above me, I threw the fellow back and discovered that the cook had met the cutlass in full swing with the cleaver and had shattered it completely. Barely in time to escape a murderous blow that the carpenter aimed at me with his hammer, I scrambled to my feet and leaped back beside Roger, who held his cheek with his hand.

I believe it was the cook's cleaver that saved our lives for the time being. Falk and Kipping had fired the charges in their pistols, and no one was willing to venture within reach of the black's long arm and brutal weapon. So, having spent our own last charge of powder, we backed away into the bow with our faces to the enemy, and the only sounds to be heard were flapping sails and rattling blocks, the groans of the poor fellow Roger had shot, and the click of a powder-flask as Falk reloaded and passed his ammunition to Kipping.

"So," said Falk at last, "we have a fine little mutiny brewing, have we?" He looked first at us, then at those who remained true to him and his schemes. "Well, Mr. Kipping, with the help of Chips here, we can make out to work the ship at a pinch. Yes, I think we can dispense with these young cocks altogether. Yes,--" he raised his voice and swore roundly--"yes, we can follow our own gait and fare a damned sight better without them. We'll let them have a boat and row back to Salem. A voyage of a few thousand miles at the oars will be a rare good thing to tone down a pair of young fighting cocks." Then he added, smiling, "If they meet with no Ladronesers or Malays to clip their spurs."

Captain Falk looked at Kipping and his men, and they all laughed.

"Ay, so it will," cried Kipping. "And old Davie Paine 'll never have a mister to his name again. You old lubber, you, your bones will be rotting at the bottom of the sea when we're dividing up the gold."

Again the men laughed loudly.

Davie flushed and stammered, but Blodgett spoke out bitterly.

"So they will, before you or Captain Falk divide with any of the rest. Ah! Red in the face, are ye? That shot told. Davie 'd rather take his chances with a gentleman than be second mate under either one o' you two. He may not know when he's well off, but he knows well when he ain't."

For all Blodgett spoke so boldly, I could see that Davie in his own heart was still afraid of Kipping. But Kipping merely smiled in his mean way and slowly looked us over.

"If we was to walk them over a plank," he suggested, deferentially, to the captain, "there would be an end to all bother with them."

"No," said Falk, "give them a boat. It's all the same in the long run, and I ain't got the stomach to watch six of them drown one after another."

Kipping raised his eyebrows at such weakness; then a new thought seemed to dawn on him. His accursed smile grew broader and he began to laugh softly. For the moment I could not imagine what he was laughing at, but his next words answered my unspoken question. "Ha ha ha! Right you are, captain! Just think of 'em, a-sailing home in a ship's boat! Oh, won't they have a pretty time?"

The predicament of six fellow men set adrift in an open boat pleased the man's vile humor. We knew that he believed he was sending us to certain death, and that he delighted in it.

"This fine talk is all very well," said Roger, "and I've no doubt you think yourselves very witty, but let that be as it may. As matters stand now, you've got the upper hand--though I wish you joy of working the ship. However, if you give us the long-boat and a fair allowance of water and bread, we'll ask nothing more."

"Ah," said Falk, with a leer at Kipping who was smiling quietly, "the long-boat and a fair allowance of water and bread! Ay, next they'll be wanting us to set 'em up in their own ship." He changed suddenly from a leer to a snarl. "You'll take what I give you and nothing more nor less. Now then, men, we'll just herd these hearties overboard and bid them a gay farewell."

He stood there, pointing the way with a grand gesture and the late afternoon sun sparkled on the buttons of his coat and shone brightly on the fine white shirt he wore, which in better days had belonged to Captain Whidden. "Murderer and thief!" I thought. For although about Captain Whidden's death I knew nothing more than the cook's never-to-be-forgotten words, "a little roun' hole in the back of his head--he was shot f'om behine," I laid Bill Hayden's death at Captain Falk's door, and I knew well by now that our worthy skipper would not scruple at stealing more than shirts.

When Falk pointed to the quarter-boat, the men, laughing harshly, closed in on us and drove us along by threatening us with pistols and pikes, which the bustling steward by now had distributed. And all the while Kipping stood just behind the captain, smiling as if no unkind thought had ever ruffled his placid nature. I could not help but be aware of his meanness, and I suppose it was because I was only a boy and not given to looking under the surface that I did not yet completely recognize in him the real leader of all that had gone astray aboard the Island Princess.

We let ourselves be driven toward the boat. Since we were outnumbered now eleven to six,--not counting the wounded man of course,--and since, compared with the others, we were virtually unarmed, we ought, I suppose, to have been thankful that we were not murdered in cold blood, as doubtless we should have been if our dangerous plight had not so delighted Kipping's cruel humor, and if both Falk and Kipping had not felt certain that they would never see or hear of us again. But we found little comfort in realizing that, as matters stood, although in our own minds we were convinced absolutely that Captain Falk and Mr. Kipping had conspired with the crew to rob the owners, by the cold light of fact we could be proved in the wrong in any court of admiralty.

So far as Roger and I were concerned, our belief was based after all chiefly on supposition; and so craftily had the whole scheme been phrased and manoeuvred that, if you got down to categorical testimony, even Blodgett and Davie Paine would have been hard put to it to prove anything culpable against the other party. Actually we were guilty of mutiny, if nothing more.

The cook still carried his great cleaver and Blodgett unobtrusively had drawn and opened a big dirk knife; but Neddie Benson, Davie, and I had no weapons of any kind, and Roger's pistol was empty.

We worked the boat outboard in silence and made no further resistance, though I knew from Roger's expression as he watched Falk and Kipping and their men, that, if he had seen a fair chance to turn the scales in our favor, he would have seized it at any cost.

Meanwhile the sails were flapping so loudly that it was hard to hear Roger's voice when he again said, "Surely you'll give us food and water."

"Why--no," said Falk. "I don't think you'll need it. You won't want to row right home without stopping to say how-d'y'-do to the natives."

Again a roar of laughter came from the men on deck.

As the boat lay under the side of the ship, they crowded to the rail and stared down at us with all sorts of rough gibes at our expense. Particularly they aimed then-taunts at Davie Paine and Blodgett, who a short time before had been hand-in-glove with them; and I was no little relieved to see that their words seemed only to confirm the two in their determination, come what might, never to join forces again with Falk and Kipping. But Kipping singled out the cook and berated him with a stream of disgusting oaths.

"You crawling black nigger, you," he yelled. "Now what'll _you_ give _me_ for a piece of pie?"

Holding the cleaver close at his side, the negro looked up at the fox who was abusing him, and burst into wild vituperation. Although Kipping only laughed in reply, there was a savage and intense vindictiveness in the negro's impassioned jargon that chilled my blood. I remember thinking then that I should dread being in Kipping's shoes if ever those two met again.

As we cast off, we six in that little boat soon to be left alone in the wastes of the China Sea, we looked up at the cold, laughing faces on which the low sun shone with an orange-yellow light, and saw in them neither pity nor mercy. The hands resting on the bulwark, the hands of our own shipmates, were turned against us.

The ship was coming back to her course now, and some of us were looking at the distant island with the cone-shaped peaks, toward which by common consent we had turned our bow, when the cook, who still stared back at Kipping, seemed to get a new view of his features. Springing up suddenly, he yelled in a great voice that must have carried far across the sea:--

"You Kipping, Ah got you--Ah got you--Ah knows who you is--Ah knows who you is--you crimp's runner, you! You blood-money sucker, you! Ah seen you in Boston! Ah seen you befo' now! A-a-a-ah!--a-a-a-ah!" And he shook his great black fist at the mate.

The smile on Kipping's face was swept away by a look of consternation. With a quick motion he raised his loaded pistol, which he had primed anew, and fired on us; then, snatching another from one of the crew, he fired again, and stood with the smoking weapons, one in each hand, and a snarl fixed on his face.

Captain Falk was staring at the negro in wrath and amazement, and there was a stir on the deck that aroused my strong curiosity. But the cook was groaning so loudly that we could hear no word of what was said, so we bent to the oars with all our strength and rowed out of range toward the distant island.

Kipping's second ball had grazed the negro's head and had left a deep furrow from which blood was running freely. But for the thickness of his skull I believe it would have killed him.

Once again the sails of the Island Princess, as we watched her, filled with wind and she bore away across the sapphire blue of the sea with all her canvas spread, as beautiful a sight as I have ever seen. The changing lights in the sky painted the water with opalescent colors and tinted the sails gold and crimson and purple, and by and by, when the sun had set and the stars had come out and the ocean had darkened, we still could make her out, smaller and ghostlike in the distance, sailing away before light winds with the money and goods all under her hatches.

Laboring at the oars, we rowed on and on and on. Stars, by which we now held our course, grew bright overhead, and after a time we again saw dimly the shores of the island. We dared not stay at sea in a small open boat without food or water, and the island was our only refuge.

Presently we heard breakers and saw once more the bluff headlands that we had seen from the deck of the Island Princess. Remembering that there had been low shores farther south, we rowed on and on, interminably and at last, faint and weary, felt the keel of the boat grate on a muddy beach.

At all events we had come safely to land.