Chapter XXXI: Pikes, Cutlasses, and Guns

As I hastily poured powder into the pan of my musket, a man sprang to our deck and dashed at Davie Paine, who thrust out a pike and impaled him as if he were a fowl on a spit, then reached for a musket. Another came and another; I saw them leap down singly. One of our new men whom we had signed at Canton raised his cutlass and sliced down the third man to board us; then they came on in an overwhelming stream.

Seeing that it would be suicide to attempt to maintain our ground, and that we already were cut off from the party on the quarter-deck, we retreated forward, fighting off the enemy as we went, and ten or a dozen of us took our stand on the forecastle.

Kipping and Falk and the beach-combers they had gathered together had conducted their campaign well. Some half of us were forward, half aft, so that we could not fire on the boarders without danger of hitting our own men. Davie Paine clubbed his musket and felled a strange white man, and Neddie Benson went down with a bullet through his thigh; then the pirates surged forward and almost around us. Before we realized what was happening, we had been forced back away from Neddie and had retreated to the knightheads. We saw a beast of a yellow ruffian stab Neddie with a kris, then one of our own men saw a chance to dart back under the very feet of our enemies and lay hold of Neddie's collar and drag him groaning up to us.

They came at us hotly, and we fought them off with pikes and cutlasses; but we were breathing hard now and our arms ached and our feet slipped. The circle of steel blades was steadily drawing closer.

That the end of our voyage had come, I was convinced, but I truly was not afraid to die. It was no credit to me; simply in the heat of action I found no time for fear. Parry and slash! Slash and parry! Blood was in my eyes. A cut burned across my right hand. My musket had fallen underfoot and I wielded a rusty blade that some one else had dropped. Fortunately the flesh wound I got from the musket-ball in our other battle had healed cleanly, and no lameness handicapped me.

We had no idea what was going on aft, and for my own part I supposed that Roger and the rest were in straits as sore as our own; but suddenly a tremendous report almost deafened us, and when our opponents turned to see what had happened we got an instant's breathing-space.

"It's the stern-chasers," Davie gasped. "They've faced 'em round!"

The light of a torch flared up and I saw shadowy shapes darting this way and that.

There were two cannon; but only one shot had been fired.

Suddenly Davie seized me by the shoulder. "See! See there!" he cried hoarsely in my ear.

I turned and followed his finger with my eyes. High on the stern of the junk, black against the starlit sky, I saw the unmistakable figure of Kipping. He was laughing--mildly. The outline of his body and the posture and motion of his head and shoulders all showed it. Then he leaped to the deck and we lost sight of him. Where he had mustered that horde of slant-eyed pirates, we never stopped to wonder. We had no time for idle questions.

I know that I, for one, finding time during the lull in the fighting to appraise our chances, expected to die there and then. A vastly greater force was attacking us, and we were divided as well as outnumbered. But if we were to die, we were determined to die fighting; so with our backs to the bulwark and with whatever weapons we had been able to snatch up in our hands, we defended ourselves as best we could and had no more respite to think of what was going on aft.

Only one stern gun, you remember, had been fired. Now the second spoke.

There was a yell of anguish as the ball cut through the midst of the pirates, a tremendous crash that followed almost instantly the report of the cannon, a sort of brooding hush, then a thunderous reverberation compared with which all other noises of the night had been as nothing.

Tongues of flame sprang skyward and a ghastly light shot far out on the sea. The junk heaved back, settled, turned slowly over and seemed to spread out into a great mass of wreckage. Pieces of timber and plank and spar came tumbling down and a few men scrambled to our decks. We could hear others crying out in the water, as they swam here and there or grasped at planks and beams to keep themselves afloat.

The cannon ball had penetrated the side of the junk and had exploded a great store of gunpowder.

Part of the wreckage of the junk was burning, and the flames threw a red glare over the strange scene aboard the ship, where the odds had been so suddenly altered. Our assailants, who but a moment before had had us at their mercy, now were confounded by the terrific blow they had received; instead of fighting the more bravely because no retreat was left them, they were confused and did not know which way to turn.

Davie Paine, sometimes so slow-witted, seemed now to grasp the situation with extraordinary quickness. "Come on, lads," he bellowed, "we've got 'em by the run."

Again clubbing his musket, he leaped into the gangway so ferociously that the pirates scrambled over the side, brown men and white, preferring to take their chances in the sea. As he charged on, I lost sight of him in the maelstrom of struggling figures. On my left a Lascar was fighting for his life against one of our new crew. On every side men were splashing and shouting and cursing.

Now, high above the uproar, I heard a voice, at once familiar and strange. For a moment I could not place it; it had a wild note that baffled me. Then I saw black Frank, cleaver in hand, come bounding out of the darkness. His arms and legs, like the legs of some huge tarantula, flew out at all angles as he ran, and in fierce gutturals he was yelling over and over again:--

"Whar's dat Kipping?"

He peered this way and that.

"Whar's dat Kipping?"

Out of the corner of my eye I saw some one stir by the deck-house, and the negro, seeing him at the same moment, leaped at my own conclusion.

In doubt whither to flee, too much of a coward at heart either to throw himself overboard or to face his enemy if there was any chance of escape, the unhappy Kipping hesitated one second too long. With a mighty lunge the negro caught him by the throat, and for a moment the two swayed back and forth in the open space between us and our enemies.

I thought of the night when they had fought together in the galley door. Momentarily Kipping seemed actually to hold his own against the mad negro; but his strength was of despair and almost at once we saw that it was failing.

"Stop!" Kipping cried. "I'll yield! Stop--stop! Don't kill me!"

For a moment the negro hesitated. He seemed bewildered; his very passion seemed to waver. Then I saw that Kipping, all the while holding the negro's wrist with his left hand, was fumbling for his sheath-knife with his right. With basest treachery he was about to knife his assailant at the very instant when he himself was crying for quarter. My shout of warning was lost in the general uproar; but the negro, though taken off his guard, had himself perceived Kipping's intentions.

By a sudden jerk he shook Kipping's hand off his wrist and raised high his sharp weapon.

From the shadow of the deck-house one of Kipping's own adherents sprang to his rescue, but Davie Paine--blundering old Davie!--knocked him flat.

For an instant the cook's weapon shone bright in the glare of the torches. Kipping snatched vainly at the black wrist above him, then jerked his knife clean out of the sheath--but too late.

"Ah got you now, you pow'ful fighter, you! Ah got you now, you dirty scut!" the cook yelled, and with one blow of his cleaver he split Kipping's skull to the chin.

* * * * *

When at last we braced the yards and drew away from the shattered fragments of the junk, which were drifting out to sea, we found that of the lawless company that so confidently had expected to murder us all, only five living men, one of whom was Captain Nathan Falk, were left aboard. They were a glum and angry little band of prisoners.

Lights and voices ashore indicated that some of our assailants had saved themselves, and by their cries and confused orders we knew that they in turn were rescuing others. Of their dead we had no record, but the number must have been large.

Of us six who had defied Falk in that time long ago, which we had come to regard almost as ancient history, only Neddie Benson had fallen. Although we had laughed time and again at the charming plump lady who had prophesied such terrible events, it had proved in bitter earnest a sad last voyage for Neddie.

From the low and distant land there continued to come what seemed to be only faint whispers of sound, yet we knew that they really were the cries of men fighting for their lives where the sea beat against the shore.

"Ah wonder," said the cook, grimly, "how dem yeh scalliwaggles gwine git along come Judgment when Gab'el blows his ho'n and Peter rattles his keys and all de wicked is a-wailin' and a-weepin' and a-gnashin' and can't git in nohow. Yass, sah. Ah guess dis yeh ol' nigger, he's gwine sit on de pearly gate and twiddle his toes at 'em."

He folded his arms and stood in the lantern light, with a dreamy expression on his grotesque face such as I had seen there once or twice before. When he glanced at me with that strange affection shining from his great eyes, he seemed like some big, benign dog. Never had I seen a calmer man. It seemed impossible that passion ever had contorted those homely black features.

But the others were discussing the fate of our prisoners. I heard Roger say, "Let me look at them, Mr. Cledd. I'll know them--some of them anyway. Ah, Captain Falk? And the carpenter? Well, well, well! We hadn't dared hope for the pleasure of your company on the return voyage. In fact, we'd quite given it up. I may add that we'd reconciled ourselves to the loss of it."

I now edged toward them, followed by the cook.

"Ay, Mr. Hamlin, it's all very well for you to talk like that," Falk replied in a trembling voice from which all arrogance had not yet vanished. "I'm lawful master of this here vessel, as you very well know. You're nothing but a mutineer and a pirate. Go ahead and kill me! Why don't you? You know I can tell a story that will send you to the gallows. What have I done, but try to get back the owners' property and defend it? To think that I could have knocked you and that addle-pated Ben Lathrop on the head any day I wished! And I wished it, too, but Kipping he said--"

Falk stopped suddenly.

"So Kipping had a finger in the pie, did he?" said Roger. "Well, Mr. Falk, what did Kipping say?"

Falk bit his lip sullenly and remained silent.

There really was something pathetic in the man's plight. He had been ambitious, and ambition alone, which often is a virtue, had gone far to contribute to his downfall. In many ways he was so weak! A quality that in other men might have led to almost anything good, in him had bred resentment and trickery and at last downright crime. He stood there now, ruined in his profession, the leader of a defeated band of criminals and vagabonds. Yet if he had succeeded in capturing the ship and putting the rest of us to death, he could have sailed her home to Salem, and by spreading his own version of the mutiny have gained great credit, and probably promotion, for himself.

"Well, Chips," said Roger, "I hope you, at least, are pleased with your prospects."

The carpenter likewise made no reply.

"Hm, Mr. Cledd, they haven't a great deal to say, have they?"

"Aha," the negro murmured just behind me, "dey's got fine prospec's, dey has. Dey's gwine dance, dey is, yass, sah, on de end of a rope, and after dey's done dance a while dey's gwine be leetle che'ubs, dey is, and flap dey wings and sing sweet on a golden harp. Yass, sah."

The carpenter shot an angry glance at the cook, but no one else paid him any attention.

A fire was flaming now on the distant shore. The seas rushed and gurgled along the side of the ship. Our lights dipped with the rigging as the ship rolled and tossed, now lifting her dripping sides high out of water, now plunging them again deep into the trough.

"Mr. Cledd, I think we can spare those five men a boat," Roger said, after a time.

"You're not going to let them go!" Mr. Cledd exclaimed.

"Yes."

Mr. Cledd raised his eyebrows, but silently acceded.

I thought that an expression of relief crossed Falk's face, yet dismay was mingled with it. Those were dark, inhospitable lands to leeward. The carpenter opened his mouth as if to speak, closed it without a word, and vacantly stared at Roger. The rest of us exchanged glances of surprise.

When we had hove to, they lowered the boat, fumbling at the falls while they did so, as if they were afraid to leave the ship. The seas caught the boat and bumped it against the side, but Falk still lingered, even when Roger indicated by a gesture that he was to go.

"Ay," he cried, "it's over the side and away. You're sending us to our death, Mr. Hamlin."

"To your death?" said Roger. "Sir, do you wish to return with us to Salem?"

Falk glared sullenly, but made no reply.

"Sir," Roger repeated sharply, "do you wish to return with us to Salem?"

Still there was no response.

"Ah, I thought not. Stay here, if you wish. I shall have you put in irons; I should not be justified in any other course. But in Salem we'll lay our two stories before the owners--ay, and before the law. Then, sir, if you are in the right and I am in the wrong, your triumph will repay you many times over for the discomforts of a few months in irons. No? Will you not come?"

Still Falk did not reply.

"Sir," Roger sternly cried, "if I were to take you back a prisoner to Salem, you'd go to the gallows by way of the courts. Here you can steer your own course--though in all probability the port will be the same."

Without another word Falk went over the side, and down by the chains to the boat that was bumping below. But before we cast off the painter, he looked up at us in the light of a lantern that some one held over the bulwark and cried bitterly, "I hope, Mr. Hamlin, you're satisfied now. I'm rightful master of that vessel in spite of all your high-handed tricks."

For the first time I noticed the marks of wounds that he had got in the fight off the island. His face was white and his eyes were at once fierce and hunted.

"You're mistaken," Roger replied. "I have papers from the firm's agent that appoint me as master." Then he laughed softly and added, "But any time you wish to carry our little dispute to the courts, you'll find me ready and willing to meet you there. Too ready, Mr. Falk, for your own good. No, Mr. Falk, it's better for you that you leave us here. Go your own gait. May you fare better than you deserve!"

We cast off the painter, and they rowed into the dark toward the shore of Java. They were men of broken fortunes, whose only hope for life lay in a land infested with cut-throat desperadoes. I thought of Kipping who lay dead on our deck. It seemed to me after all that Falk had got the worse punishment; he had aspired to better things; weak though he was, there had been the possibility of much good in his future. Now his career was shattered; never again could he go home to his own country.

Yet when all was said and done, it was more merciful to set him adrift than to bring him home to trial. Though he must suffer, he would suffer alone. The punishment that he so fully deserved would not be made more bitter by his knowing that all who knew him knew of his ruined life.

"Poor Falk!" I thought, and was amazed at myself for thinking almost kindly of him.