Cursed

“Respiration?” And Filhiol peered over his glasses at her as he sat there before his washstand, on which he had spread a newspaper, now covered with various little piles of powder.

“Hal?” cried the old man, turning very white. That evil had indeed come to him was certain now. He strode to his desk, dropped the revolver into the top drawer and closed it, th...

It would be difficult to tell how long the wounded boy lay there, but after a certain time, some vague glimmering of consciousness returned. No light came back. Neither was moti...

The old man said nothing at all, as Hal drew near, but only peered at him from under those white-thatched brows of his, with eyes of stern reproach. This still further quickened...

“My undoing was the fact that nature gave me brute strength,” said he. “Those were hard, bad days, and I had a hard, bad fist; and together with the hot blood in me, and the Old...

Decision, after dinner, crystallized into action. First of all the doctor interviewed Ezra in the galley, and from him extracted a binding promise to make no mention before Capt...

The miracle of a new day’s sunshine—golden over green earth, foam-collared shore and shining sea—brought another miracle almost as great as that which had transformed somber nig...

Thus she remained, holding to a silver birch, leaning out a little toward the chasm. Up from the depths echoed a gurgling roar as the white fury drenched and belabored the gray,...

“He’ll steal no more of my Old Jamaica,” exulted Briggs, flinging himself into a chair by the table. “And that sniveling boy will give me no more of his infernal lip! Skunks!” H...

In silence now the capstan turned. No Malays hummed or spoke. Only the grunting of their breath, oppressed by toil and the thrust of the bars, kept rough time with the slither o...

By the time he had navigated back to Snug Haven, he was wet to the bone, and was shivering with the drive of the gale now piling gray lines of breakers along the shore. Dr. Filh...

For a moment, Briggs and Scurlock confronted each other, separated by the length of the gangway. Between them stretched silence; though on the bund a cackle and chatter of nativ...

“T’ hell wid it!” shouted another. “He ain’t gonna lambaste half our crew an’ the ole man, an’ git away wid it! Come on, if there’s one o’ ye wid the guts of a man. We’ll rush t...

If you will add into one total all that is sunniest and most sheltered, all that hangs heaviest with the perfume of old-fashioned New England gardens, all that most cozily combi...

Dr. Filhiol, leaning on his cane, confronted him. Hal knew trouble lay dead ahead. Standing there in shirt-sleeves, with litter and confusion of packing all about, and two half-...

“Where Hal’s going I don’t know, Laura,” the doctor answered, “except it’s evident he’s planning to escape from here for good. He may be bound for the South Seas with some crazy...

Sadly returning home, Laura stopped for a moment at her garden gate to make quite sure her father was not in the side yard. With all her girlish dreams broken and draggled, the...

He remained motionless a moment, gazing about him, taking account of any little changes that had been wrought in the past months. At sight of him the old captain, despite all hi...

Old Captain Briggs, meanwhile, absorbed in the most cheerful speculations, was putting his best foot forward on the road to Hadlock’s Wharf. A vigorous foot it was, indeed, and...

Hal’s boots, clumping heavily on the porch, aroused the captain from his brief revery of prayer. Almost at once the new stab of pain at realization that Dr. Filhiol must see Hal...

He took up a heavy walking-stick, and started to clamber down out of the buggy. Captain Briggs, flinging open the gate, reached him just in time to keep him from collapsing in t...

All the Malays were herded in the deck-house, informed that they were sons of swine and that the first one who showed a face on deck, till wanted, would be shot dead. The doctor...

A sorry spectacle he made, tousled, bleary-eyed, with pain-contracted forehead where the devil’s own headache was driving spikes. Right hand showed lacerations, from having stru...

“Hello, Master Hal, sir,” said he. “Always studyin’, ain’t you?” Voice and expression alike showed intense pride. Above, Filhiol bent an ear of keenest attention. “Ain’t many yo...

As the captain sat there expectantly on the piazza, telescope across his knees, dog by his side, a step sounded in the hallway of Snug Haven, and out issued Ezra, blinking in th...

Fergus McLaughlin, though down, had not yet taken the count. True, Hal had felled him to his own deck, half-stunned; but the wiry Scot, toughened by many seas, had never yet lea...

“Oh, nothing,” Hal answered, while certain taggers-on stopped at a respectful distance. “I’ve just been arguing with McLaughlin, aboard the _Sylvia Fletcher_. It’s nothing at al...

“Whew, but it’s hot and stifling in here, gramp!” said he. He turned and opened a window, letting the damp, chill wind draw through. “There, that’s better now. Well, what’s the...

Hal Briggs had little thought of trouble as he strode away in search of Laura. Very hot was his blood as he swung down the shaded street toward the house of Nathaniel Maynard, f...

The full significance of the curse burning deep into his brain, old Captain Briggs sat there on the bed a moment longer, his eyes fixed on the slip of paper. Then, with a new an...

Dawn, leaping out of Motomolo Strait, flinging its gold-wrought, crimson mantle over an oily sea that ached with crawling color, found the clipper ship, whereon rested the curse...

Four months from that red morning, the _Silver Fleece_ drew in past Nix’s Mate and the low-buttressed islands in Boston Harbor, and with a tug to ease her to her berth, made fas...

In mid-scene, sunk on Ulu Salama bar only a few fathoms from where the _Silver Fleece_ had lain, rested the dismantled wreck of the proa. The unpitying sun flooded that wreck—wh...

Breakfast—served on a regulation ship’s table, with swivel-chairs screwed to the floor and with a rack above for tumblers and plates—made up by its overflowing happiness for all...

Briggs entered his cabin, and locked both doors; then fastened the window giving on the porch. He went to the fireplace, overhung with all that savage arsenal, and put a couple...

The doctor, presently finishing with Briggs, turned his attention to the other injured ones. At the top of the companion now stood the captain with wicked eyes, as up the ladder...

The voice of Filhiol startled Briggs. In the door of the cabin he saw the old man standing with a look of puzzled anxiety. Through the window Filhiol had seen him take down the...

Comfortably installed in a huge easy-chair beside the freshly built fire in the “cabin” of Snug Haven and with one of Ezra Trefethen’s most artful egg-nogs within easy reach, th...

Sweltering though the cabin was, it seemed to Dr. Filhiol a blessèd haven of refuge from the probabilities of grevious harm that menaced, without. With a deep breath of relief h...

Cold, slashing rain and boistering gusts left his wrath uncooled. Ugly, brutalized, he kept his way past the smithy—past Laura’s house, and so with glowering eyes on into the ev...

The shot that Wansley fired, a chance shot hardly aimed at all, must have been guided by the finger of the captain’s guardian genius. It crumpled the Malay, with strangely spraw...

Slashed across the copper bowl of sunset, the jagged silhouette of tawny-shouldered mountains, fringed with areca-palms in black fretwork against the swift-fading glow, divided...

I regret that I must write you again in regard to your grandson, Haldane Briggs, but necessity leaves no choice. This communication does not deal with an unimportant breach of d...

Though a freshening east wind was now beginning to add a raw salt tang to the air, troubled by a louder suspiration of surf, and though the fluttering of the poplar-leaves, whic...