Part 2

Those tiny eyes held mine and studied me cruelly. Before them I felt stripped to the marrow of my soul. My dreams, my weaknesses, my failures seemed to stand out like print for Brack to read. His superior smile indicated that he had read, that he had appraised me for a weakling; and for the life of me I could not control the resentment that leaped within me.

I looked him as steadily in the eyes as I could. He saw the resentment that lay there; for an instant there flickered a new look in his eyes; then they were bland and smiling again. But that instant was enough for each of us to know that one could never be aught but the other’s enemy.

“I am glad to see you on board, Mr. Pitt, as they say in the navy,” said Captain Brack with deepest courtesy.

“I am glad to be on board, Captain Brack,” I replied steadfastly.

“It is a pleasure to have for shipmate a literary man like Mr. Pitt.”

“It is a pleasure to contemplate a voyage in such company as Captain Brack’s.”

“We shall strive to make the voyage as interesting as possible, for you, Mr. Pitt,” said he.

“I am sure of that,” said I, “and I will do my poor best to reciprocate.”

“In a rough seaman’s way I have studied a little—enough to be interested in books. So we have, in a way, a bond of interest to begin with.”

“Mr. Chanler has told me something of your achievements, Captain Brack; I am sure you belittle them.”

It was very ridiculous. Brack had put me on my mettle; so there we stood and slavered each other with fine speeches, each knowing well that the other meant not a word of the esteem that he uttered. Yet as the luncheon progressed I was inclined to agree with George: Brack was a wonderful chap. The man’s mind seemed to be a great, well-ordered storehouse of facts and impressions which he had collected in his travels. Sitting back in his chair he dominated the company, led the talk whither he willed, and having said his say, beamed contentedly. And before the meal was over I had a distinct impression that Brack not Chanler, was master on the yacht.

Chanler, Brack, Riordan and Dr. Olson drank steadily throughout the luncheon. Mr. Wilson and myself drank not at all. As the luncheon neared its end, Chanler, his eyes steady but his under lip hanging drunkenly, broke out:

“Well, how about it, cappy? Did you land your two bad men?”

“Yes,” said Brack. “After luncheon I can promise you a little sport.”

Chanler laughed a dreary, half-drunken laugh.

“Gardy, we’ve fixed up a little sport. Awf’lly dull lying here. Have to pass the time some way.”

“If I may make the suggestion,” said Brack courteously, “perhaps Mr. Pitt has duties or wishes which will prevent him from viewing our little sport.”

“Not ’tall, not ’tall,” said Chanler.

“Perhaps it would be well for Mr. Pitt to wait a few days until—shall we say until he has become more accustomed to our ways—before treating himself to a sight of our little amusements?”

“Why so?” I demanded.

“Oh, it is merely a suggestion. Our sport is rather primitive—the bare, crawling stuff of life without the perfumery, wrappings, or other fanciful hypocrisies of civilization. Mr. Pitt does not look like a man who would admit that life so exists, and therefore must refuse to behold it.”

Chanler turned from Brack to me, his teeth showing in a pleased smile.

“Ha! Hot shot for you, that, Gardy. What say, old peg; where’s your comeback—repartee, and all that?”

As I hesitated for a reply, he tapped the table impatiently.

“Come, come, Gardy! A little brilliance, please. We don’t let him touch us and get away without a counter, do we? Ha! At ’im, boy; at ’im!”

“As Mr. Brack——”

“Ha! Mister Brack! Well, struck, Gardy; go on.”

“As Captain Brack has failed to inform me what it is we are about to see I, of course, can not be expected to express any opinion on it,” I said. “But as concerns ‘the bare, crawling stuff of life,’ I will reply that Life no longer crawls, nor is it bare.”

Chanler turned his eyes upon Brack.

“Your shot, cappy. What say to that?”

Brack bowed.

“I will reply by asking Mr. Pitt why he thinks life no longer is bare and crawling?”

“Because,” said I, “the mind of man has decreed that it should not be so. Because mas has erected a civilization in order to insure that life shall not be bare and crawling.”

“Civilization is not the point,” said Brack. “We spoke of Life. We, as we stand here, clothed, barbered, wearing the products of machinery to hide our bodies, we are Civilization. We, as we enter the bathtub in the morning, are Life—forked radishes.” He rolled his great head far back and looked down his thick cheeks at me appraisingly. “Some are small radishes; others are large.”

“Ha! Rather raw on you with that last one, Gardy. Small and large ones. You are small, you know, Gardy, compared to me or the captain.”

“Size can scarcely matter to radishes,” I said.

“Cappy, cappy! He scored on you there. What say to that?”

“I will say—” began Captain Brack, but Chanler had tired of his sport as suddenly as he had become interested.

“Rot, rot!” he said, tapping on the table. “You were going to amuse us with your new finds. Let’s have it.”

“Very well,” said the captain, arising. “It will be ready in fifteen minutes.”

I was glad of that respite of fifteen minutes. It gave me an opportunity to slip into my stateroom and pull myself together. Brack had shaken and stirred me as I had not thought possible. His terrific personality had exerted upon me the effects of a powerful stimulant. Once or twice in my life I had taken whisky in sufficient quantity to cause me to experience thoughts, emotions, elations which did not properly belong in the normal, self-controlled Me. Now I experienced something of the same sensation. My mind was buzzing with a hundred swift impressions and conjectures upon Brack.

The picture I had beheld and the words I had heard through the swinging doors of Billy Taylor’s repeated themselves to me, and I felt the same sensation of a chill that I had felt upon recognizing in Brack the big man from the saloon. The words which the small man had uttered were fraught with sinister suggestion. From them it was apparent that he recognized in the captain a man who was known as “Laughing Devil,” whose reputation, if the seaman’s words might be taken for truth, was not of the sort that one would care to have in the captain of the yacht on which one was sailing into far seas. Also it was apparent from the man’s words that Brack had made some sort of proposition: “a rich sucker,” had been mentioned.

My course was plain before me: to go to Chanler’s state-room, tell him what I had seen and heard, and demand that he investigate Brack’s actions or permit me to resign my position. I had no definite idea of what the words between Brack and Madigan might portend, but there was no doubt that they established faithfully the captain’s character. In my depressed condition I shuddered at the idea of putting to sea with such a man.

But—Captain Brack had smiled. That smile stopped me. The appalling brutality of the captain’s mental processes had started within me a slow, steady flame. It was ghastly; the man’s expression had shown that he considered me a thing to play with! The brute had looked in my eyes, had stripped me to the marrow, read me for a weakling, and smiled, so that I might know that he had seen all! And the worst of it was that he was doing it with a mind which weighed me calmly, without prejudice, with scientific calmness.

It was not fair, it was not human. The man should at least have refrained from forcing me to see how weak he considered me. And was I so weak? Was I the worm he thought me to be?

“No!” I cried aloud; and I was pacing the floor when Simmons knocked on my door.

IV

Up on the roomy bridge of the yacht I found Chanler and Brack seated on deck stools drawn close to the rail, looking down upon the immaculate fore-deck. As I followed their example I saw near the port side two seamen holding a squat, heavy negro by a rope passed under his arms. The man was trembling and moaning.

“He’s a bad man and near the snakes from gin,” laughed Chanler. “Over there’s Garvin, who fought Sharkey a couple of times.”

The pugilist, a large, young man, flashily dressed, though miserably bedraggled, was leaning against the starboard rail, scowling darkly at the negro.

“Give you gin?” he was saying to the negro. “Give you gin? What yah talkin’ about, Smoke? Give you gin? Nix. I’m the guy who gets the gin. I’m Bill Garvin. That’s why I get the gin and you get hell.”

As the negro broke out into his terrible moaning, the pugilist’s debauched nerves seemed to snap.

“Stop him! —— you! You lousy ——! Stop him! If you don’t I’ll kick his head off—I’ll kick your black head off, Smoke; I’ll kick your head off.”

His mad wandering eyes caught sight of Brack on the bridge.

“How ’bout that, pal? Won’t I kick his —— black head off. I’m Bill Garvin.”

He took a step forward and stood staring at Brack. “Say, you’re the guy who was going to gimme booze, ain’t you? Billy wouldn’t let me run my face any more; you said, ‘Come on, I’ll take you where there’s lots of it.’ Well, how ’bout it, there? Hah! How ’bout it?”

Brack smiled down upon him. And his smile was the same as he had bestowed upon me; Garvin, too, was a thing to play with.

“Well, I don’t know, Garvin,” he replied. “I promised Black Sam the same thing. I think I shall give him drink before you. He said he’d kill you if you got a drink before him.”

The pugilist stared stupidly while the significance of these words seeped into his sodden brain. A weird smile distorted one side of his face.

“He—” pointing to the negro—“said he’d do that to me?” Thumping his chest he roared: “Kill me! Bill Garvin? Sa-a-ay!”

He lurched over to where the negro stood. At first he seemed undecided what to do. Then he suddenly reached forward and caught the black’s head in chancery, and bent furiously over it. There came a horrible growl from Garvin’s throat, a piercing scream from the negro. Garvin had bitten deeply into the black’s ear.

I started back from the rail, every sense revolting, and found Brack studying me, the smile with which he favored me fixed on his lips.

“So? The stomach is not strong enough, Mr. Pitt? You feel a faintness. Yes; I have even seen delicate ladies lose consciousness under similar circumstances.”

“I do not lose consciousness,”’ I replied, drawing a chair up to the railing and seating myself, “but at the same time I fail to see what amusement a civilized man can find in this spectacle.”

“So? You can not see that, Mr. Pitt? If it would not be rude I would say that it is the truly civilized man, so highly civilized that he is not troubled by sentimentality or humanitarian motives, who can appreciate spectacles of this nature. The scientific type of mind is the ultimate product of civilization, is it not, Mr. Pitt? Well, it is only the scientist who can view properly the bare, crawling thing called Life.”

“Rot, rot, rot!” interrupted Chanler, each word punctuated with a rap of his cane on the deck. “Put on your show, Brack. Hope that wasn’t all you dragged me out here for?”

“That was entirely impromptu. I had no idea Mr. Garvin was so versatile. The show follows. Dr. Olson.”

The little doctor appeared on the deck bearing a large bottle of whisky and a tumbler. First he filled the glass full and poured it down the negro’s gaping mouth, then served Garvin in the same way. The negro grew calmer as the stimulant took hold. He examined the rope with which he was imprisoned and seemed to realize his situation.

“Say, boss, ah ain’t done nuffin. What yah got me in heah foh?” he said in a rational tone of voice. “Lemme out, kain’t yah? Ah’m awri’.”

“Let him go,” said Brack.

The two seamen let go the rope and the black fell forward. Garvin waved his hands at the sea.

“That’s where you’ll go, Smoke—overboard in pieces.”

The negro was crouched against the wheel-house, rubbing his hands on his thighs, his small red eyes feasting on the pugilist, a stream of profanity flowing in low tones from his lips.

“Dah he be, Sam, dah he be,” he whispered. “Dah deh white —— what bit you eah. Got you eah, got you eah! What yah goin’ do ’bout it, what yah goin’ do, what you goin’ do?” His words came swifter and swifter; he crouched lower, his hands moved more rapidly. “Goin’ kill ’im, goin’ kill ’im, kill ’im—kill ’im. Ow!”

With such a howl as belonged in no human throat, he launched himself, a ball of black bounding across the deck, straight at Garvin. He came head down, like a bull charging, and, Garvin side-stepping, he plunged head and shoulders between two rods of the port railing, where he stuck.

Chanler laughed drily.

“Not so bad, cappy,” he drawled. “It promises to be amusing, really.”

Garvin fell upon the negro before the latter had freed himself. He caught one of the black’s hands, drew it upward, and bent the arm over the rail till it threatened to snap or tear out the muscles at the shoulders.

“No,” said Brack in the same tone he had used on Madigan in Taylor’s saloon. “No more of that, Garvin.”

The pugilist, his brutality warming with the work in hand, looked up, a leer of contempt on his face.

“You will let go of his arm, Garvin,” said Brack.

The fighter obeyed, releasing his hold reluctantly, but he obeyed nevertheless. The black thrust himself free of the rail and faced his tormentor.

“Get hold ob ’im, Sammy; get hold ob ’im!” he whispered loudly, and moved toward Garvin with slow shuffling steps.

Garvin waited until the instant when the negro had planned the final spring, then his fist flashed up from below his knees and the black fell like a thrown sack of grain against the wheel-house.

“By Jove!” said Chanler. “Your man Garvin is really promising, Brack. Ha! The nigger’s no cripple, either.”

Black Sam had come to his feet with a spring. Again began his slow, determined advance upon Garvin, again Garvin’s fist flew out and the negro dropped with a thud.

This happened four times, and the negro was red from the neck up. The fifth time his small round head dropped suddenly as Garvin launched another terrific blow. The fist and black poll met with a sharp crack. The negro was flung back on his haunches, but Garvin grasped his right hand and swore futilely. Garvin looked up at the bridge, holding forth his hand.

“Hey! Call ’im off; take a look at me meathook!” he shouted.

“You still have your feet,” said Brack.

The fight raged again. Garvin was on his back now, kicking furiously. At last a kick favored him; he knocked the negro down. But this was his undoing, for Black Sam in falling landed full length upon Garvin, and in an instant his short, thick fingers had closed upon the white man’s throat.

After awhile Brack gave a signal to Mr. Riordan, the chief engineer, who was standing below. Without any hurry or excitement, Riordan walked over and kicked the negro in the temple. The stunned black released his hold. With another kick Riordan lifted him clear off Garvin.

Brack turned toward Chanler.

“Well, are they worth keeping?”

“Oh, I s’pose so,” said Chanler, yawning as he rose. “Rather amusing. Suit yourself, cappy.”

“Come ’long, Gardy,” said Chanler, leading the way off the bridge. He chuckled a little pointing back toward the combatants. “Conceited scum, those. Fighting men. Bad men. Be interesting to see Brack make ’em behave.”

“Chanler,” I said, “do you mean to tell me that you found any pleasure watching that bestial fight?”

“Pleasure? Pleasure, Gardy? Ha! It’s a long time since I’ve met the lady, m’boy. But a chap’s got to do what he can to keep from being bored. They did it—a little. I’m bored now. Do something, Gardy, say something. Hang it, man; can’t you do as much for me as those two brutes? Simmons! Some other togs, please. These I’ve got on make me dopy.”

He strode down into the cabin, forgetting me absolutely in this new evanescent whim.

V

I stepped to the port rail and bared my head to the young Spring breeze. I was disgusted. The sense of something uncleanly seemed to cling to me from the spectacle on the fore-deck and I was grateful for the antiseptic feel of the wind with its pure odors.

“Pretty raw, wasn’t it, Mr. Pitt?”

I looked up and saw Pierce, the young wireless operator, standing beside me.

“Yep. I feel that way about it, too,” he went on. “Not that I’ve got anything against seeing a good battle any time, ’cause I was raised back o’ the Yards in Chicago, and no more need be said. But that—that go forward, that was too raw. Garvin, he’s a sure ’nough pug—he stayed ten rounds with Sharkey once when Tom was starting, but the poor stew was about ready to have the ‘willies’; and the poor dinge was seeing snakes. Naw, it was too raw. Ear-eating and that kind of stuff. They hadn’t ought to have matched ’em. They couldn’t put up half a battle, the shape they was.”

“I didn’t object to it on those grounds,” I said, and as I looked at his merry, freckled face I was forced to smile. “Though I can appreciate your artistic disapproval. It disgusted me because it was so useless and brutal.”

“That’s what I said,” he responded promptly. “It was useless, because it wasn’t half a go, and brutal because they wasn’t in shape to stand the punishment.”

“We are slightly apart in our view-points, I am afraid, Mr. Pierce.”

“But you’re with me that it was bum match-making?”

I nodded.

“And that a right guy—you know what I mean: a guy who was right all the way through—couldn’t get any fun out of watching it?”

I nodded again. Pierce placed both hands on the railing, running his fingers up and down as if on a keyboard, whistling softly through his teeth.

“Did you notice how the boss ate it up?” he said abruptly.

“Mr. Chanler?”

“Yep. He eyed it like—like it was a pretty little thing to him.”

I said nothing. Pierce resumed his whistling and finger-practise on the rail. Suddenly he turned and faced me squarely, his countenance uncomfortably serious, as it had been on the dock that morning.

“I suppose you’re thinking what an awful dub I am to be making a crack about the boss to one of his friends, ain’t you, Mr. Pitt?”

“Well, to be frank,” I replied, “I have been wondering at your doing so. How do you know that I won’t go straight to Mr. Chanler with your words? I won’t do it, of course, but I would prefer that you do not discuss Mr. Chanler with me. One doesn’t do such things, you know.”

“No,” he said, “I didn’t know; I was raised back o’ the Yards. But if you say, ‘nix on it,’ nix it is. What—what do you think of the boat, Mr. Pitt? We can discuss that, can’t we?”

“Freely,” I laughed. “From what I’ve seen the _Wanderer_ is a remarkable yacht.”

“And you haven’t seen anything but the gingerbread work. I’m off watch. Come on; let’s walk around and pipe her off. It’ll take the taste of that bum battle out of your mouth.”

I accepted willingly, and for an hour Pierce piloted me about the yacht.

The _Wanderer_ is a craft of wonders. I have Pierce’s word that the yacht is 152 feet long on the water line with her present load, and that the load is the maximum which we could carry with safety. Her size below the cabin deck is amazing. In her engine room are some of the largest gasoline engines ever placed in a yacht, if Pierce’s information is correct. There are two great gleaming batteries of them, each battery capable of driving us at a speed of ten knots an hour, the two combined able to hurry us along at fourteen knots, if necessary. Besides this we have a small auxiliary engine and propeller, a novelty installed by the former owner, Harrison. We could smash both of our major engines and the auxiliary still would move us.

Built into the bows are the reserve gasoline tanks. There is enough fuel in them, says Pierce, to drive the _Wanderer_ twice around the world. Aft of these vast tanks are the storerooms. They are locked. Captain Brack has the key, but Freddy assures me that enough provisions have been loaded into them to keep our company of fifteen men well fed for two years.

“Which certainly is playing safe, seeing as we’re not supposed to get frozen in,” said he, as we completed our tour below decks. “Now, come on and I’ll show you my private office.”

He led the way up a ladder to the little wireless house on the aft of the main cabin. This was Pierce’s room. His bunk was beside the table on which were his instruments, and he had covered the walls—“decorated,” he called it—with newspaper cuts of celebrated baseball players, pugilists, motor-racers, and women of the musical comedy stage. Lajoie’s picture was next to Terry McGovern’s, and Chevrolet’s beside Miss Anna Held’s. I smiled as I seated myself.

“Something of a connoisseur, I see, Pierce.”

“Whatever that means,” he responded. He had become serious again. He took a cigaret paper from his pocket, absently tore it to pieces and sat glancing out over the waters of the Sound.

“So you don’t know a Jane—a girl named Miss Beatrice Baldwin, Mr. Pitt?” he said, as if he had been thinking of saying it for a long time.

“You asked me that this morning,” said I. “Why do you think I might know her?”

“You’n’ the Boss is close friends, ain’t you?”

“I wouldn’t say ‘close friends’.”

“I know. But you know him back East, and train with him, and know the bunch he trains with back there, don’t you?”

“Oh, yes, to a certain extent.”

“That’s why I thought you might have heard of this Jane—Miss Baldwin, I mean.”

“I assure you, Pierce,” I said, smiling, “that one would have to possess a much larger circle of acquaintances than I have to know all the young ladies of Mr. Chanler’s acquaintance.”

He looked up.

“Is he that kind of a guy?” he asked.

“What kind do you mean?”

“A charmer, a Jane-chaser, lady-killer?”

The perfect naiveté with which he uttered this outrageous slang brought me to hearty laughter, the first of long time.

“Mr. Chanler,” I said, suppressing my amusement, “is a much sought after man.”

“Sure; he’s got the dough. But does he chase ’em back? Eh? Is he—Here, I’ll put it up to you straight: would you let your own sister go walking with him alone in the park after dark?”

I rose. But for the life of me I could not hold offense in the face of his honest, worried expression.

“Pierce,” I said, “that is another thing one does not do—ask such questions. And I have told you that you are not to discuss Mr. Chanler with me.”

“Aw, the devil!” he blurted. “Why can’t you be human? You’re a reg’lar fellow; I can see it in the back of your eyes. I’m a reg’lar fellow. Why can’t we get together?”

“Not on a discussion of Mr. Chanler behind his back,” I chuckled. “It isn’t done.”

Pierce doubled himself up on the stool which he was sitting on and grasped his thin ankles in his hands.

“All right, then,” he said moodily. “But I want to tell you I’ve been handling messages between the boss and a Miss Beatrice Baldwin; and he sent her one this morning and got a reply; and—I wished I’d never learned wireless, that’s all.”

“Mr. Chanler is a gentleman,” I said severely.

“A gentleman?” said Pierce gloomily. “I suppose that makes it all right, then, eh? But nevertheless and notwithstanding, I wish I hadn’t learned wireless, just the same. And you don’t even ask me what the message was about,” he continued as I remained silent. “That’s the difference: I’d have asked first crack; you’re a gent. You don’t ask at all.”

“Naturally not,” I replied. “That’s another thing one doesn’t do. I won’t even permit you to tell me what it was.”

“You won’t?”

“Decidedly not.”

“Not even if I tell you——”

“No.”