Part 13

"And keep that mutt aloft till four bells. If he fails to answer the bells, keep him aloft the whole watch."

"Is that all, sir? Is the watch relieved?"

"Watch is relieved, all right. No need o' mustering and counting this moonlight night. You have the deck now. Watch out!"

"Yes, sir," I answered; then, stepping into the weather alley, I sent my voice forward, "Weather main- and cro'-jack clew-garnets and buntlines," I shouted, "and come aft here, some o' you, and take in this spanker!"

"What are you taking in the spanker for?" asked the mate as I resumed my position beside Tom, ready to aid him if necessary.

"Do you want charge of the deck again, sir?" I answered. "It's one man's job."

"Leave the spanker on her. Haul up your clews, if you like," he said. Then he began a short pacing back and forth before the wheel, evidently working himself into a rage that was based on the girl's rebuff. He continued this pacing until the men, under the boatswain of the watch, had hauled up the weather clews, which allowed the wind to impinge upon the foresail. Then, seeing that Tom made easier work of the steering--even though, because of the spanker, he steered with the wheel nearly hard up--Mr. Butterell was ready for an explosion.

"You look out, young fellow!" he said, halting me as I moved toward the weather alley. "I'll take the conceit out o' you yet!"

I looked him squarely in the eyes. I do not know that Mabel's rebuke had heartened me. I only remembered that I had lost her regard, that I had lost my skipper's good will, and that the last five years of work and effort, as far as advancement was concerned, had been wasted.

"Take care, sir," I said, quietly, "and do not forget the conditions under which I have allowed you to live this long!"

Then, in a cold rage, I turned my back on him and took my place at the forward end of the alley, where I could stand my watch in touch with both ends of the ship. He did not follow, and soon I heard him talking amicably with Mabel.

I did not look aft, as I could gauge Tom's steering by the swing of the fore yard against the few stars showing in the strong moonlight, and I noticed that the men forward were seeking sheltered and shady spots to doze away the watch--as is always permitted in easy ships--and that the lookout on the forecastle deck was pacing back and forth, wide awake. All was well with the ship, and with me, except for the irritating conversation on the quarter.

The talk continued until three bells had struck--and with each striking of the bell Bill aloft had obediently answered--then the mate shouldered his way past me and went to his room, leaving the girl still seated in the chair. I did not go aft again until nearly four bells, when I went to take the reading of the patent log at the taffrail. As I passed the girl she half rose, as though to speak to me; then, as I moved sullenly on, sank back in her chair. A glance into the binnacle showed me the ship on her course, and a glance at Tom showed him with his left shoulder braced against a spoke, steering by easing the wheel down and painfully heaving it up. I looked aloft at the swelling canvas, noticed that Bill sprawled over the lee upper topsail yard, and saw that nothing could be done in the way of bracing the yards. The spanker should have come in; for, with the ship griping like this, she would have broached to in ten seconds if Tom lost his grip on the wheel. But the mate had forbidden it, and I let it stand.

I took the reading of the log, and again passed stiffly before Mabel, going forward again by the weather alley, down the steps, and into the companionway to the desk in the passage, where I jotted down on the log slate the happenings of the watch. I could hear Mr. Butterell snoring heavily in his room on the lee, or port, side, and, wondering at his utterly nerveless makeup in being able to go to sleep so readily after a fit of anger, I closed the slate and turned toward the door.

At this moment a hoarse, guttural, hair-raising scream rang out, followed instantly by another in a higher key, and I sprang out, looking wildly about me for the cause. Mabel lay prone on the deck at the foot of the lee steps and I reached her at a bound. There was no blood nor marks, nothing to show what had hurt her and caused her to scream, and I stood up, bewildered. The men forward had wakened, and some were coming aft haltingly. I called to them, to question them, when out of the companion door burst the captain in his pajamas.

"What's happened?" he asked excitedly. "My girl screamed! What is it?"

"I do not know, sir," I answered. "I heard her scream from the log desk, and found her here."

He examined the unconscious girl, then said, "She has only fainted, I think. Call the mate and the steward. We must get her below."

For the first time since Mr. Butterell had joined the ship I opened the door of his room and looked in. He lay face up in his berth beneath the open window, with the handle of a sheath knife sticking up from his chest. It had been driven home, and as I looked, horror-stricken at the sight, four bells struck at the wheel, and Bill's voice came from aloft, "Four bells, and all's well!"

Twenty minutes later I was locked in my room, charged by the excited Captain Merwin with murdering the mate. "Find the motive; find the man!" he had stormed. He had heard me threaten again through his window as he was undressing for bed, and nothing that I could say as to another man's threatening, too, had the slightest effect. His daughter had evidently seen, and had fainted from the shock. When she recovered she would, no doubt, so testify.

With the boatswain standing my watch, I sat there until midnight; then, as the other boatswain relieved him, I crawled into my berth, but not to sleep. The problem would not permit it; for it was a problem that would not solve. But, in my casting about for a solution, I was forced to exonerate Bill, the only man besides myself with the "motive." For how could Bill, whom I had seen on the yard just before going below, descend to the lee alley, knife the mate through the window, and get aloft in time to answer at four bells?

Mentally counting my steps along the alley and down to the passage, the half-minute or so while I was engaged at the log slate, and the succeeding interval of time between his death scream and Bill's call from aloft, I found it incredible. Even had he been able so to time his descent by any means as to reach the window before I had closed the log slate, still the men had wakened at the scream, and one or more would have seen him before he could have got out of sight behind the cro'-jack on his way aloft. As for Tom, who also had a motive, though a lesser one, he was out of the question. There were no beckets nor lanyards with which to secure the wheel, and had he dropped it the canvas would have been in ribbons before he could reach the window. The steward, who slept off the forward cabin, had come out, rubbing his eyes, palpably stupid from recent sleep; and he had no motive--the mate had liked him. When I had sprung on deck the strong moonlight had shown it clear of men as far forward as the main hatch, from which a few were arousing themselves. The murderer could not have run forward.

Who else? I asked myself. Mabel? She could have run forward by the lee alley after I had gone down by the other; but why? She had no motive for the crime, and if she had why would she have chosen such a moment, when discovery was inevitable? Then, too, it required strength beyond hers to drive a sheath knife to the handle into the body of a man. No, Mabel was also out of the question; but there came to my mind the equally disquieting query, What was she doing on the main deck, or in the alley near the mate's room, at that time of night? This I could not answer; but at daylight it was answered for me.

Captain Merwin opened the door of my room, and I rolled out of my berth. "Mr. Rogers," he said, "I owe you an apology. You did not kill the mate. She has recovered and explained."

"Who did, sir?" I asked.

"One of the twin stowaways, she does not know which. I have ironed them both in the 'tween deck; but they accuse each other."

"Brotherly love with a vengeance!" I commented. "But I cannot see how either could have done it."

"My daughter saw one of them at the window. Here she is."

Mabel, her glorious hair disheveled, her face pale and drawn, her eyes tear stained, pushed into the room, and incontinently fell into my arms, her own around my neck.

"Oh, it's over!" she said brokenly. "It's over at last--and the strain, and the worry! I could not have stood it much longer! I knew last night that I couldn't; but you wouldn't let me speak!"

"Mabel, Mabel!" said her father. "Steady yourself, my girl!"

"Papa, go away!" she said. "I want to talk with Mr. Rogers, and you could not understand--you haven't understood, at all."

He paused a moment; but she straightened herself before him and pointed to the door. He left us together.

"And you did not understand, either," she said, turning to me. "You thought I enjoyed his conversation, and his society, and his maddening attentions. Why couldn't you see? It was only to quiet him, to flatter his insufferable vanity, and keep him from further assault upon you. I knew--I knew by your face that first day out that you would kill him if he struck you again; and then--then the consequences! You had warned him, threatened, and nothing would have saved you. They would have hanged you--and what should I have done then?"

"And you did this for me, Mabel? Do you really care for me?"

"Since I first saw you," she said, her face flaming with color. "I should not tell you now," she added, "only for what has happened; for I heard your opinion of me that same evening."

"Then you also heard, Mabel," I said, as I took her again in my arms, "that I have loved you, and waited for you, since you were a child."

"Yes," she answered simply. "Perhaps, after all, that is why I am telling you now. I might have told you last night, and followed you down to the main deck; but when I looked in you were busy, and I went to the lee steps to go back and wait for you. Then I saw him at the window, and--and I heard--and screamed. I must have fainted, and when I wakened a little while ago Papa told me you had killed him--and I knew better."

"God love you, Mabel!" I said. "But what roused you last night--to tell me--to follow me?"

"What he threatened after you had warned him again. He purposed to strike you again on the first pretext, and allow you to attempt his life; then to have you imprisoned for murderous assault. He did not believe you would actually kill him; but I knew you would. I wanted to beg you not to try, to be patient, to hold your temper."

"Had you asked me that, Mabel," I said, "I think I should."

After breakfast that morning the body of the mate was given sea burial; then there followed a curious court of inquiry at the mizzen hatch--a court in which the two accused prisoners were also witnesses against each other, and in which the testimony of the only positive witness was invalidated by lack of identification. Mabel could only say that she had seen one of them draw his head and shoulders out of the mate's window just as his agonized scream had smitten her ears, and look into her face as she peered at him from the head of the steps. But she could not tell one from the other. The men had heard the screams; but had seen nothing but myself, bending over the girl.

Bill's testimony was direct and short. He did not change it, nor attempt to qualify it. The sheath knife was his, he admitted, and it had not been touched by him. On the yard he had seen me go forward and into the companion; he had seen the girl follow, peer in at me, and go to the lee steps; and he had seen Tom leave the wheel when the girl had entered the alley, hurry along the lee alley, pick up the knife, reach into the window, and leave it there. He had heard the two screams, had seen me emerge and bend over the girl after she had fallen down the steps, had seen the captain arrive, and when four bells had struck he had answered and come down; for his punishment had ended.

Tom had more to say. First, he had seen Bill drop from the bight of a lee cro'-jack buntline to the house just where the knife was placed. He had seen him pick up the knife, jump to the alley, and after the mate had screamed spring back to the house and disappear behind the cro'-jack as he climbed the buntline. He had watched him farther aloft as he appeared on the cro'-jack yard, and had seen him go up the lee topmast rigging to the upper yard from which, when he had struck four bells, he had answered.

"You inhuman pair of scoundrels!" spluttered Captain Merwin indignantly. "No matter which is guilty--for a twin brother to swear away the life of the other! It is incredible, unheard of! Why didn't you speak at once--either of you--both of you?"

To this they each coolly announced a satisfaction with the death of the mate and a disinterestedness in the fate of the other as to minimize their responsibility.

I now further clouded the case by my own speculations; that Tom could not have left the wheel without the ship's broaching to, and that Bill had not the time in which to descend and return, even had he been able to choose the exact moment. But to this Tom gave immediate answer.

"Can you remember the time it took, sir," he asked me, "from your lookin' at him aloft to your hearin' him sing out at four bells?"

"About four minutes," I said, after a moment's thought.

"Now, I'll prove it, sir, that it was plenty of time. I s'pose the lee buntlines haven't been touched since then, have they?"

The boatswains testified that they had not, and Tom requested that his irons be removed for his demonstration. He was freed, and stepped toward the weather alley. "Now, I'll go aloft, Mr. Rogers," he said, "to the same place on the yard as he was, and you take the same place on the quarter where you was when you seed him up there. Then you start forward, just as you did, and I'll do just what he did."

The captain nodded assent to this, and I went aft to the log while Tom danced aloft to the lee topsail yard. "All ready, sir!" he called. "Start now!"

I faithfully reproduced my steps along the alley, down to the main deck, and into the passage, where I killed time at the log desk. As I turned to leave it I heard Tom call, "Now it is, sir!" from the mate's window, and, stepping out on deck, I went through the pantomime of leaning over Mabel, talking with the captain, and going to the mate's room to call him. Before I had reached the door, however, Tom's voice came from aloft. "Four bells!" he shouted. "All's well!"

I came out. The captain was holding his watch, and Tom was leisurely descending.

"You were slightly mistaken, Mr. Rogers," said the captain. "He did it in less than three minutes. He slid down the middle buntlines of the treesails, took time enough at the window, and went up hand over hand forward of the cro'-jack, then up the topmast rigging. He has proved his innocence by proving his brother guilty. But--God help such brothers!"

"And Gawd help you, you old fool," yelled Bill, as he waved his manacled hands at the skipper, "if I get out o' this fix! I didn't kill him, though I meant to, and I'll kill you yet as sure as I meant to kill him!"

"Down below with him, Mr. Rogers!" said the captain, and I took the frenzied Bill to the 'tween deck, where I lashed him to a stanchion, still raving and threatening, not only the captain, but his brother Tom and myself.

"For it's you," he raved, "that give him a chance to show off his climbin'! What if there was time? D'ye think I'd ha' been fool enough, up aloft where I could see, to come down on that job with the girl puttin' herself in the way? He was on the poop, and couldn't see where she was."

Though I made him no answer, I confess that this aspect of the case troubled me as we sailed on toward Sydney. I said no more about it, though at the trial of Bill at Sydney I introduced it in my testimony. It had little weight. A captain's preconceived opinion of a sailor's guilt often has more influence in court than solid evidence to the contrary, and Bill was convicted of murder in the first degree on the testimony of his brother and the captain's story of the climb.

We went to sea before he was sentenced; I as first mate, and Mabel as my promised wife. And, though the rest of the crew had deserted the murder ship, Tom went with us; for he wanted, he said, to get as far away from his brother, dead or alive, as was possible. And with his brother in limbo Tom was really a changed character, lively, anxious to please, and ambitious to learn. He seemed grateful to me, and accorded me his confidence, showing me his sheath knife one day with its point broken off.

"For I want no murder in mine, sir!" he said. "I know I've got a bad temper, and I know these knives can go deep. No hangman's knots for me, Mr. Rogers! Say, sir, will you show me how to make one?"

Not without repugnance did I make the grisly exhibit for him in the end of a rope. He practiced it until proficient, and then, gleefully and grinning, made hangman's nooses in ropes' ends until the men, with the suasion of the forecastle, changed his mood.

The change seemed permanent. His unpleasant grin gave way to the old and equally unpleasant scowl and nervous manner. He grew irritable, and one morning was so offensively familiar with Mabel and so insolent to Captain Merwin and myself that I ordered him aloft in his watch below for punishment, giving him as a task the making up of gaskets on the mizzen. Then I paid him no attention until four bells, when the helmsman, looking aloft as he struck the bell, sang out, "Great God, sir! Look!"

Tom, neatly noosed with a hangman's knot under his ear, was swaying at the end of an upper mizzentopsail yard gasket which depended from the place on the yard where his brother had clung the night of the murder.

I had begun to dread the sound of "four bells." This division of the watch is at two, six, and ten o'clock, night or day. At six in the evening I had threatened the life of the mate; at ten in the evening he had been killed; and at ten in the morning Tom had hanged himself.

What fatal or momentous event was to happen some day or night at two o'clock, I could not imagine; but an incident that occurred near the end of the homeward run led me to hope that the account had been settled. We were holystoning the decks, and a man working his stone near the wheel one afternoon found an obstruction in the deck, which he pried out and handed to me.

It was a small, flat, triangular piece of steel, sharpened on one edge, the end of a sheath-knife blade. It had been driven or pressed into the deck by some powerful force, then broken off, exactly as though used as a brace between a spoke and the deck to hold the wheel steady while the helmsman left it for a moment or two. As I came to this conclusion the man at the wheel struck four bells, and I tossed it overboard.

I said nothing about it to the captain or to Mabel; but news from Sydney that had beaten us by steamer to New York could not be concealed. On that day, at ten in the morning, Sydney time, his brother Bill had been hanged in the jail yard.

KISMET

Two babies in cabs pushed by their mothers met in a park. While the mothers talked the babies eyed each other for a few moments, then set up a blended scream of such volume and intensity as to break up the conversation and separate the party.

Five years later they met again in a kindergarten, and the pair, not knowing each other's names, but animated by a soul hatred coeval with the beginning of emotion, tried to stare each other out of countenance. Failing in this, they made faces, earnestly and spitefully, until reproved by the teacher and separated. One was soon taken away, its parents having removed their residence.

At eleven years of age they again faced one another, two vigorous boys from different streets of the city, each a leader of his band. There had been a "gang fight," a battle with sticks and stones, with charges and countercharges, retreats and routs. There had been a challenge from one leader, accepted by the other. They stood for a moment, each backed by his following; then one reached down for a chip, which he placed on his shoulder. All boyhood knows the consequences of knocking off a chip; but this one was not knocked off. The other boy also reached for a chip and placed it on his shoulder. And so they stood, silent, scowling, each waiting for a move on the part of the other, each dominated by a hate and a fear that he could not measure by any experience, but which surpassed in strength and grip all other emotions he had known.

"Soak him, Jonesy! Knock it off!" "Don't take that from any man, Smithy! Hit him!" "What's the matter with you?" "Paste him!" came from the combined following; but neither made a move. Slowly, like two tomcats similarly placed, with baleful, glittering eyes, they backed away until surrounded by their followers. Then came cries of derision and contempt, ending in a vigorous onslaught by both leaders, in which several critics bit the dust, and which partly restored their prestige. But it took many days of such tutelage before the discredited leaders regained their influence over the weaker spirits and impressed upon them the fact that they were not afraid to fight. Their excuses and explanations were many, but bore no relation to the real cause of the delinquency.

There were no more gang fights, to the relief of the residents and the police, and the enemies tried to avoid meeting; but when it was unavoidable they passed with quick, defiant, and sullen glances into each other's eyes. Once an involuntary raising of a hand by one was construed into a menace by the other, but he got no farther than to duplicate the gesture. Some intangible power seemed to paralyze his tongue and his muscles. Yet neither boy was a coward in the ordinary sense, nor lacking in the qualities of generosity and forgiveness. Young Smith, while bathing with other boys in the East River at Eighty-sixth Street, swam out into the swift current after a drowning lad, larger than himself, and who had lately bullied him on land, and, by diving again and again, secured him, only to find himself too exhausted to bring him in. A passing tug rescued them, the bully unconscious and Smith at his last gasp. The newspapers made him a hero, and the grateful bully, knowing Smith's enemy, offered to thrash him; but the same paralyzing inhibition prevented Smith from sanctioning this.

Jones, employed as elevator boy in a high building, emulated the feat a little later. Cool, and steady of nerve, he ran his car up and down through the smoke of a fire that gutted the building, and brought down to safety a half-hundred people, being rescued himself on the last trip, suffocating on the floor of his car. He, too, was made a hero, but bore his honors as modestly as Smith.