The H. Bedford-Jones Pulp Fiction Megapack

by H. Bedford-Jones

  Desmond leaned forward, and his arm swept out the automatic butt first. The man dropped without a word; a swarthy, lean, excellently dressed man.

  “It ain’t the lady’s father, anyhow,” said O’Sullivan, clawing at the figure. “I seen him with her last night. This one, now—”

  He produced an automatic, nodded as though satisfied, and awaited instructions.

  Desmond tried the skipper’s door, found it locked. He rapped sharply.

  “Who’s there?” sounded the skipper’s harsh tones. “Four bells, eh?”

  “Four bells, sir,” responded the fiddler, with a wink to Desmond.

  The door opened with a jerk. Desmond stepped in, and his automatic lay under the nose of Captain Canaughan.

  “Back and sit down, you!” he commanded simply.

  “For the love o’ Heaven!” growled the amazed and disgruntled skipper, falling back. “If it ain’t the popish lad—”

  “Papist yerself!” came the fiddler’s whining snarl from behind Desmond. “It’s an honest Orangeman I am, but with no love for a Belfast scut like yerself! Go on, ye Scots tarrier!”

  The brawny skipper ostentatiously threw up his hands, but he also threw up one boot. Desmond, however, had been watching for just such a move; he countered the kick with his knee and shin, and Captain Canaughan, uttering a stifled groan, went back against his bunk. He clung there for a moment.

  “Bruk my leg, you did!” he said with a grimace of pain.

  “Not yet,” and Desmond grinned. “But I will the next time. Shut the door, Michael Terence, and drag that lump o’ clay inside.”

  “Look here!” cried out the skipper suddenly. “This is mutiny, d’ye know that? There’s none to take charge of this ship but me—”

  “You’re right there, skipper,” said Desmond coolly. “We’ve just shot your mate, and now we’ll shoot you and have done with it.”

  For an instant the skipper’s sturdy face blanched. Then, looking Desmond in the eye, he relaxed and sat down on the edge of his bunk.

  “I should ha’ known better last night,” he said mournfully. “Oh, have ye killed poor Arevalo, too? Well, no matter. The ship will go down any minute now.”

  “Elucidate!” Desmond felt his head beginning to reel again in the closeness of the cabin. “Who’s this Arevalo? Who’s the lady?”

  Captain Canaughan elucidated. “And we’re driving along with no one to handle the ship, if you’ve killed the mate,” he concluded sourly.

  “He’s a pretty boy,” said Desmond, inspecting the Filipino. “Michael Terence! Call two of the men from above and have him carried for’ard. Let him take a hand at the work.”

  The fiddler grinned and departed. Canaughan uttered a growling protest.

  “Look here! This ain’t legal! You’ll hang for this killin’—”

  “Legal my eye!” said Desmond cheerfully. “What land are we heading for?”

  The skipper glanced at the telltale. “Headin’ for Point Galera and Mindoro, unless we’re driftin’ much. In an hour it’ll be blowin’ the sticks out of her. We’ll need the engine to get into the lee o’ Lubang or Cape Calavite. Then we’ll fetch Mamburu well enough.”

  “In other words, we’re heading south?” Desmond frowned as if puzzled. “Well, will you pass me your word to take my orders and to leave me and O’Sullivan unmolested?”

  “I will not,” returned Canaughan promptly. “I’ve me duty to the owners to consider, and I’m a righteous man. Ye can’t escape sea law, Desmond; a little craft like this even is harried down most amazing if there’s a thing wrong. That murder will hang ye. It does all very well in pirate stories, but this is no book, mind. All this sort o’ thing—”

  “You don’t compliment my brains, but I’ll surprise you there, skipper,” replied Desmond. A knock sounded at the door. “Come in!”

  O’Sullivan and the two men appeared. Desmond cocked his eye at the skipper.

  “Put Arevalo for’ard,” he said softly, “and in five minutes ye can go on deck free and unharmed. Otherwise—” He gestured with the weapon in his hand.

  “Carry that man for’ard,” ordered the skipper. “Empty a bucket over him.”

  The two men departed, bearing the limp figure of Arevalo between them, swinging to the lurch of the vessel.

  “I’ve not the heart to be shooting ye, skipper,” said Desmond simply. “Also, I’m in a bad way. So get out o’ here, with me blessing, and don’t come back. Stay above.”

  Canaughan started. “Don’t come back! And what does that mean, then?”

  “What it says. Have ye a gun on your person?”

  “No.” The skipper’s eye rolled longingly toward a desk in the corner.

  “Then go ahead; I’m thinking that we have more or less of a monopoly on the firearms aboard. Show the skipper out, Michael Terence, and mind his boot!”

  “Mutiny, this is; rank mutiny!” said the skipper hoarsely, his face purpling. “Ye’ll hang for it, I warn ye!”

  “Ah, but who’s to do the hanging?” Desmond laughed, and gestured toward the door. “You’ll not be needing your cozy cabin, skipper, dear; if you’ll take my advice, you’ll get those hatches battened down in a hurry. One good following sea will sink this walnut shell of a ship. So run up, like a good fellow!”

  A torrid exclamation, which did not partake of righteousness, fell from Captain Canaughan as the grinning fiddler opened the door and bowed mockingly; then the skipper was gone.

  Desmond relaxed in the bunk.

  “Lock the door, Michael Terence, and make sure o’ the bolts,” he said. “Help yourself to the skipper’s clothing, lad, and get warm. Wake me in a couple of hours, but not before, on the life of you! And no whisky, lad; we’re done with that, eh?”

  “But I’ve left me fiddle up for’ard!” protested O’Sullivan fiercely, his eyes widening with dismay. “Oh mhuire as truagh! Me old fiddle, that I’d not be losin’ for a mint o’ money—”

  “Leave it be, lad,” said Desmond drowsily. “They’ll batten on the hatches now, and the fiddle will be safe, I’ll warrant you. In two hours, mind, I’ll—”

  He rolled back in the bunk. O’Sullivan locked and bolted the door.

  CHAPTER III

  AREVALO TAKES CHARGE

  When Captain Miles Canaughan got on deck he found himself confronted by a situation entirely out of his experience and which laid him completely aback.

  For one thing, the San Gregorio was not at all on the course indicated by the telltale in his cabin; she was driving before the wind, and she was driving almost due west by three-quarters south. The mate had given these orders four hours previously when the skipper had gone below, said the helmsman—a great Norseman named Balderson. The mate, however, was dead, and no one else could explain these orders.

  For another thing, the schooner carried an auxiliary gasoline engine, and when Mr. Canaughan ordered this started he found it completely and efficiently smashed. What was worse, the skipper’s vigilant eye presently discovered that the small launch, carried forward in place of one of the boats, possessed a tarpaulin which was flapping. The lashings of the tarp had been cut, and the launch’s engine had also been put beautifully out of commission.

  Someone had wrecked the two engines, and someone had interfered with the telltale. Who was guilty and why? There was no answer. The men, all island riffraff with the exception of Balderson, protested absolute innocence and ignorance, and Canaughan was constrained to believe them. The mate was obviously guilty of setting a false course, and therefore must be to blame for the whole business.

  Bewildered, seeing himself able to blame Desmond for only a part of his own helpless position, with the hurricane wallowing down and the schooner going to the devil, the skipper set himself to the job of saving his ship. As the sea was rising fast, he fell to work making a sea anchor, which would hold the San Gregorio head to the wind and would let her ride out the night. She seemed to be driving along the track of Singapore traffic, so Captain Can
aughan got out his flags, hoisted NC, and swore at his men to move lively.

  At this juncture the dripping figure of Juan Arevalo approached him with difficulty.

  “Who hit me?” demanded the Filipino, holding one hand to his injured head.

  The skipper beckoned him into the shelter of the deckhouse, and briefly shouted that two of the crew had mutinied and were even now snugly ensconced in the skipper’s cabin. Juan Arevalo had already seen the mate’s body slipped over the rail, just before the fo’c’s’le hatch was battened down; but now he caught Canaughan’s arm and laid his lips to the skipper’s ear. His face, livid under its swarthy hue, worked desperately.

  “I’ve got to get below in a hurry!” he shouted.

  The skipper grinned in a sneer. “Stay where y’are,” he bawled. “No time to fool with ye now. Got to—”

  Arevalo’s keen features contorted in a sudden passion of anger.

  “I said I was going below!” he repeated furiously. “You fool, everything may be done by this time—Juliana—”

  Canaughan gave him a sharp look “What d’ye mean? Ye promised me there’d be no smuggling this trip. Well, anyhow, you stay here. We’ll be needing you soon enough.”

  A frightful cry broke from Arevalo. He shouted at two of the men, working a few feet away. At his call, they leaped up. Without warning, Arevalo swung his fist against the face of the incredulous skipper.

  Canaughan, with a bellow of rage, rushed for the Filipino, but his two men got in the way. One of them flung himself at Canaughan’s legs, the other whacked the skipper over the head with a club.

  The skipper had looked for no such mutinous play as this. The treachery caught him unawares, and he sprawled senseless on the deck before he quite knew what had happened. Arevalo searched him for a weapon, but vainly, and leaped up with a stormy fury in his keen, handsome features.

  “Throw him below, forward!” he ordered. “And get the battens off the after companion. I’ll have to go down.”

  “Wait!” One of the men caught at his arm, with a glance aft. “Balderson ain’t in on the deal. We ain’t had time to fix him.”

  Arevalo glanced at the helmsman, then laughed grimly. “Go and cut the ropes from the wheel. He’ll stay there, then, for if he left the helm the schooner would broach and go under. I’ll be back and interview Balderson before you get the sea anchor out, sabe?”

  Two more of the men were called. The body of Captain Canaughan was carried for’ard while Arevalo ran with the other two men to the after companion as though some furious impulse spurred him to get below.

  Balderson, his Viking figure straining at the helm, bellowed to the other men in frantic fury; for one of them had cut the ropes, and leave the wheel now he dared not. They laughed at him, yet in their laughter was fear of the skies and sea, dread in the shaking rigging above them, the weak confusion of uncaptained men. Balderson roared to close the hatches again, but they ignored him, for Arevalo had gone below aft, and as they waited, circling about Balderson at the helm, they drew gold from their pockets and grinned at the Norseman. And Balderson, being no fool, fell silent and waited.

  So the ship drove, open to the seas, leaderless, while ever the thunderous masses of water piled up astern and swept below, upheaving the careening schooner as they tossed her into the heavens, foaming away again ahead of her, the tiny rag of storm sail thrusting her onward like a wild thing.

  Presently the torso of Juan Arevalo rose from the after companionway and he beckoned the nearest men. His face was deathly white, and his dark eyes blazed with strange fires. Now, as always, these island ruffians stood in awe of his keen intellect and the infernal energy that drove him like some inward lash.

  “Send Balderson to me!” he shouted as they bent closer. His eyes darted to windward, searched the sky and sea; turning, he swept the horizon. Then he dropped into the passage below and waited, a revolver in his hand. A moment later Balderson, relieved from the helm, awkwardly swung through the opening and half fell down the ladder as a hissing comber swept the vessel high and twisted her against the helm.

  “Stand quiet, you!” said Arevalo, covering the big man. Down here, out of the smothering wind, one could speak and be heard. “I had no chance to see you last night. Do you want to earn five hundred, gold, with a hundred down in advance? Speak quickly.”

  The Norseman wiped the brine from his beard, looked into the revolver’s mouth, and assented:

  “Sure.”

  “The mate was in with me,” said Arevalo, picking his English word carefully. “But he was killed. So we must keep the skipper until later to navigate. You will see that he is tied up and stowed away in the forecastle, eh?”

  “Sure,” and Balderson nodded heavily. Then he grinned a little. “I’m glad the mate is gone. But the owner, Señor Salcedo?”

  A slight tremor seemed to pass over Arevalo’s countenance; a rippling quiver, as though somewhere inside of him the steel soul had buckled ever so little. Then he smiled thinly.

  “The don is dead,” he said with quiet precision. “No, I didn’t do it; ’twas those two men who killed the mate. They’re barricaded in the captain’s cabin now, and they can stay there for a while; we’ll batten the hatches presently. They must have stunk him out—shoved some Chinese punk under his door. It killed him. Doña Juliana is unconscious and sick, but safe.”

  Balderson looked steadily at the speaker for a moment.

  “That’s why you were in such a hell of a hurry to get below, huh?” he said, frowning in ponderous concentration. “You were afraid she would be killed, too. Huh!”

  Arevalo’s handsome features again showed that indefinable tremor. He had not thought that Balderson would so quickly perceive the truth. But he did not attempt further lies.

  “Yes,” he said with his deadly air of quiet, “yes, you’re right; but I’m going to keep the cap’n’s log—and those other two men did it. Understand?”

  Balderson scratched his head. Slow admiration dawned in his blue eyes.

  “The log? Then ye mean to shove along?”

  “Of course.” Arevalo showed impatience. “Don’t you understand that everything has to be proper? They’re responsible for the mate; I’ll make them responsible for everything else, including the broken engines.”

  “And—Doña Juliana?”

  “Marries me when we pick up the islands.”

  Again Balderson scratched his head. “Can’t keep it quiet,” he said heavily. “Too many in it. Me and the other five men.”

  Arevalo smiled. His teeth were very white and even.

  “I’m telling you. They won’t know the rest; they’re afraid of me, and they’ll keep quiet. Besides, they put the cap’n below, and they’ll be quick enough to let the two in the cabin be blamed, and ask no questions.”

  Balderson nodded with ponderous unraveling of thought.

  “Seems all right. Discharge all hands at Mindoro, huh, and get ’em shipped out on the first ship, huh? All right. We know you got the brains, Arevalo. But what’s the idea of runnin’ this course? This wind, now; she’s bad.”

  “The storm will suit us well enough,” returned Arevalo. “I have the chart, and the mate picked out the course. If the wind falls by tomorrow noon—and it will fall; this blow is a quick puff—we’ll be all right. Sure, there’s a reason! Leave it to me. One thousand extra to all hands if everything goes off well.”

  The Norseman’s frown cleared. “That’s good. Good! Huh?”

  “It ought to be. Send down two men to bring up Señor Salcedo; tell them he was killed by those two devils down here. Then we’ll batten down everything.”

  “And Doña Juliana?”

  “I’ll lock her in her cabin. She’s too sick to bother us until night, anyway. We can come down tonight and put the two men in irons if they give trouble, then make her comfortable. Leave that to me.”

  “You got brains, huh?” said Balderson admiringly, and held out his big hand. “Shake!”

  Smiling, Arev
alo shook hands with him; then the Norseman leaped to the deck above and swung his arm to the nearest of the men. But Arevalo, standing under the ladder below, did not see a dark figure that slipped off into the shadows of the passage, nor did he detect the opening and shutting of the captain’s cabin door.

  Michael Terence O’Sullivan sidled into the cabin, shut, locked, and bolted the door, and then dropped into a corner and propped himself against the pitch of the schooner. He produced a dirty handkerchief and wiped his face—and again. The cold sweat was breaking out upon him endlessly, and cowardice was wringing his soul. Since the days when the white plague had weakened him and stripped him of his own, O’Sullivan had come to calling himself a coward. And there was a fleck of red on his lips as he held down a cough.

  He had stolen out, meaning to have a try for that beloved fiddle of his, and he had all but walked upon Arevalo, standing there below the companion ladder. And he had heard the conversation with Balderson. As a result, O’Sullivan was now sweating for his skin, and for the skin of Gerald Desmond, who was fast asleep and snoring. With a final swipe at his brow, the fiddler pulled himself erect.

  “God help us all!” he said softly, with a sob in his throat that told the words for a prayer. Outside, he could hear a trampling of feet in the passage. He went to the desk in the corner and sat there. Presently he opened up the desk and began to go through it systematically. But he did not wake Desmond, for the time was far from up that Desmond had set. After he had rifled the skipper’s desk to his satisfaction, discovering nothing more lootable than thirty dollars in American bills, O’Sullivan went to the passage door and, after listening a moment, opened it. Outside, all was dark. Arevalo and his men had gone. The hatches were on fast. Already there was a perceptible difference in the movement of the ship. She no longer rose like a cork to the waves, but from the bows came heavy crashes; the sea anchor was out, and now she was sullenly heading into the wind and welter while the seas smashed into her bows and swept her foredeck.

  “Arevalo is facin’ the work of it, anyhow,” muttered O’Sullivan, shaking his head. “A bad one, he is! All this is crazy man’s work, yet the lad is as cool-blooded about it as a Scot! Aye, he’s a bad one, I’m thinkin’.”