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The Mucker

by Edgar Rice Burroughs · English · Gutenberg #331 · 697,530 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Mucker

Author: Edgar Rice Burroughs


        
Release date: September 1, 1995 [eBook #331]
                Most recently updated: March 14, 2018

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/331

Credits: Produced by Judith Boss, and David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MUCKER ***




Produced by Judith Boss





THE MUCKER

By Edgar Rice Burroughs



THE MUCKER: Originally published serially in All-Story Cavalier Weekly.
Copyright (c) 1914, by The Frank A. Munsey Co.

THE RETURN OF THE MUCKER: Sequel to THE MUCKER. Originally published
serially in All-Story Weekly. Copyright (c) 1916, by The Frank A. Munsey
Co.

First Ballantine Edition: January, 1966

Manufactured in the United States of America

BALLANTINE BOOKS, INC. 101 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10003




PART I.



CHAPTER I. BILLY BYRNE


BILLY BYRNE was a product of the streets and alleys of Chicago's great
West Side. From Halsted to Robey, and from Grand Avenue to Lake Street
there was scarce a bartender whom Billy knew not by his first name. And,
in proportion to their number which was considerably less, he knew the
patrolmen and plain clothes men equally as well, but not so pleasantly.

His kindergarten education had commenced in an alley back of a
feed-store. Here a gang of older boys and men were wont to congregate
at such times as they had naught else to occupy their time, and as the
bridewell was the only place in which they ever held a job for more than
a day or two, they had considerable time to devote to congregating.

They were pickpockets and second-story men, made and in the making, and
all were muckers, ready to insult the first woman who passed, or pick
a quarrel with any stranger who did not appear too burly. By night they
plied their real vocations. By day they sat in the alley behind the
feedstore and drank beer from a battered tin pail.

The question of labor involved in transporting the pail, empty, to the
saloon across the street, and returning it, full, to the alley back of
the feed-store was solved by the presence of admiring and envious little
boys of the neighborhood who hung, wide-eyed and thrilled, about these
heroes of their childish lives.

Billy Byrne, at six, was rushing the can for this noble band, and
incidentally picking up his knowledge of life and the rudiments of his
education. He gloried in the fact that he was personally acquainted with
“Eddie” Welch, and that with his own ears he had heard “Eddie” tell the
gang how he stuck up a guy on West Lake Street within fifty yards of the
Twenty-eighth Precinct Police Station.

The kindergarten period lasted until Billy was ten; then he commenced
“swiping” brass faucets from vacant buildings and selling them to a
fence who ran a junkshop on Lincoln Street near Kinzie.

From this man he obtained the hint that graduated him to a higher grade,
so that at twelve he was robbing freight cars in the yards along Kinzie
Street, and it was about this same time that he commenced to find
pleasure in the feel of his fist against the jaw of a fellow-man.

He had had his boyish scraps with his fellows off and on ever since he
could remember; but his first real fight came when he was twelve. He
had had an altercation with an erstwhile pal over the division of the
returns from some freight-car booty. The gang was all present, and as
words quickly gave place to blows, as they have a habit of doing in
certain sections of the West Side, the men and boys formed a rough ring
about the contestants.

The battle was a long one. The two were rolling about in the dust of
the alley quite as often as they were upon their feet exchanging blows.
There was nothing fair, nor decent, nor scientific about their methods.
They gouged and bit and tore. They used knees and elbows and feet, and
but for the timely presence of a brickbat beneath his fingers at the
psychological moment Billy Byrne would have gone down to humiliating
defeat. As it was the other boy went down, and for a week Billy remained
hidden by one of the gang pending the report from the hospital.

When word came that the patient would live, Billy felt an immense load
lifted from his shoulders, for he dreaded arrest and experience with
the law that he had learned from childhood to deride and hate. Of course
there was the loss of prestige that would naturally have accrued to him
could he have been pointed out as the “guy that croaked Sheehan”; but
there is always a fly in the ointment, and Billy only sighed and came
out of his temporary retirement.

That battle started Billy to thinking, and the result of that
mental activity was a determination to learn to handle his mitts
scientifically--people of the West Side do not have hands; they are
equipped by Nature with mitts and dukes. A few have paws and flippers.

He had no opportunity to realize his new dream for several years; but
when he was about seventeen a neighbor's son surprised his little world
by suddenly developing from an unknown teamster into a locally famous
light-weight.

The young man never had been affiliated with the gang, as his escutcheon
was defiled with a record of steady employment. So Billy had known
nothing of the sparring lessons his young neighbor had taken, or of the
work he had done at the down-town gymnasium of Larry Hilmore.

Now it happened that while the new light-weight was unknown to the
charmed circle of the gang, Billy knew him fairly well by reason of
the proximity of their respective parental back yards, and so when the
glamour of pugilistic success haloed the young man Billy lost no time in
basking in the light of reflected glory.

He saw much of his new hero all the following winter. He accompanied him
to many mills, and on one glorious occasion occupied a position in the
coming champion's corner. When the prize fighter toured, Billy continued
to hang around Hilmore's place, running errands and doing odd jobs, the
while he picked up pugilistic lore, and absorbed the spirit of the
game along with the rudiments and finer points of its science, almost
unconsciously. Then his ambition changed. Once he had longed to shine as
a gunman; now he was determined to become a prize fighter; but the
old gang still saw much of him, and he was a familiar figure about the
saloon corners along Grand Avenue and Lake Street.

During this period Billy neglected the box cars on Kinzie Street,
partially because he felt that he was fitted for more dignified
employment, and as well for the fact that the railroad company had
doubled the number of watchmen in the yards; but there were times when
he felt the old yearning for excitement and adventure. These times were
usually coincident with an acute financial depression in Billy's change
pocket, and then he would fare forth in the still watches of the night,
with a couple of boon companions and roll a souse, or stick up a saloon.

It was upon an occasion of this nature that an event occurred which was
fated later to change the entire course of Billy Byrne's life. Upon
the West Side the older gangs are jealous of the sanctity of their own
territory. Outsiders do not trespass with impunity. From Halsted to
Robey, and from Lake to Grand lay the broad hunting preserve of Kelly's
gang, to which Billy had been almost born, one might say. Kelly owned
the feed-store back of which the gang had loafed for years, and though
himself a respectable businessman his name had been attached to the
pack of hoodlums who held forth at his back door as the easiest means of
locating and identifying its motley members.

The police and citizenry of this great territory were the natural
enemies and prey of Kelly's gang, but as the kings of old protected
the deer of their great forests from poachers, so Kelly's gang felt
it incumbent upon them to safeguard the lives and property which they
considered theirs by divine right. It is doubtful that they thought of
the matter in just this way, but the effect was the same.

And so it was that as Billy Byrne wended homeward alone in the wee hours
of the morning after emptying the cash drawer of old Schneider's saloon
and locking the weeping Schneider in his own ice box, he was deeply
grieved and angered to see three rank outsiders from Twelfth Street
beating Patrolman Stanley Lasky with his own baton, the while they
simultaneously strove to kick in his ribs with their heavy boots.

Now Lasky was no friend of Billy Byrne; but the officer had been
born and raised in the district and was attached to the Twenty-eighth
Precinct Station on Lake Street near Ashland Avenue, and so was part
and parcel of the natural possession of the gang. Billy felt that it was
entirely ethical to beat up a cop, provided you confined your efforts
to those of your own district; but for a bunch of yaps from south
of Twelfth Street to attempt to pull off any such coarse work in his
bailiwick--why it was unthinkable.

A hero and rescuer of lesser experience than Billy Byrne would
have rushed melodramatically into the midst of the fray, and in all
probability have had his face pushed completely through the back of his
head, for the guys from Twelfth Street were not of the rah-rah-boy type
of hoodlum--they were bad men, with an upper case B. So Billy crept
stealthily along in the shadows until he was quite close to them, and
behind them. On the way he had gathered up a cute little granite paving
block, than which there is nothing in the world harder, not even a
Twelfth Street skull. He was quite close now to one of the men--he who
was wielding the officer's club to such excellent disadvantage to the
officer--and then he raised the paving block only to lower it silently
and suddenly upon the back of that unsuspecting head--“and then there
were two.”

Before the man's companions realized what had happened Billy had
possessed himself of the fallen club and struck one of them a blinding,
staggering blow across the eyes. Then number three pulled his gun and
fired point-blank at Billy. The bullet tore through the mucker's left
shoulder. It would have sent a more highly organized and nervously
inclined man to the pavement; but Billy was neither highly organized nor
nervously inclined, so that about the only immediate effect it had upon
him was to make him mad--before he had been but peeved--peeved at the
rank crust that had permitted these cheap-skates from south of Twelfth
Street to work his territory.

Thoroughly aroused, Billy was a wonder. From a long line of burly
ancestors he had inherited the physique of a prize bull. From earliest
childhood he had fought, always unfairly, so that he knew all the tricks
of street fighting. During the past year there had been added to Billy's
natural fighting ability and instinct a knowledge of the scientific
end of the sport. The result was something appalling--to the gink from
Twelfth Street.

Before he knew whether his shot had killed Billy his gun had been
wrenched from his hand and flung across the street; he was down on the
granite with a hand as hard as the paving block scrambling his facial
attractions beyond hope of recall.

By this time Patrolman Lasky had staggered to his feet, and most
opportunely at that, for the man whom Billy had dazed with the club was
recovering. Lasky promptly put him to sleep with the butt of the gun
that he had been unable to draw when first attacked, then he turned to
assist Billy. But it was not Billy who needed assistance--it was the
gentleman from Bohemia. With difficulty Lasky dragged Billy from his
prey.

“Leave enough of him for the inquest,” pleaded Lasky.

When the wagon arrived Billy had disappeared, but Lasky had recognized
him and thereafter the two had nodded pleasantly to each other upon such
occasions as they chanced to meet upon the street.

Two years elapsed before the event transpired which proved a crisis in
Billy's life. During this period his existence had been much the same as
before. He had collected what was coming to him from careless and less
muscular citizens. He had helped to stick up a half-dozen saloons. He
had robbed the night men in two elevated stations, and for a while had
been upon the pay-roll of a certain union and done strong arm work in
all parts of the city for twenty-five dollars a week.

By day he was a general utility man about Larry Hilmore's boxing
academy, and time and time again Hilmore urged him to quit drinking
and live straight, for he saw in the young giant the makings of a great
heavy-weight; but Billy couldn't leave the booze alone, and so the best
that he got was an occasional five spot for appearing in preliminary
bouts with third- and fourth-rate heavies and has-beens; but during the
three years that he had hung about Hilmore's he had acquired an enviable
knowledge of the manly art of self-defense.

On the night that things really began to happen in the life of Billy
Byrne that estimable gentleman was lolling in front of a saloon at the
corner of Lake and Robey. The dips that congregated nightly there under
the protection of the powerful politician who owned the place were
commencing to assemble. Billy knew them all, and nodded to them as they
passed him. He noted surprise in the faces of several as they saw him
standing there. He wondered what it was all about, and determined to ask
the next man who evinced even mute wonderment at his presence what was
eating him.

Then Billy saw a harness bull strolling toward him from the east. It was
Lasky. When Lasky saw Billy he too opened his eyes in surprise, and when
he came quite close to the mucker he whispered something to him, though
he kept his eyes straight ahead as though he had not seen Billy at all.

In deference to the whispered request Billy presently strolled around
the corner toward Walnut Street, but at the alley back of the saloon he
turned suddenly in. A hundred yards up the alley he found Lasky in the
shadow of a telephone pole.

“Wotinell are you doin' around here?” asked the patrolman. “Didn't you
know that Sheehan had peached?”

Two nights before old man Schneider, goaded to desperation by the
repeated raids upon his cash drawer, had shown fight when he again
had been invited to elevate his hands, and the holdup men had shot him
through the heart. Sheehan had been arrested on suspicion.

Billy had not been with Sheehan that night. As a matter of fact he never
had trained with him, for, since the boyish battle that the two had
waged, there had always been ill feeling between them; but with Lasky's
words Billy knew what had happened.

“Sheehan says I done it, eh?” he questioned.

“That's what he says.”

“I wasn't within a mile of Schneider's that night,” protested Billy.

“The Lieut thinks different,” said Lasky. “He'd be only too glad to soak
you; for you've always been too slick to get nicked before. Orders is
out to get you, and if I were you I'd beat it and beat it quick. I don't
have to tell you why I'm handing you this, but it's all I can do for
you. Now take my advice and make yourself scarce, though you'll have
to go some to make your get-away now--every man on the force has your
description by this time.”

Billy turned without a word and walked east in the alley toward Lincoln
Street. Lasky returned to Robey Street. In Lincoln Street Billy walked
north to Kinzie. Here he entered the railroad yards. An hour later he
was bumping out of town toward the West on a fast freight. Three weeks
later he found himself in San Francisco. He had no money, but the
methods that had so often replenished his depleted exchequer at home he
felt would serve the same purpose here.

Being unfamiliar with San Francisco, Billy did not know where best to
work, but when by accident he stumbled upon a street where there were
many saloons whose patrons were obviously seafaring men Billy was
distinctly elated. What could be better for his purpose than a drunken
sailor?

He entered one of the saloons and stood watching a game of cards,
or thus he seemed to be occupied. As a matter of fact his eyes were
constantly upon the alert, roving about the room to wherever a man was
in the act of paying for a round of drinks that a fat wallet might be
located.

Presently one that filled him with longing rewarded his careful watch.
The man was sitting at a table a short distance from Billy. Two other
men were with him. As he paid the waiter from a well-filled pocketbook
he looked up to meet Billy's eyes upon him.

With a drunken smile he beckoned to the mucker to join them. Billy felt
that Fate was overkind to him, and he lost no time in heeding her call.
A moment later he was sitting at the table with the three sailors, and
had ordered a drop of red-eye.

The stranger was very lavish in his entertainment. He scarcely waited
for Billy to drain one glass before he ordered another, and once after
Billy had left the table for a moment he found a fresh drink awaiting
him when he returned--his host had already poured it for him.

It was this last drink that did the business.



CHAPTER II. SHANGHAIED

WHEN Billy opened his eyes again he could not recall, for the instant,
very much of his recent past. At last he remembered with painful regret
the drunken sailor it had been his intention to roll. He felt deeply
chagrined that his rightful prey should have escaped him. He couldn't
understand how it had happened.

“This Frisco booze must be something fierce,” thought Billy.

His head ached frightfully and he was very sick. So sick that the room
in which he lay seemed to be rising and falling in a horribly realistic
manner. Every time it dropped it brought Billy's stomach nearly to his
mouth.

Billy shut his eyes. Still the awful sensation. Billy groaned. He never
had been so sick in all his life before, and, my, how his poor head did
hurt. Finding that it only seemed to make matters worse when he closed
his eyes Billy opened them again.

He looked about the room in which he lay. He found it a stuffy hole
filled with bunks in tiers three deep around the sides. In the center of
the room was a table. Above the table a lamp hung suspended from one of
the wooden beams of the ceiling.

The lamp arrested Billy's attention. It was swinging back and forth
rather violently. This could not be a hallucination. The room might seem
to be rising and falling, but that lamp could not seem to be swinging
around in any such manner if it were not really and truly swinging. He
couldn't account for it. Again he shut his eyes for a moment. When he
opened them to look again at the lamp he found it still swung as before.

Cautiously he slid from his bunk to the floor. It was with difficulty
that he kept his feet. Still that might be but the effects of the
liquor. At last he reached the table to which he clung for support while
he extended one hand toward the lamp.

There was no longer any doubt! The lamp was beating back and forth like
the clapper of a great bell. Where was he? Billy sought a window. He
found some little round, glass-covered holes near the low ceiling at one
side of the room. It was only at the greatest risk to life and limb that
he managed to crawl on all fours to one of them.

As he straightened up and glanced through he was appalled at the
sight that met his eyes. As far as he could see there was naught but a
tumbling waste of water. And then the truth of what had happened to him
broke upon his understanding.

“An' I was goin' to roll that guy!” he muttered in helpless
bewilderment. “I was a-goin' to roll him, and now look here wot he has
done to me!”

At that moment a light appeared above as the hatch was raised, and Billy
saw the feet and legs of a large man descending the ladder from above.
When the newcomer reached the floor and turned to look about his eyes
met Billy's, and Billy saw that it was his host of the previous evening.

“Well, my hearty, how goes it?” asked the stranger.

“You pulled it off pretty slick,” said Billy.

“What do you mean?” asked the other with a frown.

“Come off,” said Billy; “you know what I mean.”

“Look here,” replied the other coldly. “Don't you forget that I'm mate
of this ship, an' that you want to speak respectful to me if you ain't
lookin' for trouble. My name's MR. Ward, an' when you speak to me say
SIR. Understand?”

Billy scratched his head, and blinked his eyes. He never before had
been spoken to in any such fashion--at least not since he had put on the
avoirdupois of manhood. His head ached horribly and he was sick to his
stomach--frightfully sick. His mind was more upon his physical suffering
than upon what the mate was saying, so that quite a perceptible interval
of time elapsed before the true dimensions of the affront to his dignity
commenced to percolate into the befogged and pain-racked convolutions of
his brain.

The mate thought that his bluster had bluffed the new hand. That was
what he had come below to accomplish. Experience had taught him that an
early lesson in discipline and subordination saved unpleasant encounters
in the future. He also had learned that there is no better time to put
a bluff of this nature across than when the victim is suffering from the
after-effects of whiskey and a drug--mentality, vitality, and courage
are then at their lowest ebb. A brave man often is reduced to the
pitiful condition of a yellow dog when nausea sits astride his stomach.

But the mate was not acquainted with Billy Byrne of Kelly's gang.
Billy's brain was befuddled, so that it took some time for an idea to
wriggle its way through, but his courage was all there, and all to the
good. Billy was a mucker, a hoodlum, a gangster, a thug, a tough. When
he fought, his methods would have brought a flush of shame to the face
of His Satanic Majesty. He had hit oftener from behind than from before.
He had always taken every advantage of size and weight and numbers that
he could call to his assistance. He was an insulter of girls and women.
He was a bar-room brawler, and a saloon-corner loafer. He was all that
was dirty, and mean, and contemptible, and cowardly in the eyes of a
brave man, and yet, notwithstanding all this, Billy Byrne was no coward.
He was what he was because of training and environment. He knew no other
methods; no other code. Whatever the meager ethics of his kind he would
have lived up to them to the death. He never had squealed on a pal,
and he never had left a wounded friend to fall into the hands of the
enemy--the police.

Nor had he ever let a man speak to him, as the mate had spoken, and get
away with it, and so, while he did not act as quickly as would have been
his wont had his brain been clear, he did act; but the interval of time
had led the mate into an erroneous conception of its cause, and into
a further rash show of authority, and had thrown him off his guard as
well.

“What you need,” said the mate, advancing toward Billy, “is a bash on
the beezer. It'll help you remember that you ain't nothin' but a dirty
damn landlubber, an' when your betters come around you'll--”

But what Billy would have done in the presence of his betters remained
stillborn in the mate's imagination in the face of what Billy really
did do to his better as that worthy swung a sudden, vicious blow at the
mucker's face.

Billy Byrne had not been scrapping with third- and fourth-rate heavies,
and sparring with real, live ones for nothing. The mate's fist whistled
through empty air; the blear-eyed hunk of clay that had seemed such
easy prey to him was metamorphosed on the instant into an alert, catlike
bundle of steel sinews, and Billy Byrne swung that awful right with the
pile-driver weight, that even The Big Smoke himself had acknowledged
respect for, straight to the short ribs of his antagonist.

With a screech of surprise and pain the mate crumpled in the far corner
of the forecastle, rammed halfway beneath a bunk by the force of the
terrific blow. Like a tiger Billy Byrne was after him, and dragging the
man out into the center of the floor space he beat and mauled him until
his victim's blood-curdling shrieks echoed through the ship from stem to
stern.

When the captain, followed by a half-dozen seamen rushed down the
companionway, he found Billy sitting astride the prostrate form of the
mate. His great fingers circled the man's throat, and with mighty blows
he was dashing the fellow's head against the hard floor. Another moment
and murder would have been complete.

“Avast there!” cried the captain, and as though to punctuate his remark
he swung the heavy stick he usually carried full upon the back of
Billy's head. It was that blow that saved the mate's life, for when
Billy came to he found himself in a dark and smelly hole, chained and
padlocked to a heavy stanchion.

They kept Billy there for a week; but every day the captain visited him
in an attempt to show him the error of his way. The medium used by the
skipper for impressing his ideas of discipline upon Billy was a large,
hard stick. At the end of the week it was necessary to carry Billy above
to keep the rats from devouring him, for the continued beatings and
starvation had reduced him to little more than an unconscious mass of
raw and bleeding meat.

“There,” remarked the skipper, as he viewed his work by the light of
day, “I guess that fellow'll know his place next time an officer an' a
gentleman speaks to him.”

That Billy survived is one of the hitherto unrecorded miracles of the
power of matter over mind. A man of intellect, of imagination, a being
of nerves, would have succumbed to the shock alone; but Billy was not as
these. He simply lay still and thoughtless, except for half-formed ideas
of revenge, until Nature, unaided, built up what the captain had so
ruthlessly torn down.

Ten days after they brought him up from the hold Billy was limping
about the deck of the Halfmoon doing light manual labor. From the other
sailors aboard he learned that he was not the only member of the crew
who had been shanghaied. Aside from a half-dozen reckless men from the
criminal classes who had signed voluntarily, either because they could
not get a berth upon a decent ship, or desired to flit as quietly from
the law zone of the United States as possible, not a man was there who
had been signed regularly.

They were as tough and vicious a lot as Fate ever had foregathered in
one forecastle, and with them Billy Byrne felt perfectly at home. His
early threats of awful vengeance to be wreaked upon the mate and skipper
had subsided with the rough but sensible advice of his messmates. The
mate, for his part, gave no indication of harboring the assault that
Billy had made upon him other than to assign the most dangerous or
disagreeable duties of the ship to the mucker whenever it was possible
to do so; but the result of this was to hasten Billy's nautical
education, and keep him in excellent physical trim.

All traces of alcohol had long since vanished from the young man's
system. His face showed the effects of his enforced abstemiousness in
a marked degree. The red, puffy, blotchy complexion had given way to a
clear, tanned skin; bright eyes supplanted the bleary, bloodshot things
that had given the bestial expression to his face in the past. His
features, always regular and strong, had taken on a peculiarly refined
dignity from the salt air, the clean life, and the dangerous occupation
of the deep-sea sailor, that would have put Kelly's gang to a pinch to
have recognized their erstwhile crony had he suddenly appeared in their
midst in the alley back of the feed-store on Grand Avenue.

With the new life Billy found himself taking on a new character. He
surprised himself singing at his work--he whose whole life up to now had
been devoted to dodging honest labor--whose motto had been: The
world owes me a living, and it's up to me to collect it. Also, he was
surprised to discover that he liked to work, that he took keen pride in
striving to outdo the men who worked with him, and this spirit, despite
the suspicion which the captain entertained of Billy since the episode
of the forecastle, went far to making his life more endurable on board
the Halfmoon, for workers such as the mucker developed into are not to
be sneezed at, and though he had little idea of subordination it was
worth putting up with something to keep him in condition to work. It was
this line of reasoning that saved Billy's skull on one or two occasions
when his impudence had been sufficient to have provoked the skipper to
a personal assault upon him under ordinary conditions; and Mr. Ward,
having tasted of Billy's medicine once, had no craving for another
encounter with him that would entail personal conflict.

The entire crew was made up of ruffians and unhung murderers, but
Skipper Simms had had little experience with seamen of any other ilk,
so he handled them roughshod, using his horny fist, and the short, heavy
stick that he habitually carried, in lieu of argument; but with the
exception of Billy the men all had served before the mast in the past,
so that ship's discipline was to some extent ingrained in them all.

Enjoying his work, the life was not an unpleasant one for the mucker.
The men of the forecastle were of the kind he had always known--there
was no honor among them, no virtue, no kindliness, no decency. With them
Billy was at home--he scarcely missed the old gang. He made his friends
among them, and his enemies. He picked quarrels, as had been his way
since childhood. His science and his great strength, together with his
endless stock of underhand tricks brought him out of each encounter
with fresh laurels. Presently he found it difficult to pick a fight--his
messmates had had enough of him. They left him severely alone.

These ofttimes bloody battles engendered no deep-seated hatred in the
hearts of the defeated. They were part of the day's work and play of the
half-brutes that Skipper Simms had gathered together. There was only one
man aboard whom Billy really hated. That was the passenger, and Billy
hated him, not because of anything that the man had said or done to
Billy, for he had never even so much as spoken to the mucker, but
because of the fine clothes and superior air which marked him plainly to
Billy as one of that loathed element of society--a gentleman.

Billy hated everything that was respectable. He had hated the smug,
self-satisfied merchants of Grand Avenue. He had writhed in torture at
the sight of every shiny, purring automobile that had ever passed him
with its load of well-groomed men and women. A clean, stiff collar
was to Billy as a red rag to a bull. Cleanliness, success, opulence,
decency, spelled but one thing to Billy--physical weakness; and he hated
physical weakness. His idea of indicating strength and manliness lay in
displaying as much of brutality and uncouthness as possible. To assist
a woman over a mud hole would have seemed to Billy an acknowledgement of
pusillanimity--to stick out his foot and trip her so that she sprawled
full length in it, the hall-mark of bluff manliness. And so he hated,
with all the strength of a strong nature, the immaculate, courteous,
well-bred man who paced the deck each day smoking a fragrant cigar after
his meals.

Inwardly he wondered what the dude was doing on board such a vessel as
the Halfmoon, and marveled that so weak a thing dared venture among real
men. Billy's contempt caused him to notice the passenger more than he
would have been ready to admit. He saw that the man's face was handsome,
but there was an unpleasant shiftiness to his brown eyes; and then,
entirely outside of his former reasons for hating him, Billy came to
loathe him intuitively, as one who was not to be trusted. Finally his
dislike for the man became an obsession. He haunted, when discipline
permitted, that part of the vessel where he would be most likely to
encounter the object of his wrath, hoping, always hoping, that the
“dude” would give him some slight pretext for “pushing in his mush,” as
Billy would so picturesquely have worded it.

He was loitering about the deck for this purpose one evening when he
overheard part of a low-voiced conversation between the object of his
wrath and Skipper Simms--just enough to set him to wondering what was
doing, and to show him that whatever it might be it was crooked and that
the immaculate passenger and Skipper Simms were both “in on it.”

He questioned “Bony” Sawyer and “Red” Sanders, but neither had nearly as
much information as Billy himself, and so the Halfmoon came to Honolulu
and lay at anchor some hundred yards from a stanch, trim, white yacht,
and none knew, other than the Halfmoon's officers and her single
passenger, the real mission of the harmless-looking little brigantine.



CHAPTER III. THE CONSPIRACY

NO SHORE leave was granted the crew of the Halfmoon while the vessel lay
off Honolulu, and deep and ominous were the grumblings of the men. Only
First Officer Ward and the second mate went ashore. Skipper Simms kept
the men busy painting and holystoning as a vent for their pent emotions.

Billy Byrne noticed that the passenger had abandoned his daylight
strolls on deck. In fact he never once left his cabin while the Halfmoon
lay at anchor until darkness had fallen; then he would come on deck,
often standing for an hour at a time with eyes fastened steadily
upon the brave little yacht from the canopied upper deck of which gay
laughter and soft music came floating across the still water.

When Mr. Ward and the second mate came to shore a strange thing
happened. They entered a third-rate hotel near the water front, engaged
a room for a week, paid in advance, were in their room for half an hour
and emerged clothed in civilian raiment.

Then they hastened to another hostelry--a first-class one this time, and
the second mate walked ahead in frock coat and silk hat while Mr. Ward
trailed behind in a neat, blue serge sack suit, carrying both bags.

At the second hotel the second mate registered as Henri Theriere, Count
de Cadenet, and servant, France. His first act thereafter was to hand a
note to the clerk asking that it be dispatched immediately. The note was
addressed to Anthony Harding, Esq., On Board Yacht Lotus.

Count de Cadenet and his servant repaired immediately to the count's
rooms, there to await an answer to the note. Henri Theriere, the second
officer of the Halfmoon, in frock coat and silk hat looked every inch a
nobleman and a gentleman. What his past had been only he knew, but his
polished manners, his knowledge of navigation and seamanship, and his
leaning toward the ways of the martinet in his dealings with the men
beneath him had led Skipper Simms to assume that he had once held
a commission in the French Navy, from which he doubtless had been
kicked--in disgrace.

The man was cold, cruel, of a moody disposition, and quick to anger.
He had been signed as second officer for this cruise through the
intervention of Divine and Clinker. He had sailed with Simms before, but
the skipper had found him too hard a customer to deal with, and had
been on the point of seeking another second when Divine and Clinker
discovered him on board the Halfmoon and after ten minutes' conversation
with him found that he fitted so perfectly into their scheme of action
that they would not hear of Simms' releasing him.

Ward had little use for the Frenchman, whose haughty manner and
condescending airs grated on the sensibilities of the uncouth and
boorish first officer. The duty which necessitated him acting in the
capacity of Theriere's servant was about as distasteful to him as
anything could be, and only served to add to his hatred for the
inferior, who, in the bottom of his heart, he knew to be in every way,
except upon the roster of the Halfmoon, his superior; but money can work
wonders, and Divine's promise that the officers and crew of the Halfmoon
would have a cool million United States dollars to divide among them in
case of the success of the venture had quite effectually overcome any
dislike which Mr. Ward had felt for this particular phase of his duty.

The two officers sat in silence in their room at the hotel awaiting
an answer to the note they had dispatched to Anthony Harding, Esq.
The parts they were to act had been carefully rehearsed on board the
Halfmoon many times. Each was occupied with his own thoughts, and
as they had nothing in common outside the present rascality that had
brought them together, and as that subject was one not well to discuss
more than necessary, there seemed no call for conversation.

On board the yacht in the harbor preparations were being made to land a
small party that contemplated a motor trip up the Nuuanu Valley when
a small boat drew alongside, and a messenger from the hotel handed a
sealed note to one of the sailors.

From the deck of the Halfmoon Skipper Simms witnessed the transaction,
smiling inwardly. Billy Byrne also saw it, but it meant nothing to him.
He had been lolling upon the deck of the brigantine glaring at the yacht
Lotus, hating her and the gay, well-dressed men and women he could
see laughing and chatting upon her deck. They represented to him
the concentrated essence of all that was pusillanimous, disgusting,
loathsome in that other world that was as far separated from him as
though he had been a grubworm in the manure pile back of Brady's livery
stable.

He saw the note handed by the sailor to a gray-haired, smooth-faced
man--a large, sleek, well-groomed man. Billy could imagine the white
hands and polished nails of him. The thought was nauseating.

The man who took and opened the note was Anthony Harding, Esq. He read
it, and then passed it to a young woman who stood near-by talking with
other young people.

“Here, Barbara,” he said, “is something of more interest to you than to
me. If you wish I'll call upon him and invite him to dinner tonight.”

The girl was reading the note.


Anthony Harding, Esq.

On Board Yacht Lotus,

Honolulu

My dear Mr. Harding:

This will introduce a very dear friend of mine, Count de Cadenet, who
expects to be in Honolulu about the time that you are there. The count
is traveling for pleasure, and as he is entirely unacquainted upon
the islands any courtesies which you may show him will be greatly
appreciated.

                    Cordially,

                             L. CORTWRITE DIVINE.

The girl smiled as she finished perusing the note.

“Larry is always picking up titles and making dear friends of them,” she
laughed. “I wonder where he found this one.”

“Or where this one found him,” suggested Mr. Harding. “Well, I suppose
that the least we can do is to have him aboard for dinner. We'll be
leaving tomorrow, so there won't be much entertaining we can do.”

“Let's pick him up on our way through town now,” suggested Barbara
Harding, “and take him with us for the day. That will be settling our
debt to friendship, and dinner tonight can depend upon what sort of
person we find the count to be.”

“As you will,” replied her father, and so it came about that two big
touring cars drew up before the Count de Cadenet's hotel half an hour
later, and Anthony Harding, Esq., entered and sent up his card.

The “count” came down in person to greet his caller. Harding saw at a
glance that the man was a gentleman, and when he had introduced him to
the other members of the party it was evident that they appraised him
quite as had their host. Barbara Harding seemed particularly taken with
the Count de Cadenet, insisting that he join those who occupied her
car, and so it was that the second officer of the Halfmoon rode out of
Honolulu in pleasant conversation with the object of his visit to the
island.

Barbara Harding found De Cadenet an interesting man. There was no
corner of the globe however remote with which he was not to some degree
familiar. He was well read, and possessed the ability to discuss what
he had read intelligently and entertainingly. There was no evidence of
moodiness in him now. He was the personification of affability, for was
he not monopolizing the society of a very beautiful, and very wealthy
young lady?

The day's outing had two significant results. It put into the head of
the second mate of the Halfmoon that which would have caused his skipper
and the retiring Mr. Divine acute mental perturbation could they have
guessed it; and it put De Cadenet into possession of information which
necessitated his refusing the urgent invitation to dine upon the yacht,
Lotus, that evening--the information that the party would sail the
following morning en route to Manila.

“I cannot tell you,” he said to Mr. Harding, “how much I regret
the circumstance that must rob me of the pleasure of accepting your
invitation. Only absolute necessity, I assure you, could prevent me
being with you as long as possible,” and though he spoke to the girl's
father he looked directly into the eyes of Barbara Harding.

A young woman of less experience might have given some outward
indication of the effect of this speech upon her, but whether she was
pleased or otherwise the Count de Cadenet could not guess, for she
merely voiced the smiling regrets that courtesy demanded.

They left De Cadenet at his hotel, and as he bid them farewell the man
turned to Barbara Harding with a low aside.

“I shall see you again, Miss Harding,” he said, “very, very soon.”

She could not guess what was in his mind as he voiced this rather, under
the circumstances, unusual statement. Could she have, the girl would
have been terror-stricken; but she saw that in his eyes which she could
translate, and she wondered many times that evening whether she were
pleased or angry with the message it conveyed.

The moment De Cadenet entered the hotel he hurried to the room where the
impatient Mr. Ward awaited him.

“Quick!” he cried. “We must bundle out of here posthaste. They sail
tomorrow morning. Your duties as valet have been light and short-lived;
but I can give you an excellent recommendation should you desire to take
service with another gentleman.”

“That'll be about all of that, Mr. Theriere,” snapped the first
officer, coldly. “I did not embark upon this theatrical enterprise for
amusement--I see nothing funny in it, and I wish you to remember that I
am still your superior officer.”

Theriere shrugged. Ward did not chance to catch the ugly look in his
companion's eye. Together they gathered up their belongings, descended
to the office, paid their bill, and a few moments later were changing
back to their sea clothes in the little hotel where they first had
engaged accommodations. Half an hour later they stepped to the deck of
the Halfmoon.

Billy Byrne saw them from where he worked in the vicinity of the cabin.
When they were not looking he scowled maliciously at them. They were
the personal representatives of authority, and Billy hated authority in
whatever guise it might be visited upon him. He hated law and order and
discipline.

“I'd like to meet one of dem guys on Green Street some night,” he
thought.

He saw them enter the captain's cabin with the skipper, and then he saw
Mr. Divine join them. Billy noted the haste displayed by the four and it
set him to wondering. The scrap of conversation between Divine and Simms
that he had overheard returned to him. He wanted to hear more, and as
Billy was not handicapped by any overly refined notions of the ethics
which frown upon eavesdropping he lost no time in transferring the scene
of his labors to a point sufficiently close to one of the cabin ports to
permit him to note what took place within.

What the mucker beard of that conversation made him prick up his ears.
He saw that something after his own heart was doing--something crooked,
and he wondered that so pusillanimous a thing as Divine could have
a hand in it. It almost changed his estimate of the passenger of the
Halfmoon.

The meeting broke up so suddenly that Billy had to drop to his knees to
escape the observation of those within the cabin. As it was, Theriere,
who had started to leave a second before the others, caught a fleeting
glimpse of a face that quickly had been withdrawn from the cabin
skylight as though its owner were fearful of detection.

Without a word to his companions the Frenchman left the cabin, but once
outside he bounded up the companionway to the deck with the speed of a
squirrel. Nor was he an instant too soon, for as he emerged from below
he saw the figure of a man disappearing forward.

“Hey there, you!” he cried. “Come back here.”

The mucker turned, a sulky scowl upon his lowering countenance, and
the second officer saw that it was the fellow who had given Ward such a
trimming the first day out.

“Oh, it's you is it, Byrne?” he said in a not unpleasant tone. “Come
to my quarters a moment, I want to speak with you,” and so saying he
wheeled about and retraced his way below, the seaman at his heels.

“My man,” said Theriere, once the two were behind the closed door of
the officer's cabin, “I needn't ask how much you overheard of the
conversation in the captain's cabin. If you hadn't overheard a great
deal more than you should you wouldn't have been so keen to escape
detection just now. What I wanted to say to you is this. Keep a close
tongue in your head and stick by me in what's going to happen in the
next few days. This bunch,” he jerked his thumb in the direction of
the captain's cabin, “are fixing their necks for halters, an' I for one
don't intend to poke my head through any noose of another man's making.
There's more in this thing if it's handled right, and handled without
too many men in on the whack-up than we can get out of it if that man
Divine has to be counted in. I've a plan of my own, an' it won't take
but three or four of us to put it across.

“You don't like Ward,” he continued, “and you may be almighty sure that
Mr. Ward ain't losing any sleep nights over love of you. If you stick to
that bunch Ward will do you out of your share as sure as you are a foot
high, an' the chances are that he'll do you out of a whole lot more
besides--as a matter of fact, Byrne, you're a mighty poor life insurance
risk right now, with a life expectancy that's pretty near minus as long
as Bender Ward is on the same ship with you. Do you understand what I
mean?”

“Aw,” said Billy Byrne, “I ain't afraid o' that stiff. Let him make
any funny crack at me an' I'll cave in a handful of slats for him--the
piker.”

“That's all right too, Byrne,” said Theriere. “Of course you can do it
if anybody can, provided you get the chance; but Ward isn't the man to
give you any chance. There may be shooting necessary within the next day
or so, and there's nothing to prevent Ward letting you have it in the
back, purely by accident; and if he don't do it then there'll be all
kinds of opportunities for it before any of us ever see a white man's
port again. He'll get you, Byrne, he's that kind.

“Now, with my proposition you'll be shut of Ward, Skipper Simms, and
Divine. There'll be more money in it for you, an' you won't have to go
around expecting a bullet in the small of your back every minute. What
do you say? Are you game, or shall I have to go back to Skipper Simms
and Ward and tell them that I caught you eavesdropping?”

“Oh, I'm game,” said Billy Byrne, “if you'll promise me a square deal on
the divvy.”

The Frenchman extended his hand.

“Let's shake on it,” he said.

Billy took the proffered palm in his.

“That's a go,” he said; “but hadn't you better wise me to wot's doin'?”

“Not now,” said Theriere, “someone might overhear just as you did. Wait
a bit until I have a better opportunity, and I'll tell you all there is
to know. In the meantime think over who'd be the best men to let into
this with us--we'll need three or four more besides ourselves. Now go on
deck about your duties as though nothing had happened, and if I'm a bit
rougher than usual with you you'll understand that it's to avert any
possible suspicion later.”

“I'm next,” said Billy Byrne.



CHAPTER IV. PIRACY

BY DUSK the trim little brigantine was scudding away toward the west
before a wind that could not have suited her better had it been made to
order at the special behest of the devil himself to speed his minions
upon their devil's work.

All hands were in the best of humor. The crew had forgotten their recent
rancor at not having been permitted shore leave at Honolulu in the
expectancy of adventure in the near future, for there was that in
the atmosphere of the Halfmoon which proclaimed louder than words the
proximity of excitement, and the goal toward which they had been sailing
since they left San Francisco.

Skipper Simms and Divine were elated at the luck which had brought
them to Honolulu in the nick of time, and at the success of Theriere's
mission at that port. They had figured upon a week at least there before
the second officer of the Halfmoon could ingratiate himself sufficiently
into the goodwill of the Hardings to learn their plans, and now they
were congratulating themselves upon their acumen in selecting so fit an
agent as the Frenchman for the work he had handled so expeditiously and
so well.

Ward was pleased that he had not been forced to prolong the galling
masquerade of valet to his inferior officer. He was hopeful, too, that
coming events would bring to the fore an opportunity to satisfy the
vengeance he had inwardly sworn against the sailor who had so roughly
manhandled him a few weeks past--Theriere had not been in error in his
estimate of his fellow-officer.

Billy Byrne, the arduous labor of making sail over for the time, was
devoting his energies to the task of piecing out from what Theriere had
told him and what he had overheard outside the skipper's cabin some sort
of explanation of the work ahead.

As he pondered Theriere's proposition he saw the wisdom of it. It would
give those interested a larger amount of the booty for their share.
Another feature of it was that it was underhanded and that appealed
strongly to the mucker. Now, if he could but devise some scheme for
double-crossing Theriere the pleasure and profit of the adventure would
be tripled.

It was this proposition that was occupying his attention when he caught
sight of “Bony” Sawyer and “Red” Sanders emerging from the forecastle.
Billy Byrne hailed them.

When the mucker had explained the possibilities of profit that were to
be had by entering the conspiracy aimed at Simms and Ward the two seamen
were enthusiastically for it.

“Bony” Sawyer suggested that the black cook, Blanco, was about the only
other member of the crew upon whom they could depend, and at Byrne's
request “Bony” promised to enlist the cooperation of the giant
Ethiopian.

From early morning of the second day out of Honolulu keen eyes scanned
the eastern horizon through powerful glasses, until about two bells
of the afternoon watch a slight smudge became visible about two points
north of east. Immediately the course of the Halfmoon was altered so
that she bore almost directly north by west in an effort to come safely
into the course of the steamer which was seen rising rapidly above the
horizon.

The new course of the brigantine was held as long as it seemed
reasonably safe without danger of being sighted under full sail by the
oncoming vessel, then her head was brought into the wind, and one by one
her sails were lowered and furled, as the keen eyes of Second Officer
Theriere announced that there was no question but that the white hull in
the distance was that of the steam pleasure yacht Lotus.

Upon the deck of the unsuspecting vessel a merry party laughed and
chatted in happy ignorance of the plotters in their path. It was nearly
half an hour after the Halfmoon had come to rest, drifting idly under
bare poles, that the lookout upon the Lotus sighted her.

“Sailin' vessel lyin' to, west half south,” he shouted, “flyin' distress
signals.”

In an instant guests and crew had hurried to points of vantage where
they might obtain unobstructed view of the stranger, and take advantage
of this break in the monotony of a long sea voyage.

Anthony Harding was on the bridge with the captain, and both men had
leveled their glasses upon the distant ship.

“Can you make her out?” asked the owner.

“She's a brigantine,” replied the officer, “and all that I can make out
from here would indicate that everything was shipshape about her. Her
canvas is neatly furled, and she is evidently well manned, for I can see
a number of figures above deck apparently engaged in watching us. I'll
alter our course and speak to her--we'll see what's wrong, and give her
a hand if we can.”

“That's right,” replied Harding; “do anything you can for them.”

A moment later he joined his daughter and their guests to report the
meager information he had.

“How exciting,” exclaimed Barbara Harding. “Of course it's not a real
shipwreck, but maybe it's the next thing to it. The poor souls may have
been drifting about here in the center of the Pacific without food or
water for goodness knows how many weeks, and now just think how they
must be lifting their voices in thanks to God for his infinite mercy in
guiding us to them.”

“If they've been drifting for any considerable number of weeks without
food or water,” hazarded Billy Mallory, “about the only things they'll
need'll be what we didn't have the foresight to bring along--an
undertaker and a preacher.”

“Don't be horrid, Billy,” returned Miss Harding. “You know perfectly
well that I didn't mean weeks--I meant days; and anyway they'll be
grateful to us for what we can do for them. I can scarcely wait to hear
their story.”

Billy Mallory was inspecting the stranger through Mr. Harding's glass.
Suddenly he gave an exclamation of dismay.

“By George!” he cried. “It is serious after all. That ship's afire.
Look, Mr. Harding,” and he passed the glass over to his host.

And sure enough, as the owner of the Lotus found the brigantine again
in the center of his lens he saw a thin column of black smoke rising
amidships; but what he did not see was Mr. Ward upon the opposite side
of the Halfmoon's cabin superintending the burning by the black cook of
a bundle of oily rags in an iron boiler.

“By Jove!” exclaimed Mr. Harding. “This is terrible. The poor devils
are panic-stricken. Look at 'em making for the boats!” and with that he
dashed back to the bridge to confer with his captain.

“Yes,” said that officer, “I noticed the smoke about the same time you
did--funny it wasn't apparent before. I've already signaled full speed
ahead, and I've instructed Mr. Foster to have the boats in readiness to
lower away if we find that they're short of boats on the brigantine.

“What I can't understand,” he added after a moment's silence, “is why
they didn't show any signs of excitement about that fire until we came
within easy sight of them--it looks funny.”

“Well, we'll know in a few minutes more,” returned Mr. Harding.
“The chances are that the fire is just a recent addition to their
predicament, whatever it may be, and that they have only just discovered
it themselves.”

“Then it can't have gained enough headway,” insisted the captain, “to
cause them any such immediate terror as would be indicated by the haste
with which the whole ship's crew is tumbling into those boats; but as
you say, sir, we'll have their story out of them in a few minutes now,
so it's idle speculating beforehand.”

The officers and men of the Halfmoon, in so far as those on board the
Lotus could guess, had all entered the boats at last, and were pulling
frantically away from their own ship toward the rapidly nearing yacht;
but what they did not guess and could not know was that Mr. Divine paced
nervously to and fro in his cabin, while Second Officer Theriere tended
the smoking rags that Ward and Blanco had resigned to him that they
might take their places in the boats.

Theriere had been greatly disgusted with the turn events had taken for
he had determined upon a line of action that he felt sure would prove
highly remunerative to himself. It had been nothing less than a bold
resolve to call Blanco, Byrne, “Bony,” and “Red” to his side the moment
Simms and Ward revealed the true purpose of their ruse to those on board
the Lotus, and with his henchmen take sides with the men of the yacht
against his former companions.

As he had explained it to Billy Byrne the idea was to permit Mr. Harding
to believe that Theriere and his companions had been duped by Skipper
Simms--that they had had no idea of the work that they were to be called
upon to perform until the last moment and that then they had done the
only thing they could to protect the passengers and crew of the Lotus.

“And then,” Theriere had concluded, “when they think we are a band of
heroes, and the best friends they have on earth we'll just naturally be
in a position to grab the whole lot of them, and collect ransoms on ten
or fifteen instead of just one.”

“Bully!” exclaimed the mucker. “You sure got some bean, mate.”

As a matter of fact Theriere had had no intention of carrying the matter
as far as he had intimated to Billy except as a last resort. He had been
mightily smitten by the face and fortune of Barbara Harding and had seen
in the trend of events a possible opportunity of so deeply obligating
her father and herself that when he paid court to her she might fall a
willing victim to his wiles. In this case he would be obliged to risk
nothing, and could make away with his accomplices by explaining to
Mr. Harding that he had been compelled to concoct this other scheme to
obtain their assistance against Simms and Ward; then they could throw
the three into irons and all would be lovely; but now that fool Ward
had upset the whole thing by hitting upon this asinine fire hoax as
an excuse for boarding the Lotus in force, and had further dampened
Theriere's pet scheme by suggesting to Skipper Simms the danger of
Theriere being recognized as they were boarding the Lotus and bringing
suspicion upon them all immediately.

They all knew that a pleasure yacht like the Lotus was well supplied
with small arms, and that at the first intimation of danger there would
be plenty of men aboard to repel assault, and, in all probability, with
entire success.

That there were excellent grounds for Theriere's belief that he could
win Barbara Harding's hand with such a flying start as his daring
plan would have assured him may not be questioned, for the man was
cultivated, polished and, in a sinister way, good-looking. The title
that he had borne upon the occasion of his visit to the yacht, was, all
unknown to his accomplices, his by right of birth, so that there was
nothing other than a long-dead scandal in the French Navy that might
have proved a bar to an affiance such as he dreamed of. And now to be
thwarted at the last moment! It was unendurable. That pig of a Ward had
sealed his own death warrant, of that Theriere was convinced.

The boats were now quite close to the yacht, which had slowed down
almost to a dead stop. In answer to the query of the Lotus' captain
Skipper Simms was explaining their trouble.

“I'm Captain Jones,” he shouted, “of the brigantine Clarinda, Frisco
to Yokohama with dynamite. We disabled our rudder yesterday, an' this
afternoon fire started in the hold. It's makin' headway fast now, an'll
reach the dynamite most any time. You'd better take us aboard, an' get
away from here as quick as you can. 'Tain't safe nowhere within five
hun'erd fathom of her.”

“You'd better make haste, Captain, hadn't you?” suggested Mr. Harding.

“I don't like the looks of things, sir,” replied that officer. “She
ain't flyin' any dynamite flag, an' if she was an' had a hold full
there wouldn't be any particular danger to us, an' anyone that has
ever shipped dynamite would know it, or ought to. It's not fire that
detonates dynamite, it's concussion. No sir, Mr. Harding, there's
something queer here--I don't like the looks of it. Why just take a good
look at the faces of those men. Did you ever see such an ugly-looking
pack of unhung murderers in your life, sir?”

“I must admit that they're not an overly prepossessing crowd, Norris,”
 replied Mr. Harding. “But it's not always either fair or safe to judge
strangers entirely by appearances. I'm afraid that there's nothing else
for it in the name of common humanity than to take them aboard, Norris.
I'm sure your fears are entirely groundless.”

“Then it's your orders, sir, to take them aboard?” asked Captain Norris.

“Yes, Captain, I think you'd better,” said Mr. Harding.

“Very good, sir,” replied the officer, turning to give the necessary
commands.

The officers and men of the Halfmoon swarmed up the sides of the Lotus,
dark-visaged, fierce, and forbidding.

“Reminds me of a boarding party of pirates,” remarked Billy Mallory,
as he watched Blanco, the last to throw a leg over the rail, reach the
deck.

“They're not very pretty, are they?” murmured Barbara Harding,
instinctively shrinking closer to her companion.

“'Pretty' scarcely describes them, Barbara,” said Billy; “and do you
know that somehow I am having difficulty in imagining them on their
knees giving up thanks to the Lord for their rescue--that was your
recent idea of 'em, you will recall.”

“If you have purposely set yourself the task of being more than
ordinarily disagreeable today, Billy,” said Barbara sweetly, “I'm sure
it will please you to know that you are succeeding.”

“I'm glad I'm successful at something then,” laughed the man. “I've
certainly been unsuccessful enough in another matter.”

“What, for example?” asked Barbara, innocently.

“Why in trying to make myself so agreeable heretofore that you'd finally
consent to say 'yes' for a change.”

“Now you are going to make it all the worse by being stupid,” cried the
girl petulantly. “Why can't you be nice, as you used to be before you
got this silly notion into your head?”

“I don't think it's a silly notion to be head over heels in love with
the sweetest girl on earth,” cried Billy.

“Hush! Someone will hear you.”

“I don't care if they do. I'd like to advertise it to the whole world.
I'm proud of the fact that I love you; and you don't care enough about
it to realize how really hard I'm hit--why I'd die for you, Barbara, and
welcome the chance; why--My God! What's that?”

“O Billy! What are those men doing?” cried the girl. “They're shooting.
They're shooting at papa! Quick, Billy! Do something. For heaven's sake
do something.”

On the deck below them the “rescued” crew of the “Clarinda” had
surrounded Mr. Harding, Captain Norris, and most of the crew of the
Lotus, flashing quick-drawn revolvers from beneath shirts and coats, and
firing at two of the yacht's men who showed fight.

“Keep quiet,” commanded Skipper Simms, “an' there won't none of you get
hurted.”

“What do you want of us?” cried Mr. Harding. “If it's money, take what
you can find aboard us, and go on your way. No one will hinder you.”

Skipper Simms paid no attention to him. His eyes swept aloft to the
upper deck. There he saw a wide-eyed girl and a man looking down upon
them. He wondered if she was the one they sought. There were other women
aboard. He could see them, huddled frightened behind Harding and Norris.
Some of them were young and beautiful; but there was something about
the girl above him that assured him she could be none other than Barbara
Harding. To discover the truth Simms resorted to a ruse, for he knew
that were he to ask Harding outright if the girl were his daughter the
chances were more than even that the old man would suspect something of
the nature of their visit and deny her identity.

“Who is that woman you have on board here?” he cried in an accusing tone
of voice. “That's what we're a-here to find out.”

“Why she's my daughter, man!” blurted Harding. “Who did you--”

“Thanks,” said Skipper Simms, with a self-satisfied grin. “That's what
I wanted to be sure of. Hey, you, Byrne! You're nearest the
companionway--fetch the girl.”

At the command the mucker turned and leaped up the stairway to the upper
deck. Billy Mallory had overheard the conversation below and Simms'
command to Byrne. Disengaging himself from Barbara Harding who in her
terror had clutched his arm, he ran forward to the head of the stairway.

The men of the Lotus looked on in mute and helpless rage. All were
covered by the guns of the boarding party--the still forms of two
of their companions bearing eloquent witness to the slenderness of
provocation necessary to tighten the trigger fingers of the beasts
standing guard over them.

Billy Byrne never hesitated in his rush for the upper deck. The sight of
the man awaiting him above but whetted his appetite for battle. The
trim flannels, the white shoes, the natty cap, were to the mucker as
sufficient cause for justifiable homicide as is an orange ribbon in
certain portions of the West Side of Chicago on St. Patrick's Day. As
were “Remember the Alamo,” and “Remember the Maine” to the fighting
men of the days that they were live things so were the habiliments of
gentility to Billy Byrne at all times.

Billy Mallory was an older man than the mucker--twenty-four perhaps--and
fully as large. For four years he had played right guard on a great
eastern team, and for three he had pulled stroke upon the crew. During
the two years since his graduation he had prided himself upon the
maintenance of the physical supremacy that had made the name of Mallory
famous in collegiate athletics; but in one vital essential he was
hopelessly handicapped in combat with such as Billy Byrne, for Mallory
was a gentleman.

As the mucker rushed upward toward him Mallory had all the advantage of
position and preparedness, and had he done what Billy Byrne would have
done under like circumstances he would have planted a kick in the midst
of the mucker's facial beauties with all the power and weight and energy
at his command; but Billy Mallory could no more have perpetrated a
cowardly trick such as this than he could have struck a woman.

Instead, he waited, and as the mucker came on an even footing with him
Mallory swung a vicious right for the man's jaw. Byrne ducked beneath
the blow, came up inside Mallory's guard, and struck him three times
with trip-hammer velocity and pile-driver effectiveness--once upon the
jaw and twice--below the belt!

The girl, clinging to the rail, riveted by the paralysis of fright, saw
her champion stagger back and half crumple to the deck. Then she saw him
make a brave and desperate rally, as, though torn with agony, he lurched
forward in an endeavor to clinch with the brute before him. Again the
mucker struck his victim--quick choppy hooks that rocked Mallory's head
from side to side, and again the brutal blow below the belt; but with
the tenacity of a bulldog the man fought for a hold upon his foe, and at
last, notwithstanding Byrne's best efforts, he succeeded in closing with
the mucker and dragging him to the deck.

Here the two men rolled and tumbled, Byrne biting, gouging, and kicking
while Mallory devoted all of his fast-waning strength to an effort to
close his fingers upon the throat of his antagonist. But the terrible
punishment which the mucker had inflicted upon him overcame him at last,
and as Byrne felt the man's efforts weakening he partially disengaged
himself and raising himself upon one arm dealt his now almost
unconscious enemy a half-dozen frightful blows upon the face.

With a shriek Barbara Harding turned from the awful sight as Billy
Mallory's bloody and swollen eyes rolled up and set, while the mucker
threw the inert form roughly from him. Quick to the girl's memory sprang
Mallory's recent declaration, which she had thought at the time but the
empty, and vainglorious boasting of the man in love--“Why I'd die for
you, Barbara, and welcome the chance!”

“Poor boy! How soon, and how terribly has the chance come!” moaned the
girl.

Then a rough hand fell upon her arm.

“Here, youse,” a coarse voice yelled in her ear. “Come out o' de
trance,” and at the same time she was jerked roughly toward the
companionway.

Instinctively the girl held back, and then the mucker, true to his
training, true to himself, gave her arm a sudden twist that wrenched a
scream of agony from her white lips.

“Den come along,” growled Billy Byrne, “an' quit dis monkey business, or
I'll sure twist yer flipper clean off'n yeh.”

With an oath, Anthony Harding sprang forward to protect his daughter;
but the butt of Ward's pistol brought him unconscious to the deck.

“Go easy there, Byrne,” shouted Skipper Simms; “there ain't no call to
injure the hussy--a corpse won't be worth nothing to us.”

In mute terror the girl now permitted herself to be led to the deck
below. Quickly she was lowered into a waiting boat. Then Skipper Simms
ordered Ward to search the yacht and remove all firearms, after which
he was to engage himself to navigate the vessel with her own crew under
armed guard of half a dozen of the Halfmoon's cutthroats.

These things attended to, Skipper Simms with the balance of his own crew
and six of the crew of the Lotus to take the places upon the brigantine
of those left as a prize crew aboard the yacht returned with the girl to
the Halfmoon.

The sailing vessel's sails were soon hoisted and trimmed, and in half
an hour, followed by the Lotus, she was scudding briskly southward. For
forty-eight hours this course was held until Simms felt assured that
they were well out of the lane of regular trans-Pacific traffic.

During this time Barbara Harding had been kept below, locked in a small,
untidy cabin. She had seen no one other than a great Negro who brought
her meals to her three times daily--meals that she returned scarcely
touched.

Now the Halfmoon was brought up into the wind where she lay with
flapping canvas while Skipper Simms returned to the Lotus with the six
men of the yacht's crew that he had brought aboard the brigantine with
him two days before, and as many more of his own men.

Once aboard the Lotus the men were put to work with those already on the
yacht. The boat's rudder was unshipped and dropped into the ocean; her
fires were put out; her engines were attacked with sledges until they
were little better than so much junk, and to make the slender chances of
pursuit that remained to her entirely nil every ounce of coal upon her
was shoveled into the Pacific. Her extra masts and spare sails followed
the way of the coal and the rudder, so that when Skipper Simms and First
Officer Ward left her with their own men that had been aboard her she
was little better than a drifting derelict.

From her cabin window Barbara Harding had witnessed the wanton wrecking
of her father's yacht, and when it was over and the crew of the
brigantine had returned to their own ship she presently felt the
movement of the vessel as it got under way, and soon the Lotus dropped
to the stern and beyond the range of her tiny port. With a moan of
hopelessness and terror the girl sank prostrate across the hard berth
that spanned one end of her prison cell.

How long she lay there she did not know, but finally she was aroused by
the opening of her cabin door. As she sprang to her feet ready to defend
herself against what she felt might easily be some new form of danger
her eyes went wide in astonishment as they rested on the face of the man
who stood framed in the doorway of her cabin.

“You?” she cried.



CHAPTER V. LARRY DIVINE UNMASKED


“YES, Barbara, it is I,” said Mr. Divine; “and thank God that I am
here to do what little any man may do against this band of murdering
pirates.”

“But, Larry,” cried the girl, in evident bewilderment, “how did you come
to be aboard this ship? How did you get here? What are you doing amongst
such as these?”

“I am a prisoner,” replied the man, “just as are you. I think they
intend holding us for ransom. They got me in San Francisco. Slugged me
and hustled me aboard the night before they sailed.”

“Where are they going to take us?” she asked.

“I do not know,” he replied, “although from something I have overheard
of their conversations I imagine that they have in mind some distant
island far from the beaten track of commerce. There are thousands such
in the Pacific that are visited by vessels scarce once in a century.
There they will hold us until they can proceed with the ship to some
point where they can get into communication with their agents in the
States. When the ransom is paid over to these agents they will return
for us and land us upon some other island where our friends can find us,
or leaving us where we can divulge the location of our whereabouts to
those who pay the ransom.”

The girl had been looking intently at Mr. Divine during their
conversation.

“They cannot have treated you very badly, Larry,” she said. “You are as
well groomed and well fed, apparently, as ever.”

A slight flush mounting to the man's face made the girl wonder a bit
though it aroused no suspicion in her mind.

“Oh, no,” he hastened to assure her, “they have not treated me at all
badly--why should they? If I die they can collect no ransom on me. It
is the same with you, Barbara, so I think you need apprehend no harsh
treatment.”

“I hope you are right, Larry,” she said, but the hopelessness of her air
rather belied any belief that aught but harm could come from captivity
with such as those who officered and manned the Halfmoon.

“It seems so remarkable,” she went on, “that you should be a prisoner
upon the same boat. I cannot understand it. Why only a few days ago we
received and entertained a friend of yours who brought a letter from you
to papa--the Count de Cadenet.”

Again that telltale flush mantled the man's cheek. He cursed himself
inwardly for his lack of self-control. The girl would have his whole
secret out of him in another half-hour if he were not more careful.

“They made me do that,” he said, jerking his thumb in the general
direction of Skipper Simms' cabin. “Maybe that accounts for their
bringing me along. The 'Count de Cadenet' is a fellow named Theriere,
second mate of this ship. They sent him to learn your plans; when you
expected sailing from Honolulu and your course. They are all crooks and
villains. If I hadn't done as they bid they would have killed me.”

The girl made no comment, but Divine saw the contempt in her face.

“I didn't know that they were going to do this. If I had I'd have died
before I'd have written that note,” he added rather lamely.

The girl was suddenly looking very sad. She was thinking of Billy
Mallory who had died in an effort to save her. The mental comparison she
was making between him and Mr. Divine was not overly flattering to the
latter gentleman.

“They killed poor Billy,” she said at last. “He tried to protect me.”

Then Mr. Divine understood the trend of her thoughts. He tried to find
some excuse for his cowardly act; but with the realization of the true
cowardliness and treachery of it that the girl didn't even guess he
understood the futility of seeking to extenuate it. He saw that the
chances were excellent that after all he would be compelled to resort to
force or threats to win her hand at the last.

“Billy would have done better to have bowed to the inevitable as I
did,” he said. “Living I am able to help you now. Dead I could not have
prevented them carrying out their intentions any more than Billy has,
nor could I have been here to aid you now any more than he is. I cannot
see that his action helped you to any great extent, brave as it was.”

“The memory of it and him will always help me,” she answered quietly.
“They will help me to bear whatever is before me bravely, and, when the
time comes, to die bravely; for I shall always feel that upon the other
side a true, brave heart is awaiting me.”

The man was silent. After a moment the girl spoke again. “I think I
would rather be alone, Larry,” she said. “I am very unhappy and nervous.
Possibly I could sleep now.”

With a bow he turned and left the cabin.

For weeks the Halfmoon kept steadily on her course, a little south of
west. There was no material change in the relations of those aboard
her. Barbara Harding, finding herself unmolested, finally acceded to the
repeated pleas of Mr. Divine, to whose society she had been driven by
loneliness and fear, and appeared on deck frequently during the daylight
watches. Here, one afternoon, she came face to face with Theriere
for the first time since her abduction. The officer lifted his cap
deferentially; but the girl met his look of expectant recognition with
a cold, blank stare that passed through and beyond him as though he had
been empty air.

A tinge of color rose to the man's face, and he continued on his way for
a moment as though content to accept her rebuff; but after a step or two
he turned suddenly and confronted her.

“Miss Harding,” he said, respectfully, “I cannot blame you for the
feeling of loathing and distrust you must harbor toward me; but in
common justice I think you should hear me before finally condemning.”

“I cannot imagine,” she returned coldly, “what defense there can be for
the cowardly act you perpetrated.”

“I have been utterly deceived by my employers,” said Theriere, hastening
to take advantage of the tacit permission to explain which her reply
contained. “I was given to understand that the whole thing was to be but
a hoax--that I was taking part in a great practical joke that Mr. Divine
was to play upon his old friends, the Hardings and their guests. Until
they wrecked and deserted the Lotus in mid-ocean I had no idea that
anything else was contemplated, although I felt that the matter, even
before that event, had been carried quite far enough for a joke.

“They explained,” he continued, “that before sailing you had expressed
the hope that something really exciting and adventurous would befall
the party--that you were tired of the monotonous humdrum of
twentieth-century existence--that you regretted the decadence of piracy,
and the expunging of romance from the seas.

“Mr. Divine, they told me, was a very wealthy young man, to whom you
were engaged to be married, and that he could easily afford the
great expense of the rather remarkable hoax we were supposed to be
perpetrating. I saw no harm in taking part in it, especially as I knew
nothing of the supposititious purpose of the cruise until just before we
reached Honolulu. Before that I had been led to believe that it was but
a pleasure trip to the South Pacific that Mr. Divine intended.

“You see, Miss Harding, that I have been as badly deceived as you. Won't
you let me help to atone for my error by being your friend? I can assure
you that you will need one whom you can trust amongst this shipload of
scoundrels.”

“Who am I to believe?” cried the girl. “Mr. Divine assures me that he,
too, has been forced into this affair, but by threats of death rather
than deception.”

The expression on Mr. Theriere's face was eloquent of sarcastic
incredulity.

“How about the note of introduction that I carried to your father from
Mr. Divine?” asked Theriere.

“He says that he was compelled to write it at the point of a revolver,”
 replied the girl.

“Come with me, Miss Harding,” said the officer. “I think that I may be
able to convince you that Mr. Divine is not on any such bad terms with
Skipper Simms as would be the case were his story to you true.”

As he spoke he started toward the companionway leading to the officers'
cabins. Barbara Harding hesitated at the top of the stairway.

“Have no fear, Miss Harding,” Theriere reassured her. “Remember that
I am your friend and that I am merely attempting to prove it to your
entire satisfaction. You owe it to yourself to discover as soon as
possible who your friends are aboard this ship, and who your enemies.”

“Very well,” said the girl. “I can be in no more danger one place aboard
her than another.”

Theriere led her directly to his own cabin, cautioning her to silence
with upraised forefinger. Softly, like skulking criminals, they entered
the little compartment. Then Theriere turned and closed the door,
slipping the bolt noiselessly as he did so. Barbara watched him, her
heart beating rapidly with fear and suspicion.

“Here,” whispered Theriere, motioning her toward his berth. “I have
found it advantageous to know what goes on beyond this partition. You
will find a small round hole near the head of the berth, about a foot
above the bedding. Put your ear to it and listen--I think Divine is in
there now.”

The girl, still frightened and fearful of the man's intentions, did,
nevertheless, as he bid. At first she could make out nothing beyond the
partition but a confused murmur of voices, and the clink of glass, as
of the touch of the neck of a bottle against a goblet. For a moment she
remained in tense silence, her ear pressed to the tiny aperture. Then,
distinctly, she heard the voice of Skipper Simms.

“I'm a-tellin' you, man,” he was saying, “that there wan't nothin' else
to be done, an' I'm a-gettin' damn sick o' hearin' you finding fault all
the time with the way I been a-runnin' o' this little job.”

“I'm not finding fault, Simms,” returned another voice which the girl
recognized immediately as Divine's; “although I do think that it was a
mistake to so totally disable the Lotus as you did. Why, how on earth
are we ever to return to civilization if that boat is lost? Had she been
simply damaged a little, in a way that they could themselves have fixed
up, the delay would have been sufficient to permit us to escape, and
then, when Miss Harding was returned in safety to her father, after our
marriage, they would have been so glad to be reunited that he easily
could have been persuaded to drop the matter. Then another thing; you
intended to demand a ransom for both Miss Harding and myself, to carry
out the fiction of my having been stolen also--how can you do that if
Mr. Harding be dead? And do you suppose for a moment that Miss Harding
will leave a single stone unturned to bring the guilty to justice if any
harm has befallen her father or his guests? If so you do not know her as
well as I.”

The girl turned away from the partition, her face white and drawn, her
eyes inexpressibly sad. She rose to her feet, facing Theriere.

“I have heard quite enough, thank you, Mr. Theriere,” she said.

“You are convinced then that I am your friend?” he asked.

“I am convinced that Mr. Divine is not,” she replied non-committally.

She took a step toward the door. Theriere stood looking at her. She was
unquestionably very good to look at. He could not remember ever having
seen a more beautiful girl. A great desire to seize her in his arms
swept over the man. Theriere had not often made any effort to harness
his desires. What he wanted it had been his custom to take--by force
if necessary. He took a step toward Barbara Harding. There was a sudden
light in his eyes that the girl had not before seen there, and she
reached quickly toward the knob of the door.

Theriere was upon her, and then, quickly, he mastered himself, for he
recalled his coolly thought-out plan based on what Divine had told him
of that clause in the will of the girl's departed grandparent which
stipulated that the man who shared the bequest with her must be the
choice of both herself and her father. He could afford to bide his time,
and play the chivalrous protector before he essayed the role of lover.

Barbara had turned a half-frightened look toward him as he advanced--in
doubt as to his intentions.

“Pardon me, Miss Harding,” he said; “the door is bolted--let me unlatch
it for you,” and very gallantly he did so, swinging the portal wide that
she might pass out. “I feared interruption,” he said, in explanation of
the bolt.

In silence they returned to the upper deck. The intoxication of sudden
passion now under control, Theriere was again master of himself and
ready to play the cold, calculating, waiting game that he had determined
upon. Part of his plan was to see just enough of Miss Harding to insure
a place in her mind at all times; but not enough to suggest that he was
forcing himself upon her. Rightly, he assumed that she would appreciate
thoughtful deference to her comfort and safety under the harrowing
conditions of her present existence more than a forced companionship
that might entail too open devotion on his part. And so he raised his
cap and left her, only urging her to call upon him at any time that he
might be of service to her.

Left alone the girl became lost in unhappy reflections, and in the
harrowing ordeal of attempting to readjust herself to the knowledge that
Larry Divine, her lifelong friend, was the instigator of the atrocious
villainy that had been perpetrated against her and her father. She found
it almost equally difficult to believe that Mr. Theriere was so much
more sinned against than sinning as he would have had her believe. And
yet, did his story not sound even more plausible than that of Divine
which she had accepted before Theriere had made it possible for her to
know the truth? Why, then, was it so difficult for her to believe the
Frenchman? She could not say, but in the inmost recesses of her heart
she knew that she mistrusted and feared the man.

As she stood leaning against the rail, buried deep in thought, Billy
Byrne passed close behind her. At sight of her a sneer curled his lip.
How he hated her! Not that she ever had done aught to harm him, but
rather because she represented to him in concrete form all that he had
learned to hate and loathe since early childhood.

Her soft, white skin; her shapely hands and well-cared-for nails;
her trim figure and perfectly fitting suit all taunted him with their
superiority over him and his kind. He knew that she looked down upon him
as an inferior being. She was of the class that addressed those in his
walk of life as “my man.” Lord, how he hated that appellation!

The intentness of his gaze upon her back had the effect so often noted
by the observant, and suddenly aroused from the lethargy of her
misery the girl swung around to meet the man's eyes squarely upon her.
Instantly she recognized him as the brute who had killed Billy Mallory.
If there had been hate in the mucker's eyes as he looked at the girl, it
was as nothing by comparison with the loathing and disgust which sprang
to hers as they rested upon his sullen face.

So deep was her feeling of contempt for this man, that the sudden
appearance of him before her startled a single exclamation from her.

“Coward!” came the one word, involuntarily, from her lips.

The man's scowl deepened menacingly. He took a threatening step toward
her.

“Wot's dat?” he growled. “Don't get gay wit me, or I'll black dem lamps
fer yeh,” and he raised a heavy fist as though to strike her.

The mucker had looked to see the girl cower before his threatened
blow--that would have been ample atonement for her insult, and would
have appealed greatly to his Kelly-gang sense of humor. Many a time
had he threatened women thus, for the keen enjoyment of hearing their
screams of fright and seeing them turn and flee in terror. When they had
held their ground and opposed him, as some upon the West Side had felt
sufficiently muscular to do, the mucker had not hesitated to “hand them
one.” Thus only might a man uphold his reputation for bravery in the
vicinage of Grand Avenue.

He had looked to see this girl of the effete and effeminate upper class
swoon with terror before him; but to his intense astonishment she but
stood erect and brave before him, her head high held, her eyes cold and
level and unafraid. And then she spoke again.

“Coward!” she said.

Billy almost struck her; but something held his hand. What, he could not
understand. Could it be that he feared this slender girl? And at this
juncture, when the threat of his attitude was the most apparent,
Second Officer Theriere came upon the scene. At a glance he took in the
situation, and with a bound had sprung between Billy Byrne and Barbara
Harding.



CHAPTER VI. THE MUCKER AT BAY

“WHAT has this man said to you, Miss Harding?” cried Theriere. “Has he
offered you harm?”

“I do not think that he would have dared strike me,” replied the girl,
“though he threatened to do so. He is the coward who murdered poor Mr.
Mallory upon the Lotus. He might stoop to anything after that.”

Theriere turned angrily upon Byrne.

“Go below!” he shouted. “I'll attend to you later. If Miss Harding were
not here I'd thrash you within an inch of your life now. And if I
ever hear of your speaking to her again, or offering her the slightest
indignity I'll put a bullet through you so quick you won't know what has
struck you.”

“T'ell yeh will!” sneered Billy Byrne. “I got your number, yeh big
stiff; an' yeh better not get gay wit me. Dey ain't no guy on board dis
man's ship dat can hand Billy Byrne dat kin' o' guff an' get away with
it--see?” and before Theriere knew what had happened a heavy fist had
caught him upon the point of the chin and lifted him clear off the deck
to drop him unconscious at Miss Harding's feet.

“Yeh see wot happens to guys dat get gay wit me?” said the mucker to the
girl, and then stooping over the prostrate form of the mate Billy Byrne
withdrew a huge revolver from Theriere's hip pocket.

“I guess I'll need dis gat in my business purty soon,” he remarked.

Then he planted a vicious kick in the face of the unconscious man and
went his way to the forecastle.

“Now maybe she'll tink Billy Byrne's a coward,” he thought, as he
disappeared below.

Barbara Harding stood speechless with shock at the brutality and
ferocity of the unexpected attack upon Theriere. Never in all her life
had she dreamed that there could exist upon the face of the earth a
thing in human form so devoid of honor, and chivalry, and fair play
as the creature that she had just witnessed threatening a defenseless
woman, and kicking an unconscious man in the face; but then Barbara
Harding had never lived between Grand Avenue and Lake Street, and
Halsted and Robey, where standards of masculine bravery are strange and
fearful.

When she had recovered her equanimity she hastened to the head of the
cabin companionway and called aloud for help. Instantly Skipper Simms
and First Officer Ward rushed on deck, each carrying a revolver in
readiness for the conflict with their crew that these two worthies were
always expecting.

Barbara pointed out the still form of Theriere, quickly explaining what
had occurred.

“It was the fellow Byrne who did it,” she said. “He has gone into the
forecastle now, and he has a revolver that he took from Mr. Theriere
after he had fallen.”

Several of the crew had now congregated about the prostrate officer.

“Here you,” cried Skipper Simms to a couple of them; “you take Mr.
Theriere below to his cabin, an' throw cold water in his face. Mr. Ward,
get some brandy from my locker, an' try an' bring him to. The rest of
you arm yourselves with crowbars and axes, an' see that that son of a
sea cook don't get out on deck again alive. Hold him there 'til I get a
couple of guns. Then we'll get him, damn him!”

Skipper Simms hastened below while two of the men were carrying Theriere
to his cabin and Mr. Ward was fetching the brandy. A moment later
Barbara Harding saw the skipper return to the upper deck with a rifle
and two revolvers. The sailors whom he had detailed to keep Byrne below
were gathered about the hatchway leading to the forecastle. Some of them
were exchanging profane and pleasant badinage with the prisoner.

“Yeh better come up an' get killed easy-like;” one called down to the
mucker. “We're apt to muss yeh all up down there in the dark with these
here axes and crowbars, an' then wen we send yeh home yer pore maw won't
know her little boy at all.”

“Yeh come on down here, an' try mussin' me up,” yelled back Billy Byrne.
“I can lick de whole gang wit one han' tied behin' me--see?”

“De skipper's gorn to get his barkers, Billy,” cried Bony Sawyer. “Yeh
better come up an' stan' trial if he gives yeh the chanct.”

“Stan' nothin',” sneered Billy. “Swell chanct I'd have wit him an'
Squint Eye holdin' court over me. Not on yer life, Bony. I'm here, an'
here I stays till I croaks, but yeh better believe me, I'm goin' to
croak a few before I goes, so if any of you ginks are me frien's yeh
better keep outen here so's yeh won't get hurted. An' anudder ting I'm
goin' to do afore I cashes in--I'm goin' to put a few of dem ginks in
de cabin wise to where dey stands wit one anudder. If I don't start
something before I goes out me name's not Billy Byrne.”

At this juncture Skipper Simms appeared with the three weapons he had
gone to his cabin to fetch. He handed one to Bony Sawyer, another to Red
Sanders and a third to a man by the name of Wison.

“Now, my men,” said Skipper Simms, “we will go below and bring Byrne up.
Bring him alive if you can--but bring him.”

No one made a move to enter the forecastle.

“Go on now, move quickly,” commanded Skipper Simms sharply.

“Thought he said 'we',” remarked one of the sailors.

Skipper Simms, livid with rage, turned to search out the offender from
the several men behind him.

“Who was that?” he roared. “Show me the blitherin' swab. Jes' show him
to me, I tell you, an I'll learn him. Now you,” he yelled at the top of
his voice, turning again to the men he had ordered into the forecastle
after Billy Byrne, “you cowardly landlubbers you, get below there quick
afore I kick you below.”

Still no one moved to obey him. From white he went to red, and then back
to white again. He fairly frothed at the mouth as he jumped up and down,
cursing the men, and threatening. But all to no avail. They would not
go.

“Why, Skipper,” spoke up Bony Sawyer, “it's sure death for any man as
goes below there. It's easier, an' safer, to starve him out.”

“Starve nothin',” shrieked Skipper Simms. “Do you reckon I'm a-goin' to
sit quiet here for a week an' let any blanked wharf rat own that there
fo'c's'le just because I got a lot o' white-livered cowards aboard? No
sir! You're a-goin' down after that would-be bad man an' fetch him up
dead or alive,” and with that he started menacingly toward the three
who stood near the hatch, holding their firearms safely out of range of
Billy Byrne below.

What would have happened had Skipper Simms completed the threatening
maneuver he had undertaken can never be known, for at this moment
Theriere pushed his way through the circle of men who were interested
spectators of the impending tragedy.

“What's up, sir?” he asked of Simms. “Anything that I can help you
with?”

“Oh!” exclaimed the skipper; “so you ain't dead after all, eh? Well
that don't change the looks of things a mite. We gotta get that man outa
there an' these flea-bitten imitations of men ain't got the guts to go
in after him.”

“He's got your gun, sir,” spoke up Wison, “an' Gawd knows he be the one
as'ud on'y be too glad for the chanct to use it.”

“Let me see if I can't handle him, sir,” said Theriere to Skipper Simms.
“We don't want to lose any men if we can help it.”

The skipper was only too glad to welcome this unexpected rescue from
the predicament in which he had placed himself. How Theriere was to
accomplish the subjugation of the mutinous sailor he could not guess,
nor did he care so long as it was done without risk to his own skin.

“Now if you'll go away, sir,” said Theriere, “and order the men away
I'll see what I can do.”

Skipper Simms did as Theriere had requested, so that presently the
officer stood alone beside the hatch. Across the deck, amidships, the
men had congregated to watch Theriere's operations, while beyond them
stood Barbara Harding held fascinated by the grim tragedy that was
unfolding before her upon this accursed vessel.

Theriere leaned over the open hatch, in full view of the waiting Byrne,
ready below. There was the instant report of a firearm and a bullet
whizzed close past Theriere's head.

“Avast there, Byrne!” he shouted. “It's I, Theriere. Don't shoot again,
I want to speak to you.”

“No monkey business now,” growled the mucker in reply. “I won't miss
again.”

“I want to talk with you, Byrne,” said Theriere in a low tone. “I'm
coming down there.”

“No you ain't, cul,” returned Byrne; “leastways yeh ain't a-comin' down
here alive.”

“Yes I am, Byrne,” replied Theriere, “and you don't want to be foolish
about it. I'm unarmed. You can cover me with your gun until you have
satisfied yourself as to that. I'm the only man on the ship that can
save your life--the only man that has any reason to want to; but we've
got to talk it over and we can't talk this way where there's a chance of
being overheard. I'll be on the square with you if you will with me,
and if we can't come to terms I'll come above again and you won't be
any worse off than you are now. Here I come,” and without waiting for an
acceptance of his proposition the second officer of the Halfmoon slipped
over the edge of the hatchway and disappeared from the sight of the
watchers above.

That he was a brave man even Billy Byrne had to admit, and those above
who knew nothing of the relations existing between the second mate and
the sailor, who had so recently felled him, thought that his courage was
little short of marvelous. Theriere's stock went up by leaps and bounds
in the estimation of the sailors of the Halfmoon, for degraded though
they were they could understand and appreciate physical courage of this
sort, while to Barbara Harding the man's act seemed unparalleled in its
utter disregard of the consequences of life and death to himself that it
entailed. She suddenly was sorry that she had entertained any suspicions
against Theriere--so brave a man could not be other than the soul of
honor, she argued.

Once below Theriere found himself covered by his own revolver in the
hands of a very desperate and a very unprincipled man. He smiled at
Byrne as the latter eyed him suspiciously.

“See here, Byrne,” said Theriere. “It would be foolish for me to say
that I am doing this for love of you. The fact is that I need you. We
cannot succeed, either one of us, alone. I think you made a fool play
when you hit me today. You know that our understanding was that I was
to be even a little rougher with you than usual, in order to avoid
suspicion being attached to any seeming familiarity between us, should
we be caught conferring together. I had the chance to bawl you out
today, and I thought that you would understand that I was but taking
advantage of the opportunity which it afforded to make it plain to Miss
Harding that there could be nothing other than hatred between us--it
might have come in pretty handy later to have her believe that.

“If I'd had any idea that you really intended hitting me you'd have been
a dead man before your fist reached me, Byrne. You took me entirely
by surprise; but that's all in the past--I'm willing to let bygones be
bygones, and help you out of the pretty pickle you've got yourself into.
Then we can go ahead with our work as though nothing had happened. What
do you say?”

“I didn't know yeh was kiddin,” replied the mucker, “or I wouldn't have
hit yeh. Yeh acted like yeh meant it.”

“Very well, that part's understood,” said Theriere. “Now will you come
out if I can square the thing with the skipper so's you won't get more
than a day or so in irons--he'll have to give you something to save his
own face; but I promise that you'll get your food regularly and that you
won't be beaten up the way you were before when he had you below. If he
won't agree to what I propose I give you my word to tell you so.”

“Go ahead,” said Billy Byrne; “I don't trust nobody wen I don't have to;
but I'll be dinged if I see any other way out of it.”

Theriere returned to the deck and seeking out the skipper drew him to
one side.

“I can get him up peaceably if I can assure him that he'll only get a
day or so in the cooler, with full rations and no beatings. I think,
sir, that that will be the easiest way out of it. We cannot spare a
man now--if we want to get the fellow later we can always find some
pretext.”

“Very well, Mr. Theriere,” replied the skipper, “I'll leave the matter
entirely in your hands--you can do what you want with the fellow; it's
you as had your face punched.”

Theriere returned immediately to the forecastle, from which he presently
emerged with the erstwhile recalcitrant Byrne, and for two days the
latter languished in durance vile, and that was the end of the episode,
though its effects were manifold. For one thing it implanted in the
heart of Theriere a personal hatred for the mucker, so that while
heretofore his intention of ridding himself of the man when he no longer
needed him was due purely to a matter of policy, it was now reinforced
by a keen desire for personal revenge. The occurrence had also had its
influence upon Barbara Harding, in that it had shown her Mr. Theriere
in a new light--one that reflected credit upon him. She had thought his
magnanimous treatment of the sailor little short of heroic; and it
had deepened the girl's horror of Billy Byrne until it now amounted to
little short of an obsession. So vivid an impression had his brutality
made upon her that she would start from deep slumber, dreaming that she
was menaced by him.

After Billy was released for duty following his imprisonment, he several
times passed the girl upon deck. He noticed that she shrank from him
in disgust and terror; but what surprised him was that instead of the
thrill of pride which he formerly would have felt at this acknowledgment
of his toughness, for Billy prided himself on being a tough, he now felt
a singular resentment against the girl for her attitude, so that he came
to hate her even more than he had before hated. Formerly he had hated
her for the things she stood for, now he hated her for herself.

Theriere was often with her now, and, less frequently, Divine; for
at the second officer's suggestion Barbara had not acquainted that
gentleman with the fact that she was aware of his duplicity.

“It is just as well not to let him know,” said Theriere. “It gives you
an advantage that would be wanting should he suspect the truth, so that
now you are always in a position to be warned in plenty of time against
any ulterior suggestion he may make. Keep me posted as to all he tells
you of his plans, and in this way we can defeat him much more easily
than as though you followed your natural inclinations and refused to
hold communication of any sort with him. It might be well, Miss Harding,
even to encourage him in the hope that you will wed him voluntarily. I
think that that would throw him entirely off his guard, and pave the way
for your early release.”

“Oh, I doubt if I could do that, Mr. Theriere,” exclaimed the girl.
“You cannot imagine how I loathe the man now that I know him in his true
colors. For years he has importuned me to marry him, and though I never
cared for him in that way at all, and never could, I felt that he was
a very good friend and that his constancy demanded some return on my
part--my friendship and sympathy at least; but now I shiver whenever he
is near me, just as I would were I to find a snake coiled close beside
me. I cannot abide treachery.”

“Nor I, Miss Harding,” agreed Theriere glibly. “The man deserves nothing
but your contempt, though for policy's sake I hope that you will find
it possible to lead him on until his very treachery proves the means
of your salvation, for believe me, if he has been false to you how much
more quickly will he be false to Simms and Ward! He would ditch them in
a minute if the opportunity presented itself for him to win you
without their aid. I had thought it might be feasible to lead him into
attempting to take the ship by force, and return you to San Francisco,
or, better still possibly, to the nearest civilized port.

“You might, with propriety suggest this to him, telling him that you
believe that I would stand ready to assist in the undertaking. I can
promise you the support of several of the men--quite a sufficient
number with Divine and myself, easily to take the Halfmoon away from her
present officers.”

“I will think over your suggestion, Mr. Theriere,” replied Barbara, “and
I thank you for the generous impulse that has prompted you to befriend
me--heaven knows how badly I need a friend now among so many enemies.
What is it, Mr. Theriere? What is the matter?”

The officer had turned his eyes casually toward the southeast as the
girl spoke, and just now he had given a sudden exclamation of surprise
and alarm.

“That cloud, Miss Harding,” he answered. “We're in for a bad blow, and
it'll be on us in a minute,” and with that he started forward on a run,
calling back over his shoulder, “you'd better go below at once.”



CHAPTER VII. THE TYPHOON


THE storm that struck the Halfmoon took her entirely unaware. It had
sprung, apparently, out of a perfectly clear sky. Both the lookout and
the man at the wheel were ready to take oath that they had scanned the
horizon not a half-minute before Second Mate Theriere had come racing
forward bellowing for all hands on deck and ordering a sailor below to
report the menacing conditions to Captain Simms.

Before that officer reached the deck Theriere had the entire crew aloft
taking in sail; but though they worked with the desperation of doomed
men they were only partially successful in their efforts.

The sky and sea had assumed a sickly yellowish color, except for the
mighty black cloud that raced toward them, low over the water. The low
moaning sound that had followed the first appearance of the storm, gave
place to a sullen roar, and then, of a sudden, the thing struck the
Halfmoon, ripping her remaining canvas from her as if it had been
wrought from tissue paper, and with the flying canvas, spars, and
cordage went the mainmast, snapping ten feet above the deck, and
crashing over the starboard bow with a noise and jar that rose above the
bellowing of the typhoon.

Fully half the crew of the Halfmoon either went down with the falling
rigging or were crushed by the crashing weight of the mast as it hurtled
against the deck. Skipper Simms rushed back and forth screaming out
curses that no one heeded, and orders that there was none to fill.

Theriere, on his own responsibility, looked to the hatches. Ward with a
handful of men armed with axes attempted to chop away the wreckage, for
the jagged butt of the fallen mast was dashing against the ship's side
with such vicious blows that it seemed but a matter of seconds ere it
would stave a hole in her.

With the utmost difficulty a sea anchor was rigged and tumbled over
the Halfmoon's pitching bow into the angry sea, that was rising to more
gigantic proportions with each succeeding minute. This frail makeshift
which at best could but keep the vessel's bow into the wind, saving her
from instant engulfment in the sea's trough, seemed to Theriere but a
sorry means of prolonging the agony of suspense preceding the inevitable
end. That nothing could save them was the second officer's firm belief,
nor was he alone in his conviction. Not only Simms and Ward, but every
experienced sailor on the ship felt that the life of the Halfmoon was
now but a matter of hours, possibly minutes, while those of lesser
experience were equally positive that each succeeding wave must mark the
termination of the lives of the vessel and her company.

The deck, washed now almost continuously by hurtling tons of storm-mad
water, as one mountainous wave followed another the length of the ship,
had become entirely impossible. With difficulty the men were attempting
to get below between waves. All semblance of discipline had vanished.
For the most part they were a pack of howling, cursing, terror-ridden
beasts, fighting at the hatches with those who would have held them
closed against the danger of each new assault of the sea.

Ward and Skipper Simms had been among the first to seek the precarious
safety below deck. Theriere alone of the officers had remained on duty
until the last, and now he was exerting his every faculty in the effort
to save as many of the men as possible without losing the ship in the
doing of it. Only between waves was the entrance to the main cabins
negotiable, while the forecastle hatch had been abandoned entirely after
it had with difficulty been replaced following the retreat of three of
the crew to that part of the ship.

The mucker stood beside Theriere as the latter beat back the men when
the seas threatened. It was the man's first experience of the kind.
Never had he faced death in the courage-blighting form which the grim
harvester assumes when he calls unbridled Nature to do his ghastly
bidding. The mucker saw the rough, brawling bullies of the forecastle
reduced to white-faced, gibbering cowards, clawing and fighting to climb
over one another toward the lesser danger of the cabins, while the mate
fought them off, except as he found it expedient to let them pass him;
he alone cool and fearless.

Byrne stood as one apart from the dangers and hysteric strivings of
his fellows. Once when Theriere happened to glance in his direction
the Frenchman mentally ascribed the mucker's seeming lethargy to the
paralysis of abject cowardice. “The fellow is in a blue funk,” thought
the second mate; “I did not misjudge him--like all his kind he is a
coward at heart.”

Then a great wave came, following unexpectedly close upon the heels of
a lesser one. It took Theriere off his guard, threw him down and hurtled
him roughly across the deck, landing him in the scuppers, bleeding and
stunned. The next wave would carry him overboard.

Released from surveillance the balance of the crew pushed and fought
their way into the cabin--only the mucker remained without, staring
first at the prostrate form of the mate and then at the open cabin
hatch. Had one been watching him he might reasonably have thought that
the man's mind was in a muddle of confused thoughts and fears; but such
was far from the case. Billy was waiting to see if the mate would revive
sufficiently to return across the deck before the next wave swept the
ship. It was very interesting--he wondered what odds O'Leary would have
laid against the man.

In another moment the wave would come. Billy glanced at the open cabin
hatch. That would never do--the cabin would be flooded with tons of
water should the next wave find the hatch still open. Billy closed
it. Then he looked again toward Theriere. The man was just recovering
consciousness--and the wave was coming.

Something stirred within Billy Byrne. It gripped him and made him act
quickly as though by instinct to do something that no one, Billy himself
least of all, would have suspected that the Grand Avenue mucker would
have been capable of.

Across the deck Theriere was dragging himself painfully to his hands and
knees, as though to attempt the impossible feat of crawling back to the
cabin hatch. The wave was almost upon Billy. In a moment it would engulf
him, and then rush on across him to tear Theriere from the deck and hurl
him beyond the ship into the tumbling, watery, chaos of the sea.

The mucker saw all this, and in the instant he launched himself toward
the man for whom he had no use, whose kind he hated, reaching him as
the great wave broke over them, crushing them to the deck, choking and
blinding them.

For a moment they were buried in the swirling maelstrom, and then as the
Halfmoon rose again, shaking the watery enemy from her back, the two men
were disclosed--Theriere half over the ship's side--the mucker clinging
to him with one hand, the other clutching desperately at a huge cleat
upon the gunwale.

Byrne dragged the mate to the deck, and then slowly and with infinite
difficulty across it to the cabin hatch. Through it he pushed the man,
tumbling after him and closing the aperture just as another wave swept
the Halfmoon.

Theriere was conscious and but little the worse for his experience,
though badly bruised. He looked at the mucker in astonishment as the two
faced each other in the cabin.

“I don't know why you did it,” said Theriere.

“Neither do I,” replied Billy Byrne.

“I shall not forget it, Byrne,” said the officer.

“Yeh'd better,” answered Billy, turning away.

The mucker was extremely puzzled to account for his act. He did not look
upon it at all as a piece of heroism; but rather as a “fool play” which
he should be ashamed of. The very idea! Saving the life of a gink who,
despite his brutal ways, belonged to the much-despised “highbrow” class.
Billy was peeved with himself.

Theriere, for his part, was surprised at the unexpected heroism of the
man he had long since rated as a cowardly bully. He was fully determined
to repay Byrne in so far as he could the great debt he owed him. All
thoughts of revenge for the mucker's former assault upon him were
dropped, and he now looked upon the man as a true friend and ally.

For three days the Halfmoon plunged helplessly upon the storm-wracked
surface of the mad sea. No soul aboard her entertained more than the
faintest glimmer of a hope that the ship would ride out the storm; but
during the third night the wind died down, and by morning the sea had
fallen sufficiently to make it safe for the men of the Halfmoon to
venture upon deck.

There they found the brigantine clean-swept from stem to stern. To
the north of them was land at a league or two, perhaps. Had the storm
continued during the night they would have been dashed upon the coast.
God-fearing men would have given thanks for their miraculous rescue;
but not so these. Instead, the fear of death removed, they assumed their
former bravado.

Skipper Simms boasted of the seamanship that had saved the Halfmoon--his
own seamanship of course. Ward was cursing the luck that had disabled
the ship at so crucial a period of her adventure, and revolving in his
evil mind various possible schemes for turning the misfortune to his
own advantage. Billy Byrne, sitting upon the corner of the galley
table, hobnobbed with Blanco. These choice representatives of the ship's
company were planning a raid on the skipper's brandy chest during the
disembarkation which the sight of land had rendered not improbable.

The Halfmoon, with the wind down, wallowed heavily in the trough of the
sea, but even so Barbara Harding, wearied with days of confinement in
her stuffy cabin below, ventured above deck for a breath of sweet, clean
air.

Scarce had she emerged from below than Theriere espied her, and hastened
to her side.

“Well, Miss Harding,” he exclaimed, “it seems good to see you on deck
again. I can't tell you how sorry I have felt for you cooped up alone
in your cabin without a single woman for companionship, and all those
frightful days of danger, for there was scarce one of us that thought
the old hooker would weather so long and hard a blow. We were mighty
fortunate to come through it so handily.”

“Handily?” queried Barbara Harding, with a wry smile, glancing about
the deck of the Halfmoon. “I cannot see that we are either through it
handily or through it at all. We have no masts, no canvas, no boats;
and though I am not much of a sailor, I can see that there is little
likelihood of our effecting a landing on the shore ahead either with or
without boats---it looks most forbidding. Then the wind has gone down,
and when it comes up again it is possible that it will carry us away
from the land, or if it takes us toward it, dash us to pieces at the
foot of those frightful cliffs.”

“I see you are too good a sailor by far to be cheered by any
questionable hopes,” laughed Theriere; “but you must take the will
into consideration--I only wished to give you a ray of hope that might
lighten your burden of apprehension. However, honestly, I do think that
we may find a way to make a safe landing if the sea continues to go
down as it has in the past two hours. We are not more than a league from
shore, and with the jury mast and sail that the men are setting under
Mr. Ward now we can work in comparative safety with a light breeze,
which we should have during the afternoon. There are few coasts, however
rugged they may appear at a distance, that do not offer some foothold
for the wrecked mariner, and I doubt not but that we shall find this no
exception to the rule.”

“I hope you are right, Mr. Theriere,” said the girl, “and yet I cannot
but feel that my position will be less safe on land than it has been
upon the Halfmoon. Once free from the restraints of discipline which
tradition, custom, and law enforce upon the high seas there is no
telling what atrocities these men will commit. To be quite candid, Mr.
Theriere, I dread a landing worse than I dreaded the dangers of the
storm through which we have just passed.”

“I think you have little to fear on that score, Miss Harding,” said the
Frenchman. “I intend making it quite plain that I consider myself your
protector once we have left the Halfmoon, and I can count on several of
the men to support me. Even Mr. Divine will not dare do otherwise. Then
we can set up a camp of our own apart from Skipper Simms and his faction
where you will be constantly guarded until succor may be obtained.”

Barbara Harding had been watching the man's face as he spoke. The memory
of his consideration and respectful treatment of her during the trying
weeks of her captivity had done much to erase the intuitive feeling
of distrust that had tinged her thoughts of him earlier in their
acquaintance, while his heroic act in descending into the forecastle
in the face of the armed and desperate Byrne had thrown a glamour of
romance about him that could not help but tend to fascinate a girl of
Barbara Harding's type. Then there was the look she had seen in his eyes
for a brief instant when she had found herself locked in his cabin on
the occasion that he had revealed to her Larry Divine's duplicity. That
expression no red-blooded girl could mistake, and the fact that he had
subdued his passion spoke eloquently to the girl of the fineness
and chivalry of his nature, so now it was with a feeling of utter
trustfulness that she gladly gave herself into the keeping of Henri
Theriere, Count de Cadenet, Second Officer of the Halfmoon.

“O Mr. Theriere,” she cried, “if you only can but arrange it so, how
relieved and almost happy I shall be. How can I ever repay you for all
that you have done for me?”

Again she saw the light leap to the man's eyes--the light of a love
that would not be denied much longer other than through the agency of a
mighty will. Love she thought it; but the eye-light of love and lust are
twin lights between which it takes much worldly wisdom to differentiate,
and Barbara Harding was not worldly-wise in the ways of sin.

“Miss Harding,” said Theriere, in a voice that he evidently found it
difficult to control, “do not ask me now how you may repay me; I--;” but
what he would have said he checked, and with an effort of will that was
almost appreciable to the eye he took a fresh grip upon himself, and
continued: “I am amply repaid by being able to serve you, and thus to
retrieve myself in your estimation--I know that you have doubted me;
that you have questioned the integrity of my acts that helped to lead
up to the unfortunate affair of the Lotus. When you tell me that you
no longer doubt--that you accept me as the friend I would wish to be, I
shall be more than amply repaid for anything which it may have been
my good fortune to have been able to accomplish for your comfort and
safety.”

“Then I may partially repay you at once,” exclaimed the girl with a
smile, “for I can assure you that you possess my friendship to the
fullest, and with it, of course, my entire confidence. It is true that
I doubted you at first--I doubted everyone connected with the Halfmoon.
Why shouldn't I? But now I think that I am able to draw a very clear
line between my friends and my enemies. There is but one upon the right
side of that line--you, my friend,” and with an impulsive little gesture
Barbara Harding extended her hand to Theriere.

It was with almost a sheepish expression that the Frenchman took the
proffered fingers, for there had been that in the frank avowal of
confidence and friendship which smote upon a chord of honor in the man's
soul that had not vibrated in response to a chivalrous impulse for so
many long years that it had near atrophied from disuse.

Then, of a sudden, the second officer of the Halfmoon straightened to
his full height. His head went high, and he took the small hand of the
girl in his own strong, brown one.

“Miss Harding,” he said, “I have led a hard, bitter life. I have not
always done those things of which I might be most proud: but there
have been times when I have remembered that I am the grandson of one of
Napoleon's greatest field marshals, and that I bear a name that has been
honored by a mighty nation. What you have just said to me recalls these
facts most vividly to my mind--I hope, Miss Harding, that you will never
regret having spoken them,” and to the bottom of his heart the man meant
what he said, at the moment; for inherent chivalry is as difficult to
suppress or uproot as is inherent viciousness.

The girl let her hand rest in his for a moment, and as their eyes met
she saw in his a truth and honesty and cleanness which revealed
what Theriere might have been had Fate ordained his young manhood to
different channels. And in that moment a question sprang, all unbidden
and unforeseen to her mind; a question which caused her to withdraw her
hand quickly from his, and which sent a slow crimson to her cheek.

Billy Byrne, slouching by, cast a bitter look of hatred upon the two.
The fact that he had saved Theriere's life had not increased his love
for that gentleman. He was still much puzzled to account for the strange
idiocy that had prompted him to that act; and two of his fellows had
felt the weight of his mighty fist when they had spoken words of rough
praise for his heroism--Billy had thought that they were kidding him.

To Billy the knocking out of Theriere, and the subsequent kick which
he had planted in the unconscious man's face, were true indications of
manliness. He gauged such matters by standards purely Grand Avenuesque
and now it enraged him to see that the girl before whose very eyes he
had demonstrated his superiority over Theriere should so look with favor
upon the officer.

It did not occur to Billy that he would care to have the girl look with
favor upon him. Such a thought would have sent him into a berserker
rage; but the fact remained that Billy felt a strong desire to cut out
Theriere's heart when he saw him now in close converse with Barbara
Harding--just why he felt so Billy could not have said. The truth of
the matter is that Billy was far from introspective; in fact he did very
little thinking. His mind had never been trained to it, as his muscles
had been trained to fighting. Billy reacted more quickly to instinct
than to the processes of reasoning, and on this account it was difficult
for him to explain any great number of his acts or moods--it is to be
doubted, however, that Billy Byrne had ever attempted to get at the
bottom of his soul, if he possessed one.

Be that as it may, had Theriere known it he was very near death that
moment when a summons from Skipper Simms called him aft and saved his
life. Then the mucker, unseen by the officer, approached the girl. In
his heart were rage and hatred, and as the girl turned at the sound of
his step behind her she saw them mirrored in his dark, scowling face.



CHAPTER VIII. THE WRECK OF THE “HALFMOON”

INSTANTLY Barbara Harding looked into the face of the mucker she read
her danger. Why the man should hate her so she could not guess; but
that he did was evidenced by the malevolent expression of his surly
countenance. For a moment he stood glaring at her, and then he spoke.

“I'm wise to wot youse an' dat guy was chinnin' about,” he growled, “an'
I'm right here to tell youse dat you don't wanta try an' put nothin'
over on me, see? Youse ain't a-goin' to double-cross Billy Byrne. I
gotta good notion to han' youse wot's comin' to you. If it hadn't been
fer youse I wouldn't have been here now on dis Gawd-forsaken wreck.
Youse is de cause of all de trouble. Wot youse ought to get is croaked
an' den dere wouldn't be nothin' to bother any of us. You an' yer bunch
of kale, dey give me a swift pain. Fer half a cent I'd soak youse a
wallop to de solar plexus dat would put youse to sleep fer de long
count, you--you--” but here words failed Billy.

To his surprise the girl showed not the slightest indication of fear.
Her head was high, and her level gaze never wavered from his own eyes.
Presently a sneer of contempt curled her lip.

“You coward!” she said quietly. “To insult and threaten a woman! You are
nothing but an insufferable bully, and a cowardly murderer. You murdered
a man on the Lotus whose little finger held more true manhood, bravery,
and worth than the whole of your great, hulking carcass. You are only
fit to strike from behind, or when your victim is unsuspecting, as you
did Mr. Theriere that other day. Do you think I fear a THING such as
you--a beast without honor that kicks an unconscious man in the face?
I know that you can kill me. I know that you are coward enough to do it
because I am a defenseless woman; and though you may kill me, you never
can make me show fear for you. That is what you wish to do--that is your
idea of manliness. I had never imagined that such a thing as you lived
in the guise of man; but I have read you, Mr. Byrne, since I have had
occasion to notice you, and I know now that you are what is known in the
great cities as a mucker. The term never meant much to me before, but I
see now that it fits your kind perfectly, for in it is all the loathing
and contempt that a real man--a gentleman--must feel for such as you.”

As she spoke Billy Byrne's eyes narrowed; but not with the cunning of
premeditated attack. He was thinking. For the first time in his life he
was thinking of how he appeared in the eyes of another. Never had any
human being told Billy Byrne thus coolly and succinctly what sort of
person he seemed to them. In the heat of anger men of his own stamp had
applied vile epithets to him, describing him luridly as such that by
the simplest laws of nature he could not possibly be; but this girl
had spoken coolly, and her descriptions had been explicit--backed by
illustrations. She had given real reasons for her contempt, and somehow
it had made that contempt seem very tangible.

One who had known Billy would have expected him to fly into a rage and
attack the girl brutally after her scathing diatribe. Billy did nothing
of the sort. Barbara Harding's words seemed to have taken all the fight
out of him. He stood looking at her for a moment--it was one of the
strange contradictions of Billy Byrne's personality that he could
hold his eyes quite steady and level, meeting the gaze of another
unwaveringly--and in that moment something happened to Billy Byrne's
perceptive faculties. It was as though scales which had dimmed his
mental vision had partially dropped away, for suddenly he saw what he
had not before seen--a very beautiful girl, brave and unflinching before
the brutal menace of his attitude, and though the mucker thought that
he still hated her, the realization came to him that he must not raise a
hand against her--that for the life of him he could not, nor ever again
against any other woman. Why this change, Billy did not know, he simply
knew that it was so, and with an ugly grunt he turned his back upon her
and walked away.

A slight breeze had risen from the southwest since Theriere had left
Barbara Harding and now all hands were busily engaged in completing the
jury rigging that the Halfmoon might take advantage of the wind and make
the shore that rose abruptly from the bosom of the ocean but a league
away.

Before the work was completed the wind increased rapidly, so that when
the tiny bit of canvas was hoisted into position it bellied bravely, and
the Halfmoon moved heavily forward toward the land.

“We gotta make a mighty quick run of it,” said Skipper Simms to Ward,
“or we'll go to pieces on them rocks afore ever we find a landing.”

“That we will if this wind rises much more,” replied Ward; “and's far as
I can see there ain't no more chance to make a landing there than there
would be on the side of a house.”

And indeed as the Halfmoon neared the towering cliffs it seemed utterly
hopeless that aught else than a fly could find a foothold upon that
sheer and rocky face that rose abruptly from the ocean's surface.

Some two hundred yards from the shore it became evident that there was
no landing to be made directly before them, and so the course of the
ship was altered to carry them along parallel to the shore in an effort
to locate a cove, or beach where a landing might safely be effected.

The wind, increasing steadily, was now whipping the sea into angry
breakers that dashed resoundingly against the rocky barrier of the
island. To drift within reach of those frightful destroyers would mean
the instant annihilation of the Halfmoon and all her company, yet this
was precisely what the almost unmanageable hulk was doing at the wheel
under the profane direction of Skipper Simms, while Ward and Theriere
with a handful of men altered the meager sail from time to time in an
effort to keep the ship off the rocks for a few moments longer.

The Halfmoon was almost upon the cliff's base when a narrow opening
showed some hundred fathoms before her nose, an opening through which
the sea ran in long, surging sweeps, rolling back upon itself in angry
breakers that filled the aperture with swirling water and high-flung
spume. To have attempted to drive the ship into such a place would have
been the height of madness under ordinary circumstances. No man knew
what lay beyond, nor whether the opening carried sufficient water to
float the Halfmoon, though the long, powerful sweep of the sea as it
entered the opening denoted considerable depth.

Skipper Simms, seeing the grim rocks rising close beside his vessel,
realized that naught could keep her from them now. He saw death peering
close to his face. He felt the icy breath of the Grim Reaper upon his
brow. A coward at heart, he lost every vestige of his nerve at this
crucial moment of his life. Leaping from the wheelhouse to the deck he
ran backward and forward shrieking at the top of his lungs begging and
entreating someone to save him, and offering fabulous rewards to the man
who carried him safely to the shore.

The sight of their captain in a blue funk had its effect upon the
majority of the crew, so that in a moment a pack of screaming,
terror-ridden men had supplanted the bravos and bullies of the Halfmoon.

From the cabin companionway Barbara Harding looked upon the disgusting
scene. Her lip curled in scorn at the sight of these men weeping and
moaning in their fright. She saw Ward busy about one of the hatches. It
was evident that he intended making a futile attempt to utilize it as a
means of escape after the Halfmoon struck, for he was attaching ropes
to it and dragging it toward the port side of the ship, away from the
shore. Larry Divine crouched beside the cabin and wept.

When Simms gave up the ship Barbara Harding saw the wheelmen, there had
been two of them, desert their post, and almost instantly the nose of
the Halfmoon turned toward the rocks; but scarcely had the men reached
the deck than Theriere leaped to their place at the wheel.

Unassisted he could do little with the heavy helm. Barbara saw that
he alone of all the officers and men of the brigantine was making an
attempt to save the vessel. However futile the effort might be, it at
least bespoke the coolness and courage of the man. With the sight of him
there wrestling with death in a hopeless struggle a little wave of pride
surged through the girl. Here indeed was a man! And he loved her--that
she knew. Whether or no she returned his love her place was beside him
now, to give what encouragement and physical aid lay in her power.

Quickly she ran to the wheelhouse. Theriere saw her and smiled.

“There's no hope, I'm afraid,” he said; “but, by George, I intend to go
down fighting, and not like those miserable yellow curs.”

Barbara did not reply, but she grasped the spokes of the heavy wheel and
tugged as he tugged. Theriere made no effort to dissuade her from the
strenuous labor--every ounce of weight would help so much, and the man
had a wild, mad idea that he was attempting to put into effect.

“What do you hope to do?” asked the girl. “Make that opening in the
cliffs?”

Theriere nodded.

“Do you think me crazy?” he asked.

“It is such a chance as only a brave man would dare to take,” she
replied. “Do you think that we can get her to take it?”

“I doubt it,” he answered. “With another man at the wheel we might,
though.”

Below them the crew of the Halfmoon ran hither and thither along the
deck on the side away from the breakers. They fought with one another
for useless bits of planking and cordage. The giant figure of the black
cook, Blanco, rose above the others. In his hand was a huge butcher
knife. When he saw a piece of wood he coveted in the hands of another he
rushed upon his helpless victim with wild, bestial howls, menacing him
with his gleaming weapon. Thus he was rapidly accumulating the material
for a life raft.

But there was a single figure upon the deck that did not seem mad with
terror. A huge fellow he was who stood leaning against the capstan
watching the wild antics of his fellows with a certain wondering
expression of incredulity, the while a contemptuous smile curled his
lips. As Barbara Harding chanced to look in his direction he also
chanced to turn his eyes toward the wheelhouse. It was the mucker.

The girl was surprised that he, the greatest coward of them all, should
be showing no signs of cowardice now--probably he was paralyzed with
fright. The moment that the man saw the two who were in the wheelhouse
and the work that they were doing he sprang quickly toward them. At his
approach the girl shrank closer to Theriere.

What new outrage did the fellow contemplate? Now he was beside her. The
habitual dark scowl blackened his expression. He laid a heavy hand on
Barbara Harding's arm.

“Come out o' dat,” he bellowed. “Dat's no kind o' job fer a broiler.”

And before either she or Theriere could guess his intention the mucker
had pushed Barbara aside and taken her place at the wheel.

“Good for you, Byrne!” cried Theriere. “I needed you badly.”

“Why didn't yeh say so den?” growled the man.

With the aid of Byrne's Herculean muscles and great weight the bow
of the Halfmoon commenced to come slowly around so that presently she
almost paralleled the cliffs again, but now she was much closer in than
when Skipper Simms had deserted her to her fate--so close that Theriere
had little hope of being able to carry out his plan of taking her
opposite the opening and then turning and running her before the wind
straight into the swirling waters of the inlet.

Now they were almost opposite the aperture and between the giant cliffs
that rose on either side of the narrow entrance a sight was revealed
that filled their hearts with renewed hope and rejoicing, for a tiny
cove was seen to lie beyond the fissure--a cove with a long, wide, sandy
beach up which the waves, broken at the entrance to the little haven,
rolled with much diminished violence.

“Can you hold her alone for a second, Byrne?” asked Theriere. “We
must make the turn in another moment and I've got to let out sail. The
instant that you see me cut her loose put your helm hard to starboard.
She'll come around easy enough I imagine, and then hold her nose
straight for that opening. It's one chance in a thousand; but it's the
only one. Are you game?”

“You know it, cul--go to 't,” was Billy Byrne's laconic rejoinder.

As Theriere left the wheel Barbara Harding stepped to the mucker's side.

“Let me help you,” she said. “We need every hand that we can get for the
next few moments.”

“Beat it,” growled the man. “I don't want no skirts in my way.”

With a flush, the girl drew back, and then turning watched Theriere
where he stood ready to cut loose the sail at the proper instant. The
vessel was now opposite the cleft in the cliffs. Theriere had lashed
a new sheet in position. Now he cut the old one. The sail swung around
until caught in position by the stout line. The mucker threw the helm
hard to starboard. The nose of the brigantine swung quickly toward the
rocks. The sail filled, and an instant later the ship was dashing to
what seemed her inevitable doom.

Skipper Simms, seeing what Theriere had done after it was too late to
prevent it, dashed madly across the deck toward his junior.

“You fool!” he shrieked. “You fool! What are you doing? Driving us
straight for the rocks--murdering the whole lot of us!” and with that
he sprang upon the Frenchman with maniacal fury, bearing him to the deck
beneath him.

Barbara Harding saw the attack of the fear-demented man, but she was
powerless to prevent it. The mucker saw it too, and grinned--he hoped
that it would be a good fight; there was nothing that he enjoyed more.
He was sorry that he could not take a hand in it, but the wheel demanded
all his attention now, so that he was even forced to take his eyes from
the combatants that he might rivet them upon the narrow entrance to the
cove toward which the Halfmoon was now plowing her way at constantly
increasing speed.

The other members of the ship's company, all unmindful of the battle
that at another time would have commanded their undivided attention,
stood with eyes glued upon the wild channel toward which the
brigantine's nose was pointed. They saw now what Skipper Simms had
failed to see--the little cove beyond, and the chance for safety that
the bold stroke offered if it proved successful.

With steady muscles and giant sinews the mucker stood by the
wheel--nursing the erratic wreck as no one might have supposed it was in
him to do. Behind him Barbara Harding watched first Theriere and Simms,
and then Byrne and the swirling waters toward which he was heading the
ship.

Even the strain of the moment did not prevent her from wondering at
the strange contradictions of the burly young ruffian who could at one
moment show such traits of cowardliness and the next rise so coolly to
the highest pinnacles of courage. As she watched him occasionally now
she noted for the first time the leonine contour of his head, and she
was surprised to note that his features were regular and fine, and
then she recalled Billy Mallory and the cowardly kick that she had seen
delivered in the face of the unconscious Theriere--with a little shudder
of disgust she turned away from the man at the wheel.

Theriere by this time had managed to get on top of Skipper Simms, but
that worthy still clung to him with the desperation of a drowning man.
The Halfmoon was rising on a great wave that would bear her well into
the maelstrom of the cove's entrance. The wind had increased to the
proportions of a gale, so that the brigantine was fairly racing either
to her doom or her salvation--who could tell which?

Halfway through the entrance the wave dropped the ship, and with a
mighty crash that threw Barbara Harding to her feet the vessel struck
full amidships upon a sunken reef. Like a thing of glass she broke in
two with the terrific impact, and in another instant the waters about
her were filled with screaming men.

Barbara Harding felt herself hurtled from the deck as though shot from
a catapult. The swirling waters engulfed her. She knew that her end had
come, only the most powerful of swimmers might hope to win through that
lashing hell of waters to the beach beyond. For a girl to do it was too
hopeless even to contemplate; but she recalled Theriere's words of so
short a time ago: “There's no hope, I'm afraid; but, by George, I intend
to go down fighting,” and with the recollection came a like resolve
on her part--to go down fighting, and so she struck out against the
powerful waters that swirled her hither and thither, now perilously
close to the rocky sides of the entrance, and now into the mad chaos of
the channel's center. Would to heaven that Theriere were near her, she
thought, for if any could save her it would be he.

Since she had come to believe in the man's friendship and sincerity
Barbara Harding had felt renewed hope of eventual salvation, and with
the hope had come a desire to live which had almost been lacking for the
greater part of her detention upon the Halfmoon.

Bravely she battled now against the awful odds of the mighty Pacific,
but soon she felt her strength waning. More and more ineffective became
her puny efforts, and at last she ceased almost entirely the futile
struggle.

And then she felt a strong hand grasp her arm, and with a sudden surge
she was swung over a broad shoulder. Quickly she grasped the rough shirt
that covered the back of her would-be rescuer, and then commenced a
battle with the waves that for many minutes, that seemed hours to the
frightened girl, hung in the balance; but at last the swimmer beneath
her forged steadily and persistently toward the sandy beach to flounder
out at last with an unconscious burden in his mighty arms.

As the man staggered up out of reach of the water Barbara Harding opened
her eyes to look in astonishment into the face of the mucker.



CHAPTER IX. ODA YORIMOTO

ONLY four men of the Halfmoon's crew were lost in the wreck of the
vessel. All had been crowded in the bow when the ship broke in two,
and being far-flung by the forward part of the brigantine as it lunged
toward the cove on the wave following the one which had dropped the
craft upon the reef, with the exception of the four who had perished
beneath the wreckage they had been able to swim safely to the beach.

Larry Divine, who had sat weeping upon the deck of the doomed ship
during the time that hope had been at its lowest, had recovered his
poise. Skipper Simms, subdued for the moment, soon commenced to regain
his bluster. He took Theriere to task for the loss of the Halfmoon.

“An' ever we make a civilized port,” he shouted, “I'll prefer charges
ag'in' you, you swab you; a-losin' of the finest bark as ever weathered
a storm. Ef it hadn't o' been fer you a-mutinyin' agin' me I'd a-brought
her through in safety an' never lost a bloomin' soul.”

“Stow it!” admonished Theriere at last; “your foolish bluster can't
hide the bald fact that you deserted your post in time of danger. We're
ashore now, remember, and there is no more ship for you to command, so
were I you I'd be mighty careful how I talked to my betters.”

“What's that!” screamed the skipper. “My betters! You frog-eatin'
greaser you, I'll teach you. Here, some of you, clap this swab into
irons. I'll learn him that I'm still captain of this here bunch.”

Theriere laughed in the man's face; but Ward and a couple of hands
who had been shown favoritism by the skipper and first mate closed
menacingly toward the second officer.

The Frenchman took in the situation at a glance. They were ashore now,
where they didn't think that they needed him further and the process of
elimination had commenced. Well, it might as well come to a showdown now
as later.

“Just a moment,” said Theriere, raising his hand. “You're not going to
take me alive, and I have no idea that you want to anyhow, and if you
start anything in the killing line some of you are going to Davy Jones'
locker along with me. The best thing for all concerned is to divide up
this party now once and for all.”

As he finished speaking he turned toward Billy Byrne.

“Are you and the others with me, or against me?” he asked.

“I'm ag'in' Simms,” replied the mucker non-committally.

Bony Sawyer, Red Sanders, Blanco, Wison, and two others drew in behind
Billy Byrne.

“We all's wid Billy,” announced Blanco.

Divine and Barbara Harding stood a little apart. Both were alarmed at
the sudden, hostile turn events had taken. Simms, Ward, and Theriere
were the only members of the party armed. Each wore a revolver strapped
about his hips. All were still dripping from their recent plunge in the
ocean.

Five men stood behind Skipper Simms and Ward, but there were two
revolvers upon that side of the argument. Suddenly Ward turned toward
Divine.

“Are you armed, Mr. Divine?” he asked.

Divine nodded affirmatively.

“Then you'd better come over with us--it looks like we might need you to
help put down this mutiny,” said Ward.

Divine hesitated. He did not know which side was more likely to be
victorious, and he wanted to be sure to be on the winning side. Suddenly
an inspiration came to him.

“This is purely a matter to be settled by the ship's officers,” he
said. “I am only a prisoner, call me a passenger if you like--I have no
interest whatever in the matter, and shall not take sides.”

“Yes you will,” said Mr. Ward, in a low, but menacing tone. “You're in
too deep to try to ditch us now. If you don't stand by us we'll treat
you as one of the mutineers when we're through with them, and you can
come pretty near a-guessin' what they'll get.”

Divine was about to reply, and the nature of his answer was suggested
by the fact that he had already taken a few steps in the direction of
Simms' faction, when he was stopped by the low voice of the girl behind
him.

“Larry,” she said, “I know all--your entire connection with this plot.
If you have a spark of honor or manhood left you will do what little you
can to retrieve the terrible wrong you have done me, and my father. You
can never marry me. I give you my word of honor that I shall take my own
life if that is the only way to thwart your plans in that direction, and
so as the fortune can never be yours it seems to me that the next best
thing would be to try and save me from the terrible predicament in
which your cupidity has placed me. You can make the start now, Larry,
by walking over and placing yourself at Mr. Theriere's disposal. He has
promised to help and protect me.”

A deep flush mounted to the man's neck and face. He did not turn about
to face the girl he had so grievously wronged--for the life of him he
could not have met her eyes. Slowly he turned, and with gaze bent upon
the ground walked quickly toward Theriere.

Ward was quick to recognize the turn events had taken, and to see that
it gave Theriere the balance of power, with two guns and nine men in his
party against their two guns and seven men. It also was evident to him
that to the other party the girl would naturally gravitate since Divine,
an old acquaintance, had cast his lot with it; nor had the growing
intimacy between Miss Harding and Theriere been lost upon him.

Ward knew that Simms was an arrant coward, nor was he himself overly
keen for an upstanding, man-to-man encounter such as must quickly follow
any attempt upon his part to uphold the authority of Simms, or their
claim upon the custody of the girl.

Intrigue and trickery were more to Mr. Ward's liking, and so he was
quick to alter his plan of campaign the instant that it became evident
that Divine had elected to join forces with the opposing faction.

“I reckon,” he said, directing his remarks toward no one in particular,
“that we've all been rather hasty in this matter, being het up as we
were with the strain of what we been through an' so it seems to me,
takin' into consideration that Mr. Theriere really done his best to save
the ship, an' that as a matter of fact we was all mighty lucky to come
out of it alive, that we'd better let bygones be bygones, for the time
bein' at least, an' all of us pitch in to save what we can from the
wreckage, hunt water, rig up a camp, an' get things sort o' shipshape
here instid o' squabblin' amongst ourselves.”

“Suit yourself,” said Theriere, “it's all the same to us,” and his use
of the objective pronoun seemed definitely to establish the existence of
his faction as a separate and distinct party.

Simms, from years of experience with his astute mate, was wont to
acquiesce in anything that Ward proposed, though he had not the brains
always to appreciate the purposes that prompted Ward's suggestions. Now,
therefore, he nodded his approval of Squint Eye's proposal, feeling that
whatever was in Ward's mind would be more likely to work out to Skipper
Simms' interests than some unadvised act of Skipper Simms himself.

“Supposin',” continued Ward, “that we let two o' your men an' two o'
ourn under Mr. Divine, shin up them cliffs back o' the cove an' search
fer water an' a site fer camp--the rest o' us'll have our hands full
with the salvage.”

“Good,” agreed Theriere. “Miller, you and Swenson will accompany Mr.
Divine.”

Ward detailed two of his men, and the party of five began the difficult
ascent of the cliffs, while far above them a little brown man with
beady, black eyes set in narrow fleshy slits watched them from behind a
clump of bushes. Strange, medieval armor and two wicked-looking swords
gave him a most warlike appearance. His temples were shaved, and a broad
strip on the top of his head to just beyond the crown. His remaining
hair was drawn into an unbraided queue, tied tightly at the back, and
the queue then brought forward to the top of the forehead. His helmet
lay in the grass at his feet. At the nearer approach of the party to the
cliff top the watcher turned and melted into the forest at his back.
He was Oda Yorimoto, descendant of a powerful daimio of the Ashikaga
Dynasty of shoguns who had fled Japan with his faithful samurai nearly
three hundred and fifty years before upon the overthrow of the Ashikaga
Dynasty.

Upon this unfrequented and distant Japanese isle the exiles had retained
all of their medieval military savagery, to which had been added the
aboriginal ferocity of the head-hunting natives they had found there and
with whom they had intermarried. The little colony, far from making any
advances in arts or letters had, on the contrary, relapsed into primeval
ignorance as deep as that of the natives with whom they had cast
their lot--only in their arms and armor, their military training
and discipline did they show any of the influence of their civilized
progenitors. They were cruel, crafty, resourceful wild men trapped in
the habiliments of a dead past, and armed with the keen weapons of their
forbears. They had not even the crude religion of the Malaysians they
had absorbed unless a highly exaggerated propensity for head-hunting
might be dignified by the name of religion. To the tender mercies of
such as these were the castaways of the Halfmoon likely to be consigned,
for what might sixteen men with but four revolvers among them accomplish
against near a thousand savage samurai?

Theriere, Ward, Simms, and the remaining sailors at the beach busied
themselves with the task of retrieving such of the wreckage and the
salvage of the Halfmoon as the waves had deposited in the shallows of
the beach. There were casks of fresh water, kegs of biscuit, clothing,
tinned meats, and a similar heterogeneous mass of flotsam. This arduous
labor consumed the best part of the afternoon, and it was not until it
had been completed that Divine and his party returned to the beach.

They reported that they had discovered a spring of fresh water some
three miles east of the cove and about half a mile inland, but it was
decided that no attempt be made to transport the salvage of the party to
the new camp site until the following morning.

Theriere and Divine erected a rude shelter for Barbara Harding close
under the foot of the cliff, as far from the water as possible, while
above them Oda Yorimoto watched their proceedings with beady, glittering
eyes. This time a half-dozen of his fierce samurai crouched at his side.
Besides their two swords these latter bore the primitive spears of their
mothers' savage tribe.

Oda Yorimoto watched the white men upon the beach. Also, he watched the
white girl--even more, possibly, than he watched the men. He saw the
shelter that was being built, and when it was complete he saw the girl
enter it, and he knew that it was for her alone. Oda Yorimoto sucked in
his lips and his eyes narrowed even more than nature had intended that
they should.

A fire burned before the rude domicile that Barbara Harding was to
occupy, and another, larger fire roared a hundred yards to the west
where the men were congregated about Blanco, who was attempting to
evolve a meal from the miscellany of his larder that had been cast up
by the sea. There seemed now but little to indicate that the party was
divided into two bitter factions, but when the meal was over Theriere
called his men to a point midway between Barbara's shelter and the main
camp fire. Here he directed them to dispose themselves for the night as
best they could, building a fire of their own if they chose, for with
the coming of darkness the chill of the tropical night would render a
fire more than acceptable.

All were thoroughly tired and exhausted, so that darkness had scarce
fallen ere the entire camp seemed wrapped in slumber. And still Oda
Yorimoto sat with his samurai upon the cliff's summit, beady eyes fixed
upon his intended prey.

For an hour he sat thus in silence, until, assured that all were asleep
before him, he arose and with a few whispered instructions commenced
the descent of the cliff toward the cove below. Scarce had he started,
however, with his men stringing in single file behind him, than he came
to a sudden halt, for below him in the camp that lay between the girl's
shelter and the westerly camp a figure had arisen stealthily from among
his fellows.

It was Theriere. Cautiously he moved to a sleeper nearby whom he shook
gently until he had awakened him.

“Hush, Byrne,” cautioned the Frenchman. “It is I, Theriere. Help me
awaken the others--see that there is no noise.”

“Wot's doin'?” queried the mucker.

“We are going to break camp, and occupy the new location before that
bunch of pirates can beat us to it,” whispered Theriere in reply; “and,”
 he added, “we're going to take the salvage and the girl with us.”

The mucker grinned.

“Gee!” he said. “Won't dey be a sore bunch in de mornin'?”

The work of awakening the balance of the party required but a few
minutes and when the plan was explained to them, all seemed delighted
with the prospect of discomfiting Skipper Simms and Squint Eye. It was
decided that only the eatables be carried away on the first trip, and
that if a second trip was possible before dawn the clothing, canvas, and
cordage that had been taken from the water might then be purloined.

Miller and Swenson were detailed to bring up the rear with Miss Harding,
assisting her up the steep side of the cliff. Divine was to act as guide
to the new camp, lending a hand wherever necessary in the scaling of the
heights with the loot.

Cautiously the party, with the exception of Divine, Miller, and Swenson,
crept toward the little pile of supplies that were heaped fifty or sixty
feet from the sleeping members of Simms' faction. The three left behind
walked in silence to Barbara Harding's shelter. Here Divine scratched at
the piece of sail cloth which served as a door until he had succeeded
in awakening the sleeper within. And from above Oda Yorimoto watched the
activity in the little cove with intent and unwavering eyes.

The girl, roused from a fitful slumber, came to the doorway of her
primitive abode, alarmed by this nocturnal summons.

“It is I, Larry,” whispered the man. “Are you dressed?”

“Yes,” replied the girl, stepping out into the moonlight. “What do you
want? What has happened?”

“We are going to take you away from Simms--Theriere and I,” replied the
man, “and establish a safe camp of our own where they cannot molest you.
Theriere and the others have gone for the supplies now and as soon as
they return we shall commence the ascent of the cliffs.  If you have any
further preparations to make, Barbara, please make haste,
as we must get away from here as quickly as possible. Should any of
Simms' people awaken there is sure to be a fight.”

The girl turned back into the shelter to gather together a handful of
wraps that had been saved from the wreck.

Down by the salvage Theriere, Byrne, Bony Sawyer, Red Sanders, Blanco,
and Wison were selecting the goods that they wished to carry with them.
It was found that two trips would be necessary to carry off the bulk of
the rations, so Theriere sent the mucker to summon Miller and Swenson.

“We'll carry all that eight of us can to the top of the cliffs,” he said
“hide it there and then come back for the balance. We may be able to get
it later if we are unable to make two trips to the camp tonight.”

While they were waiting for Byrne to return with the two recruits one
of the sleepers in Simms' camp stirred. Instantly the five marauders
dropped stealthily to the ground behind the boxes and casks. Only
Theriere kept his eyes above the level of the top of their shelter that
he might watch the movements of the enemy.

The figure sat up and looked about. It was Ward. Slowly he arose and
approached the pile of salvage. Theriere drew his revolver, holding
it in readiness for an emergency. Should the first mate look in the
direction of Barbara Harding's shelter he must certainly see the four
figures waiting there in the moonlight. Theriere turned his own head in
the direction of the shelter that he might see how plainly the men there
were visible. To his delight he saw that no one was in sight. Either
they had seen Ward, or for the sake of greater safety from detection had
moved to the opposite side of the shelter.

Ward was quite close to the boxes upon the other side of which crouched
the night raiders. Theriere's finger found the trigger of his revolver.
He was convinced that the mate had been disturbed by the movement in
camp and was investigating. The Frenchman knew that the search would
not end upon the opposite side of the salvage--in a moment Ward would
be upon them. He was sorry--not for Ward, but because he had planned to
carry the work out quietly and he hated to have to muss things up with a
killing, especially on Barbara's account.

Ward stopped at one of the water casks. He tipped it up, filling a tin
cup with water, took a long drink, set the cup back on top of the cask,
and, turning, retraced his steps to his blanket. Theriere could have
hugged himself. The man had suspected nothing. He merely had been
thirsty and come over for a drink--in another moment he would be fast
asleep once more. Sure enough, before Byrne returned with Miller and
Swenson, Theriere could bear the snores of the first mate.

On the first trip to the cliff top eight men carried heavy burdens,
Divine alone remaining to guard Barbara Harding. The second trip was
made with equal dispatch and safety. No sound or movement came from the
camp of the enemy, other than that of sleeping men. On the second trip
Divine and Theriere each carried a burden up the cliffs, Miller and
Swenson following with Barbara Harding, and as they came Oda Yorimoto
and his samurai slunk back into the shadows that their prey might pass
unobserving.

Theriere had the bulk of the loot hidden in a rocky crevice just beyond
the cliff's summit. Brush torn from the mass of luxuriant tropical
vegetation that covered the ground was strewn over the cache. All had
been accomplished in safety and without detection. The camp beneath them
still lay wrapped in silence.

The march toward the new camp, under the guidance of Divine, was
immediately undertaken. On the return trip after the search for water
Divine had discovered a well-marked trail along the edge of the cliffs
to a point opposite the spring, and another leading from the main trail
directly to the water. In his ignorance he had thought these the runways
of animals, whereas they were the age-old highways of the head-hunters.

Now they presented a comparatively quick and easy approach to the
destination of the mutineers, but so narrow a one as soon to convince
Theriere that it was not feasible for him to move back and forth
along the flank of his column. He had tried it once, but it so greatly
inconvenienced and retarded the heavily laden men that he abandoned the
effort, remaining near the center of the cavalcade until the new camp
was reached.

Here he found a fair-sized space about a clear and plentiful spring of
cold water. Only a few low bushes dotted the grassy clearing which was
almost completely surrounded by dense and impenetrable jungle. The men
had deposited their burdens, and still Theriere stood waiting for the
balance of his party--Miller and Swenson with Barbara Harding.

But they did not come, and when, in alarm, the entire party started back
in search of them they retraced their steps to the very brink of the
declivity leading to the cove before they could believe the testimony
of their own perceptions--Barbara Harding and the two sailors had
disappeared.



CHAPTER X. BARBARA CAPTURED BY HEAD-HUNTERS

WHEN Barbara Harding, with Miller before and Swenson behind her, had
taken up the march behind the loot-laden party seven dusky, noiseless
shadows had emerged from the forest to follow close behind.

For half a mile the party moved along the narrow trail unmolested.
Theriere had come back to exchange a half-dozen words with the girl and
had again moved forward toward the head of the column. Miller was not
more than twenty-five feet behind the first man ahead of him, and Miss
Harding and Swenson followed at intervals of but three or four yards.

Suddenly, without warning, Swenson and Miller fell, pierced with savage
spears, and at the same instant sinewy fingers gripped Barbara Harding,
and a silencing hand was clapped over her mouth. There had been no sound
above the muffled tread of the seamen. It had all been accomplished so
quickly and so easily that the girl did not comprehend what had befallen
her for several minutes.

In the darkness of the forest she could not clearly distinguish the
forms or features of her abductors, though she reasoned, as was only
natural, that Skipper Simms' party had become aware of the plot against
them and had taken this means of thwarting a part of it; but when her
captors turned directly into the mazes of the jungle, away from the
coast, she began first to wonder and then to doubt, so that presently
when a small clearing let the moonlight full upon them she was not
surprised to discover that none of the members of the Halfmoon's company
was among her guard.

Barbara Harding had not circled the globe half a dozen times for
nothing. There were few races or nations with whose history, past and
present, she was not fairly familiar, and so the sight that greeted
her eyes was well suited to fill her with astonishment, for she found
herself in the hands of what appeared to be a party of Japanese warriors
of the fifteenth or sixteenth century. She recognized the medieval arms
and armor, the ancient helmets, the hairdressing of the two-sworded men
of old Japan. At the belts of two of her captors dangled grisly trophies
of the hunt. In the moonlight she saw that they were the heads of Miller
and Swenson.

The girl was horrified. She had thought her lot before as bad as it
could be, but to be in the clutches of these strange, fierce warriors of
a long-dead age was unthinkably worse. That she could ever have wished
to be back upon the Halfmoon would have seemed, a few days since,
incredible; yet that was precisely what she longed for now.

On through the night marched the little, brown men--grim and
silent--until at last they came to a small village in a valley away from
the coast--a valley that lay nestled high among lofty mountains. Here
were cavelike dwellings burrowed half under ground, the upper walls and
thatched roofs rising scarce four feet above the level. Granaries on
stilts were dotted here and there among the dwellings.

Into one of the filthy dens Barbara Harding was dragged. She found a
single room in which several native and half-caste women were sleeping,
about them stretched and curled and perched a motley throng of dirty
yellow children, dogs, pigs, and chickens. It was the palace of Daimio
Oda Yorimoto, Lord of Yoka, as his ancestors had christened their new
island home.

Once within the warren the two samurai who had guarded Barbara upon
the march turned and withdrew--she was alone with Oda Yorimoto and his
family. From the center of the room depended a swinging shelf upon which
a great pile of grinning skulls rested. At the back of the room was a
door which Barbara had not at first noticed--evidently there was another
apartment to the dwelling.

The girl was given little opportunity to examine her new prison, for
scarce had the guards withdrawn than Oda Yorimoto approached and grasped
her by the arm.

“Come!” he said, in Japanese that was sufficiently similar to modern
Nippon to be easily understood by Barbara Harding. With the word he drew
her toward a sleeping mat on a raised platform at one side of the room.

One of the women awoke at the sound of the man's voice. She looked up at
Barbara in sullen hatred--otherwise she gave no indication that she saw
anything unusual transpiring. It was as though an exquisite American
belle were a daily visitor at the Oda Yorimoto home.

“What do you want of me?” cried the frightened girl, in Japanese.

Oda Yorimoto looked at her in astonishment. Where had this white girl
learned to speak his tongue?

“I am the daimio, Oda Yorimoto,” he said. “These are my wives. Now you
are one of them. Come!”

“Not yet--not here!” cried the girl clutching at a straw. “Wait. Give
me time to think. If you do not harm me my father will reward you
fabulously. Ten thousand koku he would gladly give to have me returned
to him safely.”

Oda Yorimoto but shook his head.

“Twenty thousand koku!” cried the girl.

Still the daimio shook his head negatively.

“A hundred thousand--name your own price, if you will but not harm me.”

“Silence!” growled the man. “What are even a million koku to me who only
know the word from the legends of my ancestors. We have no need for koku
here, and had we, my hills are full of the yellow metal which measures
its value. No! you are my woman. Come!”

“Not here! Not here!” pleaded the girl. “There is another room--away
from all these women,” and she turned her eyes toward the door at the
opposite side of the chamber.

Oda Yorimoto shrugged his shoulders. That would be easier than a fight,
he argued, and so he led the girl toward the doorway that she had
indicated. Within the room all was dark, but the daimio moved as one
accustomed to the place, and as he moved through the blackness the girl
at his side felt with stealthy fingers at the man's belt.

At last Oda Yorimoto reached the far side of the long chamber.

“Here!” he said, and took her by the shoulders.

“Here!” answered the girl in a low, tense voice, and at the instant that
she spoke Oda Yorimoto, Lord of Yoka, felt a quick tug at his belt, and
before he guessed what was to happen his own short sword had pierced his
breast.

A single shriek broke from the lips of the daimio; but it was so high
and shrill and like the shriek of a woman in mortal terror that the
woman in the next room who heard it but smiled a crooked, wicked smile
of hate and turned once more upon her pallet to sleep.

Again and again Barbara Harding plunged the sword of the brown man into
the still heart, until she knew beyond peradventure of a doubt that her
enemy was forevermore powerless to injure her. Then she sank, exhausted
and trembling, upon the dirt floor beside the corpse.


When Theriere came to the realization that Barbara Harding was gone he
jumped to the natural conclusion that Ward and Simms had discovered
the ruse that he had worked upon them just in time to permit them to
intercept Miller and Swenson with the girl, and carry her back to the
main camp.

The others were prone to agree with him, though the mucker grumbled that
“it listened fishy.” However, all hands returned cautiously down the
face of the cliff, expecting momentarily to be attacked by the guards
which they felt sure Ward would post in expectation of a return of the
mutineers, the moment they discovered that the girl had been taken
from them; but to the surprise of all they reached the cove without
molestation, and when they had crept cautiously to the vicinity of the
sleepers they discovered that all were there, in peaceful slumber, just
as they had left them a few hours before.

Silently the party retraced its steps up the cliff. Theriere and Billy
Byrne brought up the rear.

“What do you make of it anyway, Byrne?” asked the Frenchman.

“If you wanta get it straight, cul,” replied the mucker, “I tink youse
know a whole lot more about it dan you'd like to have de rest of us
tink.”

“What do you mean, Byrne?” cried Theriere. “Out with it now!”

“Sure I'll out wid it. You didn't tink I was bashful didja? Wot fer did
you detail dem two pikers, Miller and Swenson, to guard de skirt fer if
it wasn't fer some special frame-up of yer own? Dey never been in our
gang, and dats just wot you wanted 'em fer. It was easy to tip dem off
to hike out wid de squab, and de first chanct you get you'll hike after
dem, while we hold de bag. Tought you'd double-cross us easy, didn't
yeh? Yeh cheap-skate!”

“Byrne,” said Theriere, and it was easy to see that only through the
strength of his will-power did he keep his temper, “you may have cause
to suspect the motives of everyone connected with this outfit. I can't
say that I blame you; but I want you to remember what I say to you now.
There was a time when I fully intended to 'double-cross' you, as you
say--that was before you saved my life. Since then I have been on the
square with you not only in deed but in thought as well. I give you the
word of a man whose word once meant something--I am playing square with
you now except in one thing, and I shall tell you what that is at once.
I do not know where Miss Harding is, or what has happened to her, and
Miller, and Swenson. That is God's truth. Now for the one thing that
I just mentioned. Recently I changed my intentions relative to Miss
Harding. I was after the money the same as the rest--that I am free
to admit; but now I don't give a rap for it, and I had intended
taking advantage of the first opportunity to return Miss Harding to
civilization unharmed and without the payment of a penny to anyone. The
reason for my change of heart is my own affair. In all probability
you wouldn't believe the sincerity or honesty of my motives should
I disclose them. I am only telling you these things because you have
accused me of double dealing, and I do not want the man who saved my
life at the risk of his own to have the slightest grounds to doubt my
honesty with him. I've been a fairly bad egg, Byrne, for a great many
years; but, by George! I'm not entirely rotten yet.”

Byrne was silent for a few moments. He, too, had recently come to the
conclusion that possibly he was not entirely rotten either, and had in
a vague and half-formed sort of way wished for the opportunity to
demonstrate the fact, so he was willing to concede to another that which
he craved for himself.

“Yeh listen all right, cul,” he said at last; “an' I'm willin' to take
yeh at yer own say-so until I learn different.”

“Thanks,” said Theriere tersely. “Now we can work together in the search
for Miss Harding; but where, in the name of all that's holy, are we to
start?”

“Why, where we seen her last, of course,” replied the mucker. “Right
here on top of dese bluffs.”

“Then we can't do anything until daylight,” said the Frenchman.

“Not a ting, and at daylight we'll most likely have a scrap on our hands
from below,” and the mucker jerked his thumb in the direction of the
cove.

“I think,” said Theriere, “that we had better spend an hour arming
ourselves with sticks and stones. We've a mighty good position up here.
One that we can defend splendidly from an assault from below, and if we
are prepared for them we can stave 'em off for a while if we need the
time to search about up here for clews to Miss Harding's whereabouts.”

And so the party set to work to cut stout bludgeons from the trees about
them, and pile loose fragments of rock in handy places near the cliff
top. Theriere even went so far as to throw up a low breastwork across
the top of the trail up which the enemy must climb to reach the summit
of the cliff. When they had completed their preparations three men could
have held the place against ten times their own number.

Then they lay down to sleep, leaving Blanco and Divine on guard, for it
had been decided that these two, with Bony Sawyer, should be left behind
on the morrow to hold the cliff top while the others were searching for
clews to the whereabouts of Barbara Harding. They were to relieve each
other at guard duty during the balance of the night.

Scarce had the first suggestion of dawn lightened the eastern sky than
Divine, who was again on guard, awakened Theriere. In a moment the
others were aroused, and a hasty raid on the cached provisions made. The
lack of water was keenly felt by all, but it was too far to the spring
to chance taking the time necessary to fetch the much-craved fluid and
those who were to forge into the jungle in search of Barbara Harding
hoped to find water farther inland, while it was decided to dispatch
Bony Sawyer to the spring for water for those who were to remain on
guard at the cliff top.

A hurried breakfast was made on water-soaked ship's biscuit. Theriere
and his searching party stuffed their pockets full of them, and a moment
later the search was on. First the men traversed the trail toward the
spring, looking for indications of the spot where Barbara Harding had
ceased to follow them. The girl had worn heelless buckskin shoes at the
time she was taken from the Lotus, and these left little or no spoor
in the well-tramped earth of the narrow path; but a careful and minute
examination on the part of Theriere finally resulted in the detection of
a single small footprint a hundred yards from the point they had struck
the trail after ascending the cliffs. This far at least she had been
with them.

The men now spread out upon either side of the track--Theriere and Red
Sanders upon one side, Byrne and Wison upon the other. Occasionally
Theriere would return to the trail to search for further indications of
the spoor they sought.

The party had proceeded in this fashion for nearly half a mile when
suddenly they were attracted by a low exclamation from the mucker.

“Here!” he called. “Here's Miller an' the Swede, an' they sure have
mussed 'em up turrible.”

The others hastened in the direction of his voice, to come to a
horrified halt at the sides of the headless trunks of the two sailors.

“Mon Dieu!” exclaimed the Frenchman, reverting to his mother tongue as
he never did except under the stress of great excitement.

“Who done it?” queried Red Sanders, looking suspiciously at the mucker.

“Head-hunters,” said Theriere. “God! What an awful fate for that poor
girl!”

Billy Byrne went white.

“Yeh don't mean dat dey've lopped off her block?” he whispered in an
awed voice. Something strange rose in the mucker's breast at the thought
he had just voiced. He did not attempt to analyze the sensation; but it
was far from joy at the suggestion that the woman he so hated had met a
horrible and disgusting death at the hands of savages.

“I'm afraid not, Byrne,” said Theriere, in a voice that none there would
have recognized as that of the harsh and masterful second officer of the
Halfmoon.

“Yer afraid not!” echoed Billy Byrne, in amazement.

“For her sake I hope that they did,” said Theriere; “for such as she it
would have been a far less horrible fate than the one I fear they have
reserved her for.”

“You mean--” queried Byrne, and then he stopped, for the realization of
just what Theriere did mean swept over him quite suddenly.

There was no particular reason why Billy Byrne should have felt toward
women the finer sentiments which are so cherished a possession of those
men who have been gently born and raised, even after they have learned
that all women are not as was the feminine ideal of their boyhood.

Billy's mother, always foul-mouthed and quarrelsome, had been a
veritable demon when drunk, and drunk she had been whenever she
could, by hook or crook, raise the price of whiskey. Never, to Billy's
recollection, had she spoken a word of endearment to him; and so
terribly had she abused him that even while he was yet a little boy,
scarce out of babyhood, he had learned to view her with a hatred as
deep-rooted as is the affection of most little children for their
mothers.

When he had come to man's estate he had defended himself from the
woman's brutal assaults as he would have defended himself from another
man--when she had struck, Billy had struck back; the only thing to
his credit being that he never had struck her except in self-defense.
Chastity in woman was to him a thing to joke of--he did not believe
that it existed; for he judged other women by the one he knew best--his
mother. And as he hated her, so he hated them all. He had doubly hated
Barbara Harding since she not only was a woman, but a woman of the class
he loathed.

And so it was strange and inexplicable that the suggestion of the girl's
probable fate should have affected Billy Byrne as it did. He did not
stop to reason about it at all--he simply knew that he felt a mad and
unreasoning rage against the creatures that had borne the girl away.
Outwardly Billy showed no indication of the turmoil that raged within
his breast.

“We gotta find her, bo,” he said to Theriere. “We gotta find the skirt.”

Ordinarily Billy would have blustered about the terrible things he would
do to the objects of his wrath when once he had them in his power; but
now he was strangely quiet--only the firm set of his strong chin, and
the steely glitter of his gray eyes gave token of the iron resolution
within.

Theriere, who had been walking slowly to and fro about the dead men, now
called the others to him.

“Here's their trail,” he said. “If it's as plain as that all the way we
won't be long in overhauling them. Come along.”

Before he had the words half out of his mouth the mucker was forging
ahead through the jungle along the well-marked spoor of the samurai.

“Wot kind of men do you suppose they are?” asked Red Sanders.

“Malaysian head-hunters, unquestionably,” replied Theriere.

Red Sanders shuddered inwardly. The appellation had a most gruesome
sound.

“Come on!” cried Theriere, and started off after the mucker, who already
was out of sight in the thick forest.

Red Sanders and Wison took a few steps after the Frenchman. Theriere
turned once to see that they were following him, and then a turn in the
trail hid them from his view. Red Sanders stopped.

“Damme if I'm goin' to get my coconut hacked off on any such wild-goose
chase as this,” he said to Wison.

“The girl's more'n likely dead long ago,” said the other.

“Sure she is,” returned Red Sanders, “an' if we go buttin' into that
there thicket we'll be dead too. Ugh! Poor Miller. Poor Swenson. It's
orful. Did you see wot they done to 'em beside cuttin' off their heads?”

“Yes,” whispered Wison, looking suddenly behind him.

Red Sanders gave a little start, peering in the direction that his
companion had looked.

“Wot was it?” he whimpered. “Wot did you do that fer?”

“I thought I seen something move there,” replied Wison. “Fer Gawd's sake
let's get outen this,” and without waiting for a word of assent from his
companion the sailor turned and ran at breakneck speed along the
little path toward the spot where Divine, Blanco, and Bony Sawyer were
stationed. When they arrived Bony was just on the point of setting
out for the spring to fetch water, but at sight of the frightened,
breathless men he returned to hear their story.

“What's up?” shouted Divine. “You men look as though you'd seen a ghost.
Where are the others?”

“They're all murdered, and their heads cut off,” cried Red Sanders. “We
found the bunch that got Miller, Swenson, and the girl. They'd killed
'em all and was eatin' of 'em when we jumps 'em. Before we knew wot had
happened about a thousand more of the devils came runnin' up. They
got us separated, and when we seen Theriere and Byrne kilt we jest
natch'rally beat it. Gawd, but it was orful.”

“Do you think they will follow you?” asked Divine.

At the suggestion every head turned toward the trail down which the
two panic-stricken men had just come. At the same moment a hoarse shout
arose from the cove below and the five looked down to see a scene of
wild activity upon the beach. The defection of Theriere's party had
been discovered, as well as the absence of the girl and the theft of the
provisions.

Skipper Simms was dancing about like a madman. His bellowed oaths rolled
up the cliffs like thunder. Presently Ward caught a glimpse of the men
at the top of the cliff above him.

“There they are!” he cried.

Skipper Simms looked up.

“The swabs!” he shrieked. “A-stealin' of our grub, an' abductin' of that
there pore girl. The swabs! Lemme to 'em, I say; jest lemme to 'em.”

“We'd all better go to 'em,” said Ward. “We've got a fight on here sure.
Gather up some rocks, men, an' come along. Skipper, you're too fat to do
any fightin' on that there hillside, so you better stay here an' let
one o' the men take your gun,” for Ward knew so well the mettle of his
superior that he much preferred his absence to his presence in the face
of real fighting, and with the gun in the hands of a braver man it would
be vastly more effective.

Ward himself was no lover of a fight, but he saw now that starvation
might stare them in the face with their food gone, and everything be
lost with the loss of the girl. For food and money a much more cowardly
man than Bender Ward would fight to the death.

Up the face of the cliff they hurried, expecting momentarily to be
either challenged or fired upon by those above them. Divine and his
party looked down with mixed emotions upon those who were ascending in
so threatening a manner. They found themselves truly between the devil
and the deep sea.

Ward and his men were halfway up the cliff, yet Divine had made no move
to repel them. He glanced timorously toward the dark forest behind from
which he momentarily expected to see the savage, snarling faces of the
head-hunters appear.

“Surrender! You swabs,” called Ward from below, “or we'll string the
last mother's son of you to the yardarm.”

For reply Blanco hurled a heavy fragment of rock at the assaulters. It
grazed perilously close to Ward, against whom Blanco cherished a keen
hatred. Instantly Ward's revolver barked, the bullet whistling close
by Divine's head. L. Cortwrite Divine, cotillion leader, ducked behind
Theriere's breastwork, where he lay sprawled upon his belly, trembling
in terror.

Bony Sawyer and Red Sanders followed the example of their commander.
Blanco and Wison alone made any attempt to repel the assault. The
big Negro ran to Divine's side and snatched the terror-stricken man's
revolver from his belt. Then turning he fired at Ward. The bullet,
missing its intended victim, pierced the heart of a sailor directly
behind him, and as the man crumpled to the ground, rolling down the
steep declivity, his fellows sought cover.

Wison followed up the advantage with a shower of well-aimed missiles,
and then hostilities ceased temporarily.

“Have they gone?” queried Divine, with trembling lips, noticing the
quiet that followed the shot.

“Gone nothin', yo big cowahd,” replied Blanco. “Do yo done suppose dat
two men is a-gwine to stan' off five? Ef yo white-livered skunks 'ud
git up an' fight we might have a chanct. I'se a good min' to cut out yo
cowahdly heart fer yo, das wot I has--a-lyin' der on yo belly settin'
dat kin' o' example to yo men!”

Divine's terror had placed him beyond the reach of contumely or
reproach.

“What's the use of fighting them?” he whimpered. “We should never have
left them. It's all the fault of that fool Theriere. What can we do
against the savages of this awful island if we divide our forces? They
will pick us off a few at a time just as they picked off Miller and
Swenson, Theriere and Byrne. We ought to tell Ward about it, and call
this foolish battle off.”

“Now you're talkin',” cried Bony Sawyer. “I'm not a-goin' to squat up
here any longer with my friends a-shootin' at me from below an' a lot
of wild heathen creeping down on me from above to cut off my bloomin'
head.”

“Same here!” chimed in Red Sanders.

Blanco looked toward Wison. For his own part the Negro would not have
been averse to returning to the fold could the thing be accomplished
without danger of reprisal on the part of Skipper Simms and Ward; but
he knew the men so well that he feared to trust them even should
they seemingly acquiesce to any such proposal. On the other hand, he
reasoned, it would be as much to their advantage to have the deserters
return to them as it would to the deserters themselves, for when they
had heard the story told by Red Sanders and Wison of the murder of the
others of the party they too would realize the necessity for maintaining
the strength of the little company to its fullest.

“I don't see that we're goin' to gain nothin' by fightin' 'em,” said
Wison. “There ain't nothin' in it any more nohow for nobody since the
girl's gorn. Let's chuck it, an' see wot terms we can make with Squint
Eye.”

“Well,” grumbled the Negro, “I can't fight 'em alone; What yo doin'
dere, Bony?”

During the conversation Bony Sawyer had been busy with a stick and a
piece of rag, and now as he turned toward his companions once more they
saw that he had rigged a white flag of surrender. None interfered as he
raised it above the edge of the breastwork.

Immediately there was a hail from below. It was Ward's voice.

“Surrenderin', eh? Comin' to your senses, are you?” he shouted.

Divine, feeling that immediate danger from bullets was past, raised his
head above the edge of the earthwork.

“We have something to communicate, Mr. Ward,” he called.

“Spit it out, then; I'm a-listenin',” called back the mate.

“Miss Harding, Mr. Theriere, Byrne, Miller, and Swenson have been
captured and killed by native head-hunters,” said Divine.

Ward's eyes went wide, and he blew out his cheeks in surprise. Then his
face went black with an angry scowl.

“You see what you done now, you blitherin' fools, you!” he cried, “with
your funny business? You gone an' killed the goose what laid the golden
eggs. Thought you'd get it all, didn't you? and now nobody won't get
nothin', unless it is the halter. Nice lot o' numbskulls you be, an'
whimperin' 'round now expectin' of us to take you back--well, I reckon
not, not on your measly lives,” and with that he raised his revolver to
fire again at Divine.

The society man toppled over backward into the pit behind the breastwork
before Ward had a chance to pull the trigger.

“Hol' on there mate!” cried Bony Sawyer; “there ain't no call now fer
gettin' excited. Wait until you hear all we gotta say. You can't
blame us pore sailormen. It was this here fool dude and that scoundrel
Theriere that put us up to it. They told us that you an' Skipper Simms
was a-fixin' to double-cross us all an' leave us here to starve on
this Gawd-forsaken islan'. Theriere said that he was with you when you
planned it. That you wanted to git rid o' as many of us as you could
so that you'd have more of the ransom to divide. So all we done was in
self-defense, as it were.

“Why not let bygones be bygones, an' all of us join forces ag'in' these
murderin' heathen? There won't be any too many of us at best--Red
an' Wison seen more'n two thousan' of the man-eatin' devils. They're
a-creepin' up on us from behin' right this minute, an' you can lay to
that; an' the chances are that they got some special kind o' route into
that there cove, an' maybe they're a-watchin' of you right now!”

Ward turned an apprehensive glance to either side. There was logic in
Bony's proposal. They couldn't spare a man now. Later he could punish
the offenders at his leisure--when he didn't need them any further.

“Will you swear on the Book to do your duty by Skipper Simms an' me if
we take you back?” asked Ward.

“You bet,” answered Bony Sawyer.

The others nodded their heads, and Divine sprang up and started down
toward Ward.

“Hol' on you!” commanded the mate. “This here arrangement don' include
you--it's jes' between Skipper Simms an' his sailors. You're a rank
outsider, an' you butts in an' starts a mutiny. Ef you come back you
gotta stand trial fer that--see?”

“You better  duck,  mister,”  advised  Red  Sanders;  “they'll hang
you sure.”

Divine went white. To face trial before two such men as Simms and Ward
meant death, of that he was positive. To flee into the forest meant
death, almost equally certain, and much more horrible. The man went to
his knees, lifting supplicating hands to the mate.

“For God's sake, Mr. Ward,” he cried, “be merciful. I was led into this
by Theriere. He lied to me just as he did to the men. You can't kill
me--it would be murder--they'd hang you for it.”

“We'll hang for this muss you got us into anyway, if we're ever caught,”
 growled the mate. “Ef you hadn't a-carried the girl off to be murdered
we might have had enough ransom money to have got clear some way, but
now you gone and cooked the whole goose fer the lot of us.”

“You can collect ransom on me,” cried Divine, clutching at a straw.
“I'll pay a hundred thousand myself the day you set me down in a
civilized port, safe and free.”

Ward laughed in his face.

“You ain't got a cent, you four-flusher,” he cried. “Clinker put us next
to that long before we sailed from Frisco.”

“Clinker lies,” cried Divine. “He doesn't know anything about it--I'm
rich.”

“Wot's de use ob chewin' de rag 'bout all dis,” cried Blanco, seeing
where he might square himself with Ward and Simms easily. “Does yo' take
back all us sailormen, Mr. Ward, an' promise not t' punish none o' us,
ef we swear to stick by yo' all in de future?”

“Yes,” replied the mate.

Blanco took a step toward Divine.

“Den yo come along too as a prisoner, white man,” and the burly black
grasped Divine by the scruff of the neck and forced him before him down
the steep trail toward the cove, and so the mutineers returned to the
command of Skipper Simms, and L. Cortwrite Divine went with them as a
prisoner, charged with a crime the punishment for which has been death
since men sailed the seas.



CHAPTER XI. THE VILLAGE OF YOKA

FOR several minutes Barbara Harding lay where she had collapsed after
the keen short sword of the daimio had freed her from the menace of his
lust.

She was in a half-stupor that took cognizance only of a freezing terror
and exhaustion. Presently, however, she became aware of her contact with
the corpse beside her, and with a stifled cry she shrank away from it.

Slowly the girl regained her self-control and with it came the
realization of the extremity of her danger. She rose to a sitting
posture and turned her wide eyes toward the doorway to the adjoining
room--the women and children seemed yet wrapped in slumber. It was
evident that the man's scream had not disturbed them.

Barbara gained her feet and moved softly to the doorway. She wondered
if she could cross the intervening space to the outer exit without
detection. Once in the open she could flee to the jungle, and then
there was a chance at least that she might find her way to the coast and
Theriere.

She gripped the short sword which she still held, and took a step into
the larger room. One of the women turned and half roused from sleep. The
girl shrank back into the darkness of the chamber she had just quitted.
The woman sat up and looked around. Then she rose and threw some sticks
upon the fire that burned at one side of the dwelling. She crossed to a
shelf and took down a cooking utensil. Barbara saw that she was about to
commence the preparation of breakfast.

All hope of escape was thus ended, and the girl cautiously closed the
door between the two rooms. Then she felt about the smaller apartment
for some heavy object with which to barricade herself; but her search
was fruitless. Finally she bethought herself of the corpse. That would
hold the door against the accident of a child or dog pushing it open--it
would be better than nothing, but could she bring herself to touch the
loathsome thing?

The instinct of self-preservation will work wonders even with a frail
and delicate woman. Barbara Harding steeled herself to the task, and
after several moments of effort she succeeded in rolling the dead man
against the door. The scraping sound of the body as she dragged it into
position had sent cold shivers running up her spine.

She had removed the man's long sword and armor before attempting to move
him, and now she crouched beside the corpse with both the swords beside
her--she would sell her life dearly. Theriere's words came back to her
now as they had when she was struggling in the water after the wreck of
the Halfmoon: “but, by George, I intend to go down fighting.” Well, she
could do no less.

She could hear the movement of several persons in the next room now. The
voices of women and children came to her distinctly. Many of the words
were Japanese, but others were of a tongue with which she was not
familiar.

Presently her own chamber began to lighten. She looked over her shoulder
and saw the first faint rays of dawn showing through a small aperture
near the roof and at the opposite end of the room. She rose and moved
quickly toward it. By standing on tiptoe and pulling herself up a trifle
with her hands upon the sill she was able to raise her eyes above the
bottom of the window frame.

Beyond she saw the forest, not a hundred yards away; but when she
attempted to crawl through the opening she discovered to her chagrin
that it was too small to permit the passage of her body. And then there
came a knocking on the door she had just quitted, and a woman's voice
calling her lord and master to his morning meal.

Barbara ran quickly across the chamber to the door, the long sword
raised above her head in both hands. Again the woman knocked, this time
much louder, and raised her voice as she called again upon Oda Yorimoto
to come out.

The girl within was panic-stricken. What should she do? With but a
little respite she might enlarge the window sufficiently to permit her
to escape into the forest, but the woman at the door evidently would not
be denied. Suddenly an inspiration came to her. It was a forlorn hope,
but well worth putting to the test.

“Hush!” she hissed through the closed door. “Oda Yorimoto sleeps. It is
his wish that he be not disturbed.”

For a moment there was silence beyond the door, and then the woman
grunted, and Barbara heard her turn back, muttering to herself. The girl
breathed a deep sigh of relief--she had received a brief reprieve from
death.

Again she turned to the window, where, with the short sword, she
commenced her labor of enlarging it to permit the passage of her body.
The work was necessarily slow because of the fact that it must proceed
with utter noiselessness.

For an hour she worked, and then again came an interruption at the door.
This time it was a man.

“Oda Yorimoto still sleeps,” whispered the girl. “Go away and do not
disturb him. He will be very angry if you awaken him.”

But the man would not be put off so easily as had the woman. He still
insisted.

“The daimio has ordered that there shall be a great hunt today for the
heads of the sei-yo-jin who have landed upon Yoka,” persisted the man.
“He will be angry indeed if we do not call him in time to accomplish
the task today. Let me speak with him, woman. I do not believe that Oda
Yorimoto still sleeps. Why should I believe one of the sei-yo-jin? It
may be that you have bewitched the daimio,” and with that he pushed
against the door.

The corpse gave a little, and the man glued his eyes to the aperture.
Barbara held the sword behind her, and with her shoulder against the
door attempted to reclose it.

“Go away!” she cried. “I shall be killed if you awaken Oda Yorimoto,
and, if you enter, you, too, shall be killed.”

The man stepped back from the door, and Barbara could hear him in low
converse with some of the women of the household. A moment later he
returned, and without a word of warning threw his whole weight against
the portal. The corpse slipped back enough to permit the entrance of the
man's body, and as he stumbled into the room the long sword of the Lord
of Yoka fell full and keen across the back of his brown neck.

Without a sound he lunged to the floor, dead; but the women without
had caught a fleeting glimpse of what had taken place within the little
chamber, even before Barbara Harding could slam the door again, and
with shrieks of rage and fright they rushed into the main street of the
village shouting at the tops of their voices that Oda Yorimoto and Hawa
Nisho had been slain by the woman of the sei-yo-jin.

Instantly, the village swarmed with samurai, women, children, and dogs.
They rushed toward the hut of Oda Yorimoto, filling the outer chamber
where they jabbered excitedly for several minutes, the warriors
attempting to obtain a coherent story from the moaning women of the
daimio's household.

Barbara Harding crouched close to the door, listening. She knew that the
crucial moment was at hand; that there were at best but a few moments
for her to live. A silent prayer rose from her parted lips. She placed
the sharp point of Oda Yorimoto's short sword against her breast, and
waited--waited for the coming of the men from the room beyond, snatching
a few brief seconds from eternity ere she drove the weapon into her
heart.


Theriere plunged through the jungle at a run for several minutes before
he caught sight of the mucker.

“Are you still on the trail?” he called to the man before him.

“Sure,” replied Byrne. “It's dead easy. They must o' been at least a
dozen of 'em. Even a mutt like me couldn't miss it.”

“We want to go carefully, Byrne,” cautioned Theriere. “I've had
experience with these fellows before, and I can tell you that you never
know when one of 'em is near you till you feel a spear in your back,
unless you're almighty watchful. We've got to make all the haste we can,
of course, but it won't help Miss Harding any if we rush into an ambush
and get our heads lopped off.”

Byrne saw the wisdom of his companion's advice and tried to profit by
it; but something which seemed to dominate him today carried him ahead
at reckless, breakneck speed--the flight of an eagle would have been all
too slow to meet the requirements of his unaccountable haste.

Once he found himself wondering why he was risking his life to avenge or
rescue this girl whom he hated so. He tried to think that it was for the
ransom--yes, that was it, the ransom. If he found her alive, and rescued
her he should claim the lion's share of the booty.

Theriere too wondered why Byrne, of all the other men upon the Halfmoon
the last that he should have expected to risk a thing for the sake of
Miss Harding, should be the foremost in pursuit of her captors.

“I wonder how far behind Sanders and Wison are,” he remarked to Byrne
after they had been on the trail for the better part of an hour. “Hadn't
we better wait for them to catch up with us? Four can do a whole lot
more than two.”

“Not wen Billy Byrne's one of de two,” replied the mucker, and continued
doggedly along the trail.

Anothe

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