CHAPTER 15
"Is this what you feared?" said the Scotchman. "Is this what you wantedprotection against? No; you're in league together to torture me, andall this time you've been laughing up your sleeves at my expense!"
"At your expense?" growled Harrigan, rising in turn. "Is it at yourexpense that I've been sittin' here breakin' me heart with singin' lovetunes for you an' the girl?"
She sprang up in an agony of fear.
"Go! Go!" she begged of McTee. "If you doubt me, go, and when you comeback calm, I will explain."
He brushed her to one side and made a step toward Harrigan.
"Love songs for _me?_" he repeated incredulously.
"Aye, love songs for you. Ye black swine, ye could not be happy till Iwas brought in to be the piper while you an' Kate danced!"
"While I and Kate danced?" thundered McTee. "My God, man--"
He broke off short, and a cruel light of understanding was in his eyes.
"Harrigan," he said quietly, "did Kate tell you she loved me?"
"Ye fool! Why else am I sittin' here singin' for your sake? Would I notrather be amusin' myself by takin' the hollow of your throat under mythumbs--so?"
McTee laughed softly, and Kate could not meet his eye.
"Well?" he said.
"Yes, I lied to you."
She turned to Harrigan: "And to you. Don't you see? I found you on theverge of a fight, and I knew that in it you would both be killed. Whatelse could I do? I hoped that for my sake you would spare each other.Was it wrong of me, Dan? Angus, will you forgive me?"
Harrigan raised his arms high above his head and stretched like onefrom whose wrists the manacles have been unlocked after a longimprisonment.
"McTee, are ye ready? There's a weight gone off mysoul!"
"Harrigan, I've been a driver of men, but this girl has put me underthe whip. When I'm through with you, I'm coming back to her."
"It'll be your ghost that returns."
Kate hesitated one instant as if to judge which was the greatest forcetoward evil. Then she dropped to her knees and caught the hands ofMcTee, those strong, cruel hands.
"If you will not fight, I'll--I'll be kind to you, I'll be everythingyou ask of me--"
"You're pleading for him?"
"No, no! For him and for you; for your two souls!"
"Bah! Mine was lost long ago, and I'll answer that there's a claim onHarrigan filed away in hell. He's too strong to have lived clean."
"Angus, we're all alone here--on the rim of the world, you've said--andin places like this the eye of God is on you."
He laughed brutally: "If He sees me, He'll look the other way."
"Have done with the chatter," broke in Harrigan. "Ah-h, McTee, I seewhere my hands'll fit on your throat."
"Come," McTee answered without raising his voice; "there's a corner ofthe beach where a current stands in close by the shore. You've been atraveling man, Harrigan. When I've killed you, I'll throw your bodyinto the sea, and the tide will take you out to see the rest of theworld."
"Come," said Harrigan; "I'd as soon finish you there as here, and whenyou're dead, I'll sit you up against a tree and come down every day towatch you rot."
The girl fell to the ground between them with her face buried in herarms, silent. The two men lowered their eyes for a moment upon her, andthen turned and walked down the hill, going shoulder to shoulder likefriends. So they came out upon the beach and walked along it until theyreached the point of which McTee had spoken.
It was a level, hard-packed stretch of sand which offered firm footingand no rocks over which one of the fighters might stumble at a criticalmoment.
"Tis a lovely spot," sighed Harrigan. "Captain, you're a jewel of a manto have thought of it."
"Aye, this is no deck at sea that can heave and twist and spoil mywork."
"It is not; and the palms of my hands are almost healed. Had youthought of that, captain?"
"As you lie choking, Harrigan, think of the girl. The minute I'veheaved you into the sea, I go back to her."
The hard breathing of the Irishman filled up the interval.
"I see one thing clear. It's that I'll have to kill you slow. A manlike you, McTee, ought to taste his death a while before it comes. Cometo me ar-rms, captain, I've a little secret to whisper in your ear.Whisht! 'Twill not be long in the tellin'!"
McTee replied with a snarl, and the two commenced to circle slowly,drawing nearer at every step. On the very edge of leaping forward,Harrigan was astonished to see McTee straighten from his crouch andpoint out to sea.
"The eye of God!" muttered the Scotchman. "She was right!"
Harrigan jumped back lest this should prove a maneuver to place him offhis guard, and then looked in the indicated direction. It was true; apoint of light, a white eye, peered at them from far across the water.Then the shout of McTee rang joyously: "A ship!"
"The fire!" answered Harrigan, and pointed back to the hill, for Katehad allowed the flames to fall in their absence.
All thought of the battle left them. They started back on the run tobuild high their signal light, and when they came to the top of thehill, they found Kate lying as they had left her. She started to herknees at the sound of their footsteps and stretched out her arms tothem.
"God has sent you back to me!"
"A ship!" thundered McTee for answer, and he flung a great armful ofwood upon the blaze. It rose with a rush, leaping and crackling, butall three kept at their work until the pile of wood was higher thantheir heads. Only when the supply of dry fuel was exhausted did theypause to look out to sea. In place of the one eye of white there werethree lights, one of white, one of red, and one of green--the lights ofa ship running in toward land.
In a moment the moon slipped up above the eastern waters, and rightacross that broad white circle moved a ship with the smoke streamingback from her funnel. Unquestionably the captain had seen the signalfire and understood its meaning.
They waited until the red light became fairly stationary, showing thatthe steamer had been laid-to. Then they ran for the beach and took uptheir position on the line between the glow of their fire and theposition of the ship, guessing that in this way they would be on thespot where the ship's boat would be most likely to touch the shore.
"McTee," said Harrigan, "it may be half an hour before that boatreaches the beach. Is there any reason why both of us should go aboardit?"
"Harrigan, there is none! Stand up to me."
"If you do this," broke in Kate, "I will bring the sailors who comeashore to the spot where the dead man lies, and I'll tell how he died."
They looked at her, knowing that she could be trusted to fulfill thatthreat. The moon lay on the beauty of her face; never had she seemed sodesirable. They looked to each other, and each seemed doubly hateful tothe other.
"Kate, dear," said Harrigan hastily, "I see the boat come tossin' thereover the water. Speak out like a brave girl. Neither of us will leavethe other in peace as long as we have a hope of you. Choose between usbefore we put a foot in that boat, and if you choose McTee, I'll giveyou God's blessin' an' say no more nor ever raise my hand against ye.McTee, will ye do the like?"
"For the sake of the day of the fight and the wreck I will. If shechooses you now, I'll raise no hand against you."
A shout came faintly across the rush and ripple of the breakers.
"Speak out," said Harrigan.
"Hallo!" she screamed in answer to the hail from the boat, and thenturning to them: "I choose neither of you!"
"McTee," growled Harrigan, "I'm thinkin' we've both been fools."
"Think what you will, I'll have her; and if you cross me again, I'llfinish you, Harrigan."
"McTee, ten of your like couldn't finish me. But look! There's the girlwadin' out to the boat. Let's steady her through the waves."
They ran out and, catching her beneath the shoulders, bore her safe andhigh through the small rollers. When they were waist-deep, the boatswung near. A lantern was raised by the ma
n in the bows, and under thatlight they saw the four men at the oars, now backing water to keeptheir boat from washing to the beach. The sailors cheered as the twomen swung Kate over the gunwale and then clambered in after her. Theman at the bows all this time had kept his lantern high above his headwith a rigid arm, and now he bellowed: "Black McTee!"
"Right!" said McTee. "And you?"
"Salvain--put back for the ship, lads--Pietro Salvain. D'you mean tosay you've forgotten me?"
"Shanghai!" said McTee, as light broke on his memory. "What a nightthat was."
"But you--"
"The _Mary Rogers_ took a header for Davy Jones's locker; first matedrunk and ran her on a reef; all hands went under except the three ofus; we drifted to this island."
"Black McTee shipwrecked! By God, if we get to port with our old tramp,I'll get a farm and stick to dry land."
"Your ship?"
"The _Heron_, four thousand tons, White Henshaw, skipper."
"White Henshaw?" cried McTee in almost reverent tones.
"The same. Old White still sticks to his wheel. He's as hard a man asyou, McTee, in his own way."
They were pulling close to the freighter by this time, and Salvain gavequick orders to lay the boat alongside. In another moment they stood onthe deck, where a tall man in white clothes advanced to meet them.
"Good fishing, sir," said Salvain. "We've picked up three shipwreckedpeople, with Angus McTee among them."
"Black McTee!" cried the other, and even in the dim light he picked outthe towering form of the Scotchman.
"It took a wreck to bring us together, Captain Henshaw," said McTee,"but here we are, I've combed the South Seas for ten years for the sakeof meeting you."
"H-m!" grunted Henshaw. "We'll drink on the strength of that. Come intothe cabin."
They trooped after him, Salvain and the three rescued, and stood in theroomy cabin, the captain and the first mate dapper and cool in theirwhite uniforms, the other three marvelously ragged. Barefooted, theirhair falling in jags across their foreheads, their muscles bulgingthrough the rents in their shirts, McTee and Harrigan looked batteredbut triumphant. Kate Malone might have been the prize which they hadsafely carried away. She was even more ragged than her companions, andnow she withdrew into a shadowy corner of the cabin and shook the long,loose masses of her hair about her shoulders.