BLACK PAWL

BY
BEN AMES WILLIAMS
AUTHOR OF “EVERED”

NEW YORK
E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
681 FIFTH AVENUE
Copyright, 1922,
By E. P. Dutton & Company
All Rights Reserved
PRINTED IN THE UNITED
STATES OF AMERICA

BLACK PAWL

CHAPTER I

SPIESS, a born lubber who would never learn the way of the sea, bungled his simple share of the task of getting the mate’s boat away. Black Pawl, master of the schooner, was near by; and he cuffed the man. The buffet was good-natured enough, and Black Pawl laughed as he administered it. Nevertheless it knocked Spiess end over end. The man got up, grumbling; and Red Pawl, the captain’s son and mate, said sharply to his father:

“I’ll handle my boat and my men, sir. Let them be.”

Black Pawl laughed again. “Fiddle, boy,” he retorted. “If you knew your job, you’d have Spiess trained before this. He’s been thirty months on your hands.”

“Keep your fists off my men,” Red Pawl repeated sullenly; and Black Pawl frowned.

“Get your boat away,” he ordered. “And stop your mouth.”

They had worked into the bay that morning, threading the intricate passages between the islands and the reefs with a familiarity that showed Black Pawl knew his way about. Not that the passage was difficult. There was always room, and to spare; but an ignorant man might well have taken a short way through blue water and piled up on a slumbering reef. Black Pawl was not ignorant, not ignorant where these waters were concerned. He had made this anchorage a full score of times, in his years upon the sea.

Where the schooner now lay, there was a beauty all about them, the unmeasured and profligate beauty of the tropics that appealed to every sense a man possessed. The eye was drunk with it; the air was richly heavy with a fragrance that caressed the nostrils; the stirring currents of this air brought faint, far bird-songs, and the musical tones of the natives, and blended them in a symphony to which the murmuring sea lent undertone. The touch of the sun and of the sun-warmed wind was as caressing as the touch of a woman’s hand. And to the fifth sense of men hardened to salt-horse and the rough fare of the sea, the fruit the natives brought was delight unutterable. Beauty made for the eye, the ear, the nose, the hand, the tongue—this lay all about them.

The islands were picturesque, densely wooded, and pleasantly broken by steep cliffs and reaches of bare rock. They had an appearance of permanence and strength that was welcome to eyes which had looked too long on coral atolls that barely topped the sea. The bay where the schooner lay was perfectly sheltered. A mile away, the beach lay white as silver snow. To right and left, protecting horns of land came down steeply to the water, and were wooded to the rippling edge. Along the beach were ranged a few native houses, all but hidden among the orange trees and the palms. Those who had seen it will know the spot—the Vau Vau group, ten miles or so from what passed for the “town.”

The native canoes were swarming out toward the schooner, the islanders laughing and calling like children—like amiable children, anxious to make friends. Their narrow dugouts with the balancing outrigger were deeply loaded with enough fruit and provender for a fleet. There was no need to barter for food. Once the islanders saw that the schooner was friendly, the stuff was heaped aboard. Huge oranges, great bunches of gold and green bananas, cocoanuts by the cluster, a fowl or two. One man laughingly slung aboard a pig, its feet trigged fast with strands of fiber; and it lay in the waist and squealed and squealed, kicking helplessly where it lay.

These were unspoiled folk; they lived in a land of plenty, flowing with what passed for milk and honey. But there were no pearls, no treasures to bring the traders flocking here—nothing but the abundant food. They told Black Pawl, in their broken tongue, that no vessel had anchored in this bay for three years past. They were unqualifiedly delighted to make the schooner welcome and help her take aboard the wood and water which she needed for the homeward voyage, just beginning. They wore loose folds of a cloth made of bark, this scant garb supplemented here and there by shirts or trousers of obviously Occidental origin. The women and the children stayed in the canoes; and no man came aboard the schooner without first donning some such garment of civilization. Many of the men knew Black Pawl; and they stood before him—he had taken his post at the break of the quarterdeck, and looked kindly down upon them—and told him many things, many bits of news of themselves and of the islands. Red Pawl and the second mate, each with his boat, had gone ashore for water and for wood.

One thing they told Black Pawl which led him to question them at length; and when he knew all they could tell him, he took his glass and watched the beach, a mile away, where his son had landed. A tall islander pointed out to him a flutter of white, a woman’s skirt. He nodded, and watched, and saw the woman, and a black-garbed man, approach Red Pawl and talk with him. He lowered his glass and continued to question the natives, with an occasional glance toward the beach.

Some of the younger men from the island were investigating the schooner, clustering here and there at the sharp cries of wonder and surprise which were uttered when some adventurer made a new and more marvelous discovery. Yet the Deborah Hoar was not remarkable. A two-masted whaler with full casks after close on three years in the South Pacific, she was dingy with the smoke and soot that marred her canvas, and her hull bore the hard marks of wear. Now all the canvas was down and furled, except the mainsail. They would be working out again this afternoon—no need of lowering that. The decks were scrubbed white, and reasonably clear of the litter of gear which, seemingly disorderly, yet is the height of order.

The blacks studied the big windlass and bitts, forward; they climbed over and around the cold try-works; they peered down the main hatch and adventured into the fo’c’stle, and admired from a respectful distance the three long whaleboats on the bearers along either rail, and on skids at the stern. These boats, tools of the Deborah’s epic trade, were almost half as long as the schooner herself. They were, moreover, as seaworthy as many a larger craft; and save only perhaps the dory of the fishing-fleet, they would outride any other type of small-boat that white men know. The two at the rails were just abeam the break in the deck; the stern boat lay crosswise, lashed in place upon the skids. A larger craft of the Deborah’s sort would have had one or two spare boats stowed on the boathouse just forward of the mizzenmast; but the Deborah’s spares, if she had had any, would have been athwartship, on the skids, aft. As it was, she had none. The third mate and his boat had been lost in the killing of the last whales; and the schooner was going home with only two officers besides Black Pawl. The third mate’s widow in Nantucket would get his lay, along with his seachest and the sparse belongings in his cabin.

Black Pawl saw his son’s boat put off at last from the beach and start for the schooner. He roared good-humoredly at the blacks and drove them overside. They went, giggling and laughing. Black Pawl was a tall, lean man, with a big framework of bones insufficiently covered with flesh. Nevertheless there was strength in his stringy arms and his lank legs and his gaunt torso. He had got his name of Black instead of Dan Pawl in the days when his head was crowned with a shock of ebony; now that shock of hair was iron gray, almost white. Beneath it, the bold, black eyes of the man gazed mockingly at the world. He was known for a bold man, and a cold one; he laughed much, but when he laughed, it was as though he mocked himself and all the world. He had suffered; his face told that. He still suffered; the mark of it was alive in his eyes. There were whispers about him—at which he laughed.

His son, Red Pawl—they had been christened so by the men of the sea, for it was necessary to have a mark that would distinguish one from the other—his son was his opposite. Three inches shorter than his father, and reputed to be thrice as strong, he was red of hair, red of countenance, morose and sullen in speech—an unsmiling man. Whereas Black Pawl had friends everywhere, and enemies everywhere, Red Pawl had no friends and no enemies; but men disliked and avoided him, and wondered why Black Pawl had him about. “I’d break his neck—even if he were my son,” they said. Black Pawl told some one, once, in a jocular mood, that Red was a penance. “I bear him like the load of my sins about my neck,” he said, and laughed his mirthless laugh.

There had always been enmity between father and son. Red was in his twenties now; Black Pawl was close to fifty. And for three months past, Red had been taking occasion to balk his father, to come between Black Pawl and the men, to seek strife. At such times, Black Pawl laughed at him; but when he was alone, and thought upon the matter, he frowned with a weary anxiety. If it had been another man, Black Pawl would have destroyed him and had done with it. Yet it was not because Red was his son that he held his hand; it was some stronger feeling. He disliked Red, son or no son, as much as the others did. There may have been some truth in the reason for his forbearance which he had given, when he spoke—laughingly—of his own sins. It is a hard and ugly thing for a father to recognize his own evil self in his son.

Red Pawl’s boat was nearing the schooner. It drove in a hair line, deviating no whit; and the natives in the canoes scattered before it with shrieks of laughing consternation. One was slow. The whaleboat sheared away the outrigger, and the canoe spun around and filled. Red called over his shoulder:

“Keep clear, there, you swine!”

But it was hardly worth while to swear at these islanders. They shouted with mirth at the misadventure; a trio of paddlers hauled the occupants of the wrecked canoe into their own craft; and Red Pawl’s boat slid alongside the Deborah.

Black Pawl, on the quarter, saw that the man and the woman were in Red’s boat. The man was elderly, clothed in black. The Captain knew the breed of the church. The woman, he saw, was young.

Red and his boat-steerer steadied the boat while the missionary climbed to the deck. He reached down and took the girl by both hands, and she stepped lightly up to a place by his side. Red said morosely:

“Ask Cap’n Pawl.”

The missionary looked aft and saw Black Pawl on his quarterdeck. He turned to the girl, and smiled, and said: “Come!”

They walked side by side toward the starboard deck-steps. Black Pawl studied them as they approached, but made no move to meet them. The missionary stood aside to let the girl climb to the quarter, then followed her and approached Black Pawl. He was an old man, with white hair and kindly eyes and lips; a man mellowed by right living and right thinking; a broad man, without cant and without guile. This was written plain in his face; but that spirit of mockery which lived in Black Pawl moved him to say in greeting:

“Good morning, Father!”

He knew quite well that this missionary was not of that church which is father and mother to her people; he also knew that clergy of another cloth, if they are meanly made, resent the appellation he had given this man. But the missionary only smiled and said in his gentle, firm tones without a note of pique:

“Good morning, Cap’n Pawl.”

And by this Black Pawl knew him for a man, and thrust out his big hand. They gripped.

“My name is Samuel Poor,” the missionary said; “and this is Ruth Lytton.”

He gestured toward the girl; and Black Pawl, turning, saw her at close range, and his heart for an instant stood still.

She was tall and strongly made, and sweetly. Further, she was beautiful. But there was something else in her face, and in her eyes, which pierced the Captain’s consciousness. For an instant his face was a mask of tragedy. The missionary was looking at the girl, and did not see; but the girl saw and was troubled.

Then Black Pawl smiled. There was beauty in the man when he smiled—beauty, and the radiance of strength, and the glory of audacity. He took her hand.

“Ruth—Lytton?” he repeated.

“Yes,” said the missionary. The girl studied this tall man who held her hand; and because she was brave, she asked him:

“Why were you—unhappy when you saw me?”

“Unhappy?” Black Pawl flung back his head and laughed. “I am never unhappy. There is nothing worth unhappiness.”

“Why?” she repeated.

His eyes met hers evenly; and a spark flashed between them. He touched her hand, which he still held, with his left, then dropped it.

“You are like some one I have known,” he said almost as if to himself, “—a little. That was my first thought. It is gone now. I was wrong. A fancy that comes to me often! The notion that the women I meet are—like some one I have known.”

He turned to the missionary, and the girl stepped back a little—but still watching him, as though she could not take her eyes away from him. Yet this was not strange, for Black Pawl was a man whom men and women anywhere would stop to look at twice. He asked the missionary now:

“What can I do for you?”

“Miss Lytton and I want passage home with you.”

Black Pawl chuckled. “There are passenger ships touching at the Islands. Why choose the Deborah?”

“It should be cheaper,” said the missionary. “We have not the money for the more expensive way.”

“How do you know it will be cheaper?”

“We count on your good nature, Cap’n Pawl.”

Himself an audacious man, the Captain admired audacity in others.

“You have courage, sir,” he said.

“I know men,” was the missionary’s quiet reply.

“Where are your belongings?”

“On the beach.”

“I’ll send for them.”

The missionary smiled. “No need for you to send,” he said. “I will—”

He stepped to the rail and called to the nearest canoe. Half a dozen thrust toward the schooner, and the missionary spoke to the men in them. They darted shoreward, racing. The missionary looked after them, his eyes shaded beneath the wide brim of his hat. Other canoes pressed together below him, and he talked cheerily to their occupants. A woman began to wail, and the missionary called down reassurance to her.

The girl turned to the Captain, who had watched the little scene with her.

“They love him,” she commented. “They are sorry he is going away.”

A man saw her, and grinning, shouted something; she smiled and lifted her hand.

“They love you, too,” Black Pawl said. “That is easy seen.”

She nodded. “Yes,” she replied. “And I them.”

The Captain studied her with a sidelong glance, measuring her profile, and marking the shape of forehead and of eye; and upon his face that tragic mask again descended. But when she turned toward him, he flung it off with a laugh. They leaned against the rail side by side, talking idly.

About the schooner the canoes threaded their expert way. Amidships, stores of wood were coming aboard. The second mate’s boat approached the Deborah, towing casks of water. Red Pawl set men to rig tackle to swing the casks aboard. The gear creaked as the booms swung back and forth with each lift and fall of the schooner beneath them. Above their heads the mainsail flapped. The cries of the islanders rose softly, their musical tones smothering the harsh commands of the mate.

The second mate’s boat was nearing. With her eyes upon it, the girl asked:

“Who is the officer in that boat?”

“Dan Darrin,” Black Pawl told her, “my second mate. A fine boy.” He chuckled teasingly. “And you’re rosy already, at the sight of him.”

“I’m not,” she denied, her cheeks refuting her denial.

“A fine boy,” declared Black Pawl again.

CHAPTER II

THEY did not get away as soon as the Captain had expected. Before coming to this anchorage, the oil-casks had been securely stowed against the homeward voyage; the whaling gear had been taken out of the boats and cleaned and oiled and sent below. The rigging was set up and tarred down, and the hull and spars were scraped and painted to suit even Black Pawl’s exacting eye. With the last stores aboard, the schooner was ready for sea; but toward mid-afternoon the weather-signs became unfavorable, and it was decided to lie where they were until whatever weather was brewing should have blown itself out. The narrow outlet from the bay was no place in which to be caught by a squall.

When this word of the Captain’s went forward, the men gathered in knots upon the deck, talking together; and Black Pawl saw his son and mate speak to one or two. He was not surprised, therefore, when a group of the men presently came aft and stopped at the break of the deck to speak to him. With Red Pawl behind him and Dan Darrin at one side, he looked down on them. The missionary and the girl were aft by the wheel.

“Well, what now?” Black Pawl asked good-humoredly.

“We’m heard you’ll lay here till the wind’s fit, sir,” declared the spokesman.

“Yes. Object?”

The man grinned. “Not us, sir. But—what about a break ashore? Get the kinks out of our legs.”

“And get the kinks into your head, eh?” Black Pawl chuckled. “Drown yourselves in some native rot-gut?”

The man looked sheepish. “The mate were thinking you’d leave us go.”

“The mate were thinking, were he?” Black Pawl mimicked. “Then why come to me?”

The man shifted uneasily from one foot to the other. Black Pawl looked toward his son. “What’s the matter, Red?” he asked.

“I told them it was fair they should go,” Red Pawl answered, dourly, “that there was no reason you should object.”

“What if I object without reason?”

“That’s despotism!”

Black Pawl laughed aloud. “Where did you learn that word?”

“You’ve taught it to me.”

The Captain’s smile upon his son became terrible; but when he turned to the men, his voice was level and without emotion. “There’s no reason you should not go,” he said, and they cheered. “Except that I’ll not let you!” he added grimly. “Get forward, you swipes. And look sharp.”

They hesitated an instant, even then, in stupefaction at the overthrow of their sudden hopes; then they fell to mumbling among themselves. Dan Darrin took a step forward to his Captain’s side, as though to support him; but Black Pawl needed no help to enforce his orders.

“Sharp, I say!” he cried cheerfully, and he leaped among them, his long arms flailing. He struck with the open hand, but those whom he struck fell; and others fell in their flurry to escape him. In a matter of seconds the deck was clear to the try-works, save for the harpooners by the starboard rail, who laughed at the crew’s discomfiture. Once safely forward, the men grinned too. Black Pawl had the strange faculty of commanding a liking even from those over whom he tyrannized. When he came aft, his eye lighted on his son, and he asked gently:

“Now, was that not unreasonable despotism?”

Red Pawl replied sullenly: “Yes.”

His father’s eyes twinkled. “Louder,” he enjoined, “—so that your audience, yonder, may hear.” And he asked again: “Was not that brutal tyranny?”

His son’s eyes blazed morosely now. “Yes, brutal, and be damned to you!” he bellowed; and his voice carried the length of the schooner.

“So!” said Black Pawl. “You’ve got the effect you were after—my son. You’re the hero, defending them against my unjust fists. Be satisfied!”

The son gave the father eye for eye. “You’re a brave man—and a damned rash man,” he said.

“Fiddle!” Black Pawl replied. “If you mean what you seem to mean, and if you had the sap of a man, you’d strike now. You’ll never make an omelet, Red, my boy. You’re too squeamish about breaking eggs.”

He turned, with that, and strode toward the missionary and the girl; and at the same instant Dan Darrin caught Red’s eye, and the two stood for a moment in a wordless and motionless conflict. In that clash of eyes, Dan Darrin told the mate that he was the Captain’s man; and Red Pawl understood, and made no sign, but turned away.

They made out of the bay the third day after, the homeward-bound pennant flying. The wooded shores slid past them, lush green beneath the sun; and as dusk came on, they dropped the islands behind them, and the sudden night of the tropics came down. Overhead, the stars. Darrin and the girl were on the quarter-deck together. Once in the open sea, Black Pawl and his son had gone below. Ruth liked Dan Darrin. She liked Black Pawl. She liked the harpooners—liked every man aft, save perhaps the Captain’s son. Red Pawl was a hard man to like, on any count. But the others were her friends.

Darrin, however, already held a place apart. They were within a few years of the same age; he was an honest, four-square man with a clear eye, and she was a girl, and beautiful. Perhaps it lay in that. They looked out across the sea, this night, and up at the stars. The stars in southern seas are nearer and more intimate than in our northern latitude. It is as if the veil of our smoky atmosphere were drawn aside; and they ride the heavens for us clear and unobscured. The eye more easily penetrates the vast reaches of infinity; and the stars appear in orderly perspective, less like luminous pin-holes in a deep, blue board. Dan Darrin spoke of this to the girl; and she replied that she had never seen them otherwise.

“You mean you were born out here? Never been back home?”

“I was born back home,” she told him. “But I was only a baby when we came out here,—my mother and I,—you see. So I don’t remember.”

He wanted to ask her more. Where was “back home”? He knew her name; but what lay behind her name? He was eager to read each chapter and each page of her Book of Life. But something—perhaps it was her own reticence—held his tongue.

Another had wondered with him—Red Pawl. The first mate had a hot eye for a woman, beautiful or not. And this woman was beautiful. He had watched her sidewise, from the beginning; he had asked herself about herself. She told him nothing; and he went to the old missionary, who told him no more than nothing. “She and her mother lived on the island, near me,” he said. “When her mother died, last spring, she came to me. I saw she must go back to her kind. So—we are going. That is all.”

“Running away?” Red Pawl suggested maliciously. “Why? What from?”

The missionary looked at him steadily. “From men unfit to look upon her,” he said; and Red Pawl, in spite of himself, was abashed, and let the matter lie.

When, on this night, he missed Darrin and the girl, he went on deck and found them, and the stars. So he gave Darrin a task to do, thinking to have the girl to himself. But she went below as soon as Darrin left her, in spite of Red Pawl’s suggestion that she keep the deck with him.

When she was gone, the first mate paced back and forth for a space, then fell to talking with the man at the wheel. They talked in undertones, as though afraid of being heard.

Next day they threw the try-works overside, brick by brick. The crew made it an occasion of rejoicing. It meant the hard and dangerous toil of the whale-fisheries was over and done with; it meant home, and money to spend, and a few weeks ashore. They shouted and sang at the business of dismantling the ovenlike structure where so many flenches of blubber had been boiled to scrapple for the oil they yielded. The men vied in hurling the bricks, to see which might throw one farthest out across the water. They shied half-bricks at the birds that still followed them from the islands they had left.

When the last brick was gone, the big pots were lowered into the holds and made secure; the chimney and the firebox were stowed away; and the broad pan which is always full of water when the pots are going, so that the deck may not be charred, was scoured and put in its place. Remained only the littered deck where the try-works had been. This they scrubbed till the deck-planking was white as a bleached bone. And they sang at the work, for the day was fine, and the wind was fair, and they were putting behind them the seas where they had toiled.

Black Pawl shouted at them, jovially abusive; and Dan Darrin lent a hand when another strong hand was needed now and then; Red Pawl scowled from the rail, and cursed them when they lagged. The old missionary and the girl watched all this, as they followed all the life of the schooner, from the quarter. To be at sea on each days was to the girl bliss and poetry and joy unspeakable. She told Dan Darrin so when he came aft. “It’s beautiful,” she cried. “So fine, and big! I don’t think I should ever tire of the sea.”

Black Pawl heard, and laughed, and called to her: “You’ll have chance enough to learn. You’ll get your fill of it before the end. We’ll not touch land from now till we make home harbor, child.”

She nodded, accepting what he said as true. And he meant it so; but as matters turned out, when Black Pawl said they would not touch land again, he was wrong.

CHAPTER III

THUS far fair weather had followed them from the island; the schooner laid the leagues of ocean behind her and plunged steadfastly along the homeward course. There was peace aboard her; the men were cheerful, and the cabin was quiet. Red Pawl said little, and what speech he held was generally with the men at the wheel, with whom he talked at times in furtive undertones; but if Black Pawl remarked this,—and the Captain’s eyes did not miss much that passed aboard his craft,—he made no sign.

The missionary was interested in Black Pawl. He had heard, on the island, certain dark stories of the man; yet he found the captain of the Deborah a good companion, intelligent, reasonably jovial, and courteous enough. He sought on two or three occasions to talk with him, but in the beginning Black Pawl had put him off, half avoiding him, it seemed, as if he were unwilling to be alone with a man of the church. The missionary was used to reading men; he said in his thoughts: “There is a trouble upon Black Pawl’s soul.” He wondered whether he might help the man, and so sought his friendship and his confidence.

He saw, after a time, that Black Pawl constantly watched Ruth Lytton without seeming to do so; it was obvious that he liked to talk to her. He saw, also, that after such talks with the girl the Captain was more often than not restless and at greater outs with the world.

It was on the quarter-deck, one night when the moon was full and high, that the missionary found Black Pawl alone. He did not thrust himself upon the other, but took the rail across the deck and ignored the man. Joining him there after a bit, Black Pawl said with the note of mockery in his voice:

“Good evening, Father!”

The missionary responded good-humoredly. He had been called harsher names in his time. Black Pawl leaned against the rail beside him. Beneath them, the water boiling about the Deborah’s rudder glowed and sparkled and flamed in the bright moonlight, like silver fire. Deep below the surface a great fish darted diagonally past their stern and left a streak of flame to glow an instant, and die. The moon stitched every wave with a hem of mercury; and the valleys between the waves were blue as the heavens. The sea tossed in its sleep, about them. Black Pawl flung out his hand in a swift gesture, and said quietly:

“Looks dead, doesn’t it! Yet there’s not a drop of it but has its bit of life—from an eighty-foot cachalot to a spark of fire no bigger than a pin’s point.”

The missionary nodded. “The firmament showeth His handiwork,” he quoted.

Black Pawl laughed. “Firmament? Maybe, Father. But that’s land, not sea. I’m a man of the sea. Blame the works of the land on your God if you’re a mind; but there’s no God on deep waters.”

The missionary glanced up with a quickened interest.

“You’re of that belief, my friend?” he asked softly, nothing combative in his tone.

“Aye,” replied Black Pawl. “There’s never a God on the sea. That I know, having tried out the matter. And I even have my doubts about the land.”

“What is your god?” asked the missionary.

“I have no God,” answered Black Pawl; and his face was as his name.

The other shook his head. “Even a dog has his master for a god,” he declared. “The god of some men is drink; of others, the flesh; of others, the work of their hands. But the god of wise men is—God.” Looking steadily at Black Pawl, he asked again: “What is your god, my friend?”

The Captain laughed at that, stirring uneasily. “Spoken like a parson!” he retorted. “By their gods ye shall damn them: is that the idea?”

The missionary was silent for a little; then he smiled, and said: “I knew a man, once. He was an islander; and his god taught him to cut off the heads of his enemies, and cure them in smoke, and hang them up in his house. He was, I think, the finest man I ever knew—according to his lights. He had forty-two heads on the roof-tree of his hut; and I have no doubt—his own head was cut off finally—that he is clipping heads in paradise to-day.”

“And if the elders of your church heard you say that, Father,” Black Pawl told him, “they would cast you into outer darkness. Man, you were sent out here to tell the heathen they must love Christ or be damned. Were you not, now?”

“It was my friend’s faith to cut off the heads of his enemies,” said the missionary. “It is my faith to seek to show men the beauty of my faith. That is all the difference.”

“Your God believes in advertising?”

“Yes,” said the other; and he smiled again.

Black Pawl laughed. “That’s worth hearing,” he declared. “It’s sense. Most of your cloth tell us to be humble, to be meek and lowly, like cattle. Why is goodness humble, Father? Why is virtue shy, and vice a braggart?”

“Just what do you mean, Cap’n Pawl?” the missionary asked. “I am interested.”

“A man boasts of drink, of women, of a blow that is struck; but he does not boast of what you call a good deed. He advertises his crimes; he hides his virtues. Why?”

“Such a man does wrong,” said the missionary. “He might better boast of his good deeds. Christ said: ‘I am the son of God.’ No mightier boast was ever uttered.”

“Was it true?” Black Pawl asked, sharply.

“All men are God’s sons—just as all men are God,” the missionary explained.

The Captain nodded thoughtfully. “Then why not let it go at that?” he asked. “Why all this talk of heaven? Be good, and you will twingle the heavenly harps; be bad, and you will roast in hell. That’s the way to convert a coward; but it’s only a challenge to a strong man.”

“Do you believe in the unpardonable sin?” the other countered.

Black Pawl’s eyes clouded. “Yes,” he confessed.

“Ah!” the missionary murmured half to himself. “I have been wondering why you were unhappy.”

The Captain’s face hardened at that. “The unhappy man is a coward,” he parried.

“Then you are a coward, my friend.”

“I am unhappy?”

“I think you are the most unhappy man I have ever known.”

Black Pawl moved abruptly; he took six steps away and six steps back, then leaned against the rail again, unsmiling. And at last he lifted his head and dropped his hand on the missionary’s shoulder. “Father,” he said, “if your faith is worth anything, it must be practical. It must solve the problems of this world. Am I right?”

“Yes, my friend.”

The captain of the Deborah nodded. “I am going to tell you a story of myself,” he said. “Let your God write the answer to the riddle, if he can.”

The missionary inclined his head. “Tell, if you wish to tell,” he said.

“Listen, then,” Black Pawl bade the missionary. “You and I are poured in different molds, Father. But in one matter men are much alike. Did you ever love a woman?”

“Yes.”

Black Pawl was gazing off across the purple night; it was almost as if the other were not there.

“I loved a woman,” he went on. “I—loved her. There was always an overflowing measure of life in me, perhaps. I poured it out on her. And she loved me as fully. She was tall and fair, and quiet as deep waters, Father. And she was very beautiful to look upon. Still—others thought her cold; she was not cold to me. There was a flame before us, and when we stepped into that flame hand in hand, we burned like welding metals. Burned, yet were not consumed! And we were welded like the metals, flesh and flesh, and soul and soul. We were no longer two people in those days; we were one. When others were about, we were like others, bantering, laughing, at ease—for each of us knew. But when we were alone, we were a living fire. Sometimes, seeing man and wife since then, I wonder if they are as we were. I wonder if behind the calm countenance of their open daily life there is such a passionate devotion as that which welded us two.

“I say it welded us, Father. For by your God, she loved as much as I. She had a fashion of taking my cheeks in her hands, pinching them, pulling my face to meet hers, and shaking me to and fro as she did so.... Not even a woman could pretend like that. I say she loved me as I loved her.

“In the beginning, I say, this was so. She came one cruise with me, and the boy Red Pawl was born in a black storm not a hundred miles from here. I was doctor and nurse to her then, Father. She was brave. Aye! She lay in my arms throughout the torment, smiling up at me between the agonies. She was wiser than I in such matters, and she had brought a book that told what I must do, so that when the time came I was able to tend her—and the boy. I was clumsy; and I fumbled; but—the thing was done. It was a sacrament, Father. You see, I believed in your God in those days. It was a holy sacrament. I thought she was like your Christ, giving her flesh and her blood for this baby that was our world. She was holy to me. You say your faith is spiritual; but I say the true faith is physical. There is nothing so holy as the body, Father; for the holiest thing in the world is birth. If it were not holy, it would be unspeakably terrible. If there is a God, then the bringing of one body from another body is God’s work, and man’s work, and there is nothing so important in the world, and nothing so holy as this thing.

“The boy was born. We called him Dan. That is my name, you understand. But there cannot be two Dan Pawls; so he is Red, and I am Black, and there are few men whose memory runs to the contrary. He throve aboard the ship; and he was walking when we came home again.

“After that she would come no more to sea. She stayed at home next voyage, with the boy. And I tell you our love was as much a living thing while we were ten thousand miles apart as when we were each in the other’s arms. And when I came home again, she was waiting for me.

“I was six months at home that time. The boy was past four when I came away; and his mother said he must come along and learn to know his father. To know me! So he came, and slept in my cabin, and learned the ship. He was stout for his age, even then; and before we turned for home that time, he was grown almost beyond his mother’s knowledge. I told him: ‘She will not know you.’ And he laughed with me at that, and we planned to have him slip ashore and find her out, and fling himself upon her to see the tears of surprise that would spring into her eyes.

“All the long way home we planned that matter between us, you understand. And the boy’s eyes would light, and my heart leaped to see him. And when the land lifted out of the sea ahead of us, we took our stand, we two, and watched for hours before we could sight the wharves where I told him she would be.

“I knew our coming would be signaled; she would know we were in the bay. So my glass searched the wharf, and the boy at my side clamored: ‘Where is she, Daddy? Where is she, Daddy? Let me see.’ And he took the glass from me and leveled it and looked. I could not tell him she was not there. So I pointed out a woman’s figure, against a pile of oilbrown casks, and told him that was his mother. And he screamed his greeting to her across a solid mile of water. And I was straining my eyes for her coming along the wharf!”

For a moment Black Pawl paused. When he went on, there was no tremor in his voice. “We made fast,” he said, “and still she had not come. And I saw by the way the others looked at me that something was amiss. I forgot the boy, in wondering; and I dared not question them, and the black fear shut down and clamped my heart. I forgot the boy; and before I knew, he was ashore, and had run to hug that woman I had shown him, and call her mother. And she put him away, and cried. So I thought my wife was dead.

“Even then I did not ask; and no one told me. I thought this was sympathy; I know, now, that it was because they were afraid. It was my brother who told me, in the end. He was not such a man as I am—smaller, and never over-strong. And when he told me, I struck him down, and he did not walk straight again during the two years more that he lived. Was that sin, that I did, in striking him?”

The pulse of the sea stirred the schooner’s deck beneath them; their white wake foamed with silver fire. The moon moved serenely across the purple arch of the sky. The rigging overhead hummed beneath the thrumming fingers of the wind. The missionary looked out across the water, and then up into the eyes of Black Pawl, and beheld the deeps of agony there.

“Did your brother condemn you for that blow?” he asked gently.

“No.”

“Then no man can do what he refused to do.”

Black Pawl laughed sneeringly. “All right! Hear what he told me. Eight months after I was gone, our daughter was born to her. And six months after that, she and the child were away to sea with another man. Fleeing in the night secretly!”

He was still, on the word—still for so long that the missionary thought the story was ended. But before he could find words, the Captain spoke again.

“There is more,” he said. “Will you hear it?”

“Yes.”

“We got away quickly on another cruise, my son and I. And another after that, and another. And after the third returning, they told me at home that the man with whom she had fled had come back alone. He said she had left him as she had left me. He was gone before I returned. But I knew that some day I would come upon him.

“Red Pawl was full-grown by then—big for his years. He was cabin-boy, one cruise; and fourth mate on the next; and mate the cruise after. It was his first cruise as mate that we found the man.”

There was a cold intensity in Black Pawl’s tone, and he asked again as if in challenge: “Will you hear?”

“Yes.”

“Ill luck had pursued that man,” Black Pawl went on evenly now. “They said his ship was a death-ship. Men died easily upon it; and it was hard for that vessel to find whales. Also it was hard for him to persuade men to ship with him. His officers were unlucky; and to be unlucky in the whale-fisheries is to die. He was driven to fight the whales himself. And it was thus, in the end, that he came into my hands.

My son’s boat picked him up one day. He had lowered for a whale, and got fast; and the fish ran with him till he was lost from his ship; and then he was forced to cut. Thereafter thirst fell upon that boat. Because he was strong, and because that was the breed of the man, he kept more than his fair measure of the water in the lantern-keg. So when Red Pawl found him drifting under the sun, only this man was left alive in the boat. There was another, dead, with him—his boat-steerer. He had thrown the others overside.

“The man was insane with thirst when Red found him. But he wouldn’t have known the boy, in any case; and Red didn’t know him. He brought him back to the schooner; and we took him into my cabin to nurse him back to life, and I knew him—there.

“When he was sane, he knew me; but he said nothing, hoping I did not know. And I said nothing until he was himself again, strong and well. In due time, one day, he wished to leave the cabin and go on deck. So I knew it was time for that which I meant to do.

“We tied this man, my son and I. We tied him in the bunk, and gagged him, I had told Red who he was, and Red wanted to slit his throat; but I would not do that. Red lacks imagination. I told him so.

“We tied him in his bunk, and gagged him. I told him then that I knew him; and I told him what I meant to do. It was in my mind to let him lie there without food or water till he died before my eyes. I believed then, and I still believe, that to do this would have been to show too much mercy.

“But when I told him what I meant to do, he made signs that he wished to speak; and I took away the gag from his mouth. He was a man of a certain rat-like courage, Father. He taunted me to my teeth; and he told me, among other things, that when he was tired of the woman I had loved, he had given her into the hands of an evil crew I knew of, and the child with her, and he said they had died unspeakably.

“That he spoke truth was plain in the man’s eye. I knew why he told me. It was to move me to give him the mercy of quick death; but I would not. Then he called me coward, and said that I would not face him as a man. So I laughed and told him he should have his wish to face me. He said he was weak. That was true. And I was hungry to feel his strong flesh break in my hands. I considered what we might do.

“What we did was this, Father: I turned the schooner toward an island of which I knew—a place where no humans lived. There we stayed a length of time, till the man was well; and there, when the time was ripe, we fought.

“I killed him. He was stronger than I; and he battered me badly before I could close with him. Then I broke his right arm between my hands, so that he screamed; and after that I beat him with my fists, and when he fell, Red Pawl lifted him, and held him, and I beat him to death with my bare hands. The fight lasted from morning until halfway to noon. It was a good fight until I broke his arm; after that—He died on his feet, Red Pawl’s arms supporting him. And when he was dead, we left him there; and when the schooner made out of that anchorage, sir, the birds were already a heap of white upon him, where he lay.”

Black Pawl stopped, with that; and for a long time neither man spoke. At last, uneasy at the silence, Black Pawl laughed to hide his unrest.

“So, Father,” he said at last, “what has your God to say to that?”

“Have you ever found trace of your wife, Black Pawl?” the missionary asked.

“I found those men to whom he gave her. They denied the tale. But Red Pawl and I killed three of them, and broke the other two.”

The missionary made no comment; and Black Pawl asked again: “What will your God say to that, Father?”

Then the man of the church looked up at the other and said gently: “I am sorry for you, Dan Pawl.”

The Captain sneered. “Don’t waste sorrow on me. I’ve no regrets.”

“It is not because of the past that I am sorry for you,” replied the missionary. “It is because of that which must surely come.”

CHAPTER IV

THERE developed in Black Pawl a devil of unrest. It is in all men; it was stronger in him, just as every function of the man was stronger than a like function in other men. Beneath his mirthless laughter, beneath his malign joviality, there was a hatred of the world, a hatred which could not find expression.

It showed itself, curiously, in his attitude toward the crew. His fists were ever ready; they struck more and more frequently as the days passed. Yet when he struck, the man always laughed. It was as if his laughter were the curb he put upon himself. It was possible to imagine that if he had not laughed, his least impatience would become a murderous rage. He might have killed for small offenses; but he laughed, and so refrained.

His men, for the most part, felt this without understanding it. There was always a strange loyalty in Black Pawl’s crews; this was well known, and it puzzled those who knew. There were more blows struck on his ship than on any other that pretended to decency; yet the crew were loyal. Ashore they were ever ready to fight to defend him. They had, in some sort, a love for him. They felt, without understanding why, a sympathy for the man. Once one of the older men, who had sailed with him four full cruises, put this into words.

“He means naught,” this man said. “The fist is a fashion of speech with him. The man is torn, and weary o’ the world. That’s easy seen. There’s a load on him.”

So they took his buffets, and picked themselves up, and grinned good-naturedly, and would not take offense.

There were, on the Deborah, but two exceptions to this rule. One was Red Pawl, his son and mate. When Red Pawl struck a man, there was murder in the blow and poison in the eye that guided it.

Shunned by every man, and hating every man, he had no friend aboard. He was like a mad dog in one thing; his deeper hatred was directed toward his master, his father, the one man he should have loved and served. Just as a dog that is mad will bite first the best-loved hand, just as an elephant upon whom madness comes will trample first his own mahout, in like fashion Red Pawl’s hatred centered on his father. It was this hatred which gave the impulse to his efforts to cultivate the crew, to breed discontent and to bring matters to a point that would end in the Captain’s destruction.

He had, it is true, little success; nevertheless he persisted. The one man aboard who listened to him willingly was Spiess, him whom Black Pawl had struck that day they took the missionary and the girl aboard. This Spiess was, aside from Red Pawl, the only man aboard who had not a secret sympathy for the tragedy plain upon the Captain’s face. He hated Black Pawl with the hatred of the weak for the strong; and the Captain saw this, and took a mocking delight in nagging Spiess, and bullying him, and driving him toward the point of open strife.

This was near, one day, when Black Pawl stepped down from the quarter and started toward the waist of the schooner. Spiess was on his knees, scrubbing the deck. The Captain, as he passed, kicked out at the man, and Spiess was tumbled forward on his face, while Black Pawl laughed. “Keep out o’ the path, Spiess,” the Captain warned him.

Spiess got up lumberingly, and looked around. Red Pawl was on the quarter, and Spiess caught his eye. Beyond Red were Dan Darrin and the girl. These two were much together as time passed; but Spiess saw only Red Pawl, and read, perhaps, encouragement in his eye. For he turned and rushed the Captain with the blind ferocity of a bull.

Black Pawl’s face set grimly as the man charged; and he met Spiess with an open-handed blow on one cheek, and then on the other, that brought the seaman up all standing and trembling with the dizzy nausea the jarring blows induced. While he stood thus, helpless, Black Pawl struck out like the kick of a mule and Spiess went spinning and teetering across the deck till he came to the opposite rail, where he collapsed.

As Spiess lifted his head, Black Pawl laughed and said: “Bring better than your fists, next time, Spiess.”

The man muttered under his breath: “Aye, I will.” And Black Pawl nodded cheerfully, and forgot his errand in the waist and returned to the quarter again. There Red Pawl, openly rebellious, warned him:

“I tell you, keep your hands off the men of my boat, sir.”

“Fiddle!” grinned his father. “Teach your men manners, boy.” And he passed Red and joined the girl. She had watched, she was watching now, with a white, still face. Black Pawl felt a curious necessity of apologizing to her for what he had done. But he did not; for it was not the nature of the man. He challenged her instead. “One way of handling that like of man, Ruth,” he said.

She replied boldly: “A bad way, Cap’n Pawl.”

He laughed at that, and touched her under the chin, lightly. “Now, now! It serves.”

She felt that she ought to condemn him, but she could not. The spell of the man was upon her, as it was upon the others. She liked him, could not forbear liking him, no matter what he might do. There was charm in him; and there was, for all his strength and pride of strength, a weakness that appealed to the mother heart of her. She was sorry for him, without knowing why. Indeed she did not even know she was sorry for him; she only knew she liked him, whatever he might do. So in spite of herself she found she must smile at him now. He said, catching the smile: “So, that’s better.”

“You’ll find the men don’t mind,” Dan Darrin had told her one day. “They take it as a part of the game; and there never was a crew that would stick closer in trouble.”

She nodded, and murmured thoughtfully: “I can believe that men would stick with you.”

He looked forward along the length of his ship, an uninvited wistfulness in eye and curve of lip. “Aye, Ruth, they do,” he said. Then, with his mirthless laugh, he added: “Lord knows why!”

She wondered, when she was alone, why she felt so drawn to the man. He personified, she thought, those brutalities which she should condemn; yet she liked him, admired him—and something more. There was a tenderness in her for Black Pawl that she could neither define nor deny. It increased her wonder, even frightened her a little. She told the old missionary of this; and he explained:

“There’s fundamental good in him; that is all. In spite of himself, Black Pawl is a fine, good man.”

When she and Darrin were together, she made him tell her about Black Pawl; and nothing more delighted Darrin. For he loved Black Pawl; and the man he painted for the girl was of heroic proportions and Viking strength, and the stories he told of his exploits were like legends. Ruth asked him, one day, what Black Pawl’s name had been, and Dan told her. “He was christened Dan; and his son too,” he said.

She smiled with surprise. “Three of you Dans about the Deborah; and all officers!” Her eyes clouded thoughtfully, and she fell silent. She remembered a thing her mother had once said to her. “Trust a man named Dan,” her mother had said. “They’re good men, Ruth. It goes with the name.”

She had wondered, then, whether her father had been named Dan, and asked her mother. The woman shivered faintly, and said: “No; Michael he was—Michael Lytton, Ruth. Never forget that name.”

Her mother had told her very little about this man who had been her father. He had died, she said, when Ruth was still a baby. Thought of him came to her now; then she put the thought aside and fell to talking to Dan Darrin again, and their talk ran on and on.

“Trust a man named Dan,” her mother had said; and she had trusted and liked Dan Darrin from the beginning. She was a girl; a girl’s fancies run very tenderly on such things as names.

Yet she had not at all the same feeling toward Red Pawl, even though his name were also Dan. She disliked him; and his insistent companionship annoyed her. Sometimes she was hard put to be rid of him.

Black Pawl perceived this, one morning when she turned away from the mate with hot cheeks and hurried below; and his eyes, as he looked on his son thereafter, were lowering.

But Red Pawl did not see. He was looking toward the cabin companion, down which the girl had disappeared.

CHAPTER V

THE grim story which the missionary had heard from Black Pawl stayed in his mind; he could not put it aside. He thought upon it constantly, wondering, seeking, puzzling for the key.

He hesitated to speak of it again to Black Pawl. Since that night of confidences the Captain had avoided him, with something shame-faced in his manner, as if he regretted having spoken. The man of the church was not one to harass another; he knew Black Pawl must hate to think or speak of that which had passed. But the missionary’s mind dwelt on it constantly; he watched Black Pawl, and pondered.

There is a certain comfort and solace in talking of our own miseries. It is as though, by revealing them to others, we shift the burden of the load from our own shoulders. Black Pawl, until he spoke to the missionary, had never tasted this measure of comfort; and having tasted, it was inevitable, finally, that he should seek it again. The missionary understood this, as he considered the matter; and so he waited with some patience, and in the end, as he expected, Black Pawl brought up the tale once more.

“I’ve been wondering, Father,” he said with a mockery of respect in his tones, “just what you meant by saying you pitied me for what must surely come.”

The missionary did not answer at once; and when he did, it was with another question. “Black Pawl,” he said, “are you sure your wife and your child are dead?”

The Captain laughed bitterly. “Sure.”

“You told me the—evil men—denied the thing.”

“At first, yes,” said Black Pawl. “But at the last, just before I broke his neck, seeking to save the worthless life in him, the chief of them admitted the whole.”

The missionary considered, eyes afar with his thoughts. “Was there any way,” he asked, “by which you might have known them, if you had ever found the two? Not your wife only, but—your daughter.”

“Aye,” said Black Pawl. “I would know.” His voice was dead in his throat.

“But you never saw the child.”

“No.”

“How could you know?”

The Captain flung about, and asked harshly: “Should I not know my own?”

There was a gentle persistence in the missionary. He ignored the rebuff. “Cap’n Pawl,” he said, “there are strange chances in this world. It is impossible ever to be sure.”

“It is not impossible,” said the Captain. “For I am sure.”

“That dying man may have lied.”

Black Pawl threw back his head. “Father,” he said, “I thought of that. I called him a liar. And he showed me a drawer hidden in the cabin of their filthy schooner; and from the drawer he picked out for me a wedding-ring. I knew it. So was I sure.”

“So—the wedding-ring.” It was as though the missionary spoke to himself; then he asked: “Have you the ring?”

“Aye,” answered Black Pawl.

The man of the church considered a moment.

“You gave her other—jewels, I have no doubt,” he suggested. “Did this man have them as well?”

Black Pawl shook his head. “She was not one for such baubles. There was only a little locket. When I left her, at the last, with our son, we made a daguerreotype of him, that she might wear it in this locket about her throat. It was not worth the stealing, or it was lost before the end. At least, this man had it not.”

“You asked him for it?”

“No. When he showed me the wedding-ring, he was in five seconds of death.”

“What was that locket like?” the missionary pursued.

But Black Pawl could endure no more. “Man,” he cried, “have done!” His voice broke with a laugh. “This digging in dead years is fool’s work, Father,” he said. “Have done with it, for good and all.”

For a space of minutes the missionary stood musing, while Black Pawl paced the deck behind him, now and again roaring orders to laggers amidships. In the end he paused, then drew near the missionary again.

“Why do you pity me, Father?” he asked. “You’ve not told that.”

The calm eyes looked up at him; and the man of the church answered steadily: “Because of the thing that is before you, Cap’n Pawl.”

Black Pawl laughed. “Aye, you said that. Prophesy, Father—prophesy! What is before me?”

“You love your son?” asked the missionary. Black Pawl’s face twisted, and he laughed again.

“Oh, aye!” he said.

“Because he is your son, blood of your blood,” the man of the church defined. “But—you also hate your son.”

The Captain was smiling grimly. “Have it so. This is paradox, not prophecy.”

“There is evil in him,” said the missionary. “The blood that you gave him, the life you have shown him—these have bred evil in the man. And you have justice in you; and because of that justice, you hate the evil in Red Pawl. I pity you, Captain, because some day you must choose between the blood-son whom you love and the evil son whom you hate. And that will not be an easy choice.”

Black Pawl snapped his fingers. “Fiddle!” he exclaimed. “I’ve laid hands on him as a boy; I can do it still. I can chastise, if there’s need.”

“Red Pawl is no longer a boy,” replied the missionary. “He is the worst of you, alive before your eyes, my friend.”

“Well?” the Captain challenged. “Is it not something to see your sins so plainly?”

The missionary hesitated; then he held out his hand and smiled. “Captain,” he said, “you are a man, and my friend. Whether you believe in their worth or no, you have my prayers.”

“They’ll do no harm, at the least,” answered Black Pawl; and a simple and honest gratitude for this friendship was behind the mockery in his tones.

CHAPTER VI

ON the second day afterward, the Deborah ran into the fringes of bad weather. In mid-morning the wind began to rise unpleasantly; the glass was falling, and the skies were overcast. Black Pawl had been driving the schooner under full canvas. He was a bold man without being a reckless one, and when the signs turned against him, he ordered topsails furled and reefs in fore and main. It was Dan Darrin’s watch on deck, and Dan went forward to direct the work. Black Pawl was aft, with the old missionary. The mate was below in his cabin, Ruth in hers.

When the work was under way, the Captain turned and said: “Best come below, Father. This wind’s a rough one.”

The old missionary shook his head. His cheeks were ruddy with the buffets of wind and spray, and his eyes were shining. “There’s still sap enough in this old body of mine to like it,” he said.

Black Pawl laughed. Then he caught Dan Darrin’s eye and bade him watch for a space. He meant to go below for his storm gear and return to take the deck. It was in his mind to be no more than a minute below; but when he dropped down the companion, the ship, and the brewing storm and the sea were all forgotten in what he beheld.

The door of the girl’s cabin was open. Beyond this open doorway Ruth was struggling in the arms of Red Pawl. She was fighting silently, pushing at him with her hands against his breast. And Red was laughing, and whispering to her.

At the sight Black Pawl felt something surge in his breast that he had not known was there, a hot flood of passion and anger. For an instant he stood quite still, choking against the beating of his own heart; and his face turned black. The girl saw him, and called softly across the cabin:

“Cap’n Pawl—please.”

He had time to mark, even then, that her voice was level and unafraid.

As she spoke, Red Pawl turned his head, and over his shoulder beheld his father. He loosed the girl, and turned, half crouching. He moved forward two steps, to the cabin table, and rested his great hands on it, and gazed at Black Pawl eye to eye.

That instant the flood of passion in the Captain’s heart burst its bounds. He leaped forward with the swift and silent ferocity of a beast; and at sight of his convulsed face, the girl shuddered. But she held her ground in the corner, watching. The cabin was so small that there was no room for any maneuvering; the table in the center left only narrow ways about the sides. It was like witnessing the battle of two lions in a pit.

Black Pawl, in his charge, seemed not to see the table. He struck it with his thighs; and stout as it was, and secure as it was in its place upon the floor, it was wrenched loose and flung against Red Pawl, bearing him back; and for an instant he was pinned against the wall, the table against his legs, his father’s huge knotted fists lashing at him.

Since Red was a child, Black Pawl had never struck him in anger. And now, at those first blows, the son was whipped to a fury as fierce as that of Black Pawl. He ducked, bent his back, and thrust the table from his knees; he came on Black Pawl then, from the side, head down. He got his arms about the other’s middle; their two bodies crashed down upon the table, smashing it to splinters.

The sudden tumult in the cabin had brought the missionary and Dan Darrin, running. Pinned in his son’s arms, Black Pawl saw them, and he called in stern, sure tones:

“Dan, on deck! Take the ship. Father, stand away. I’ve a lesson to teach here.”

Dan obeyed instantly; the missionary paused by the companion, watching. Tighter Red Pawl’s arms wound about his father, as though he would crush the older man.

Red was the stronger. He was built broad, built thick, built solid upon the ground, whereas Black Pawl was lean and long. Nevertheless, Black Pawl had more of the lore of rough and tumble; and through the years his strength had ripened, not decayed. Held down now by the heavier man, crushed in that viselike grip, he cooled to a deadly ferocity; then worked his long arm up for a blow that, when it fell, rocked Red’s head upon his shoulders. For an instant only the other’s muscles slacked, but the instant was enough to let Black Pawl get his elbow beneath the other’s throat, and thrust up and away. Red was finally forced to yield, for if he had not, his head must have been torn from his shoulders. He writhed back, shifting to obtain a fresh hold, and Black Pawl squirmed to one side, and to his feet, and so was free. He stepped back, breathing deep into his strangled lungs; instantly Red sprang to his feet, lowered his head and charged.

Black Pawl was too wise to send home a blow a-top that lowered head. He had seen many an unwise man break a fist thus and lose thereby. As Red came near, he stepped to one side with a lagging foot, and Red stumbled over this foot, and went into the cabin wall with a crash that would have stunned a weaker man. As he straightened, Black Pawl met him with a blow full in the face that drove Red’s head back against the paneling. Then the younger man ducked, and blocked with cunning elbows and shoulders hunched high, and strove again to come to closer quarters.

Black Pawl was still too nimble for him. It was like a bullfight. Red was the bull, and Black Pawl’s blows pricked him again and again as he charged fruitlessly upon and past the older man. In the end, Red understood that what he wished to do could not be done in this way; he must stand and fight. And so he changed his tactics. Standing back, he took his ease and caught his breath while Black Pawl pushed the fighting. Red was content to guard, take what blows came, and wait till his strength was restored again.

When he was ready, he lifted his head and began.

In such fighting as this, Black Pawl had all the advantage; he was taller, and swifter of foot, and he had three inches the reach of the other man. His knuckles cut Red’s cheek, smashed Red’s mouth, beat a tattoo upon his face that would have killed another man. As for Red, he did not strike for the head. He was plugging at Black Pawl’s ribs, but Black Pawl’s fists had a way of tapping Bed’s biceps or wrists in a fashion that took the strength from these blows. Meanwhile, he landed almost at will upon his son; and any one of a dozen blows he struck would have plunged a weaker man swiftly into oblivion.

After a time this became plain to both of them. Red realized that Black Pawl could not hurt him, that he could endure the worst the older man could send; and Black Pawl knew this as quickly as his son. Nevertheless, he would cut Red to pieces with his blows. The mate must weaken in the end. He struck, and struck, and struck again.

Red lowered his head into the shelter of his left shoulder and rested his right arm, fending with the left. And he began to wait, and wait, and watch for the chance he sought. Soon or late, his father’s chin must come within reach of that waiting fist. And when it did—

His chance came quickly. He ducked a straightforward blow that slid across his shoulder, and brought Black Pawl’s face within a few inches of his own. Before the Captain could guard, Red’s right whipped up squarely on the chin, a little to the left of the point, where the full jolt of it was instantly communicated through jawbone and skull to those nerves which bear to the muscles the messages of the brain. Black Pawl went spinning backward, slack and weak and helpless; and Red gathered his breath and leaped.

There was no more than a second’s space between Red’s blow and his charge, but that second was long enough for the sickness to pass—long enough for Black Pawl to gain control of his shaking body once more. Then Red had him around the waist again; he felt his son’s hip thrust against his thigh and knew what was coming—the throw for which there is no guard, no defense except to yield to it. Black Pawl let himself go limply, but as his feet left the floor, his hands reached out and got the grip he sought. His long fingers closed on his son’s neck. He sank them home, pressing—pressing.

He was in the air, all his weight flying. Yet his hands still gripped the other’s throat. So the momentum of his own throw dragged Red Pawl forward, overbalancing him. He fell a-top Black Pawl in a rolling heap, and Black Pawl’s thumbs sank in between the great muscles at the side of the neck, and the gullet in front. Their paralyzing pressure stopped Red’s breath, stopped the blood in the great arteries that feed the brain. He felt insensibility enveloping him; then with a mighty effort he flung his elbow into Black Pawl’s throat and broke the hold. For an instant again he was free of that choking terror. They were grappling, entwined like snakes in a knot upon the floor.

Black Pawl’s hand slid beneath his son’s arm; and with all his strength he drove his thumb in against the tender flesh that covers the ribs at the armpit. There is no more excruciating pain; Red Pawl screamed with it, and fumbled frantically for his father’s wrist.