The Max Brand Megapack. Max Brand
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the salve with delicate touches. For the result, a confession of all his troubles tumbled up the big man’s throat to his tongue. He had to set his teeth to keep it back.
She became aware of those cold, incurious eyes studying her face as she wrapped the gauze bandage deftly around the injured palms.
“Why do you watch me so closely?”
It disarmed him. Those possibilities of tenderness came about his stiff-set lips, and the girl wondered.
“I was thinkin’ about my home town.”
“Where is it?”
He frowned and waved his hand in a sweep which included half the points on the compass.
“Back there.”
She waited, wrapping up the gauze bandage.
“When I was a kid, I used to go down to the harbor an’ watch the ships comin’ in an’ goin’ out,” he went on cautiously.
She nodded, and he resumed with more confidence: “I’d sit on the pierhead an’ watch the ships. I knew they was bringing the smell of far lands in their holds.”
There was a little pause; then his head tilted back and he burst into the soft, thick brogue: “Ah-h, I was afther bein’ woild about the schooners blowin’ out to sea wid their sails shook out like clouds. An’ then I’d look down to the wather around the pier, an’ it was green, deep green, ah-h, the deep sea-green av it! An’ I would look into it an’ dream. Whin I seen your eyes—”
He stopped, grown cold as a man will when he feels that he has laid his inner self indecently bare to the eye of the world. But she did not stir; she did not smile.
“I felt like a kid again,” said Harrigan, recovering from the brogue. “Like a kid sittin’ on the pierhead an’ watchin’ the green water. Your eyes are that green,” he finished.
Self-consciousness, the very thing which she had been trying to keep the big sailor from, turned her blood to fire. She knew the quick color was running from throat to cheek; she knew the cold, incurious eye would note the change. He was so far aware of the alteration that he rose and glanced at the door.
“Good-by,” she said, and then quite forgetting herself: “I shall ask the captain to see that you are treated like a white man.”
“You will not!”
“I beg your pardon?” she said, but the hint of insulted dignity was lost on Harrigan.
“You will not,” he repeated. “It’d simply make him worse.”
She was glad of the chance to be angry; it would explain her heightening color.
“The captain must be an utter brute.”
“I figger he’s nine tenths man, an’ the other tenth devil, but there ain’t no human bein’ can change any of them ten parts. Good-by. I’m thankin’ you. My name’s Harrigan.”
She opened the door for him.
“If you wish to have that dressing changed, ask for Miss Malone.”
“Ah-h!” said Harrigan. “Malone!”
She explained coldly: “I’m Scotch, not Irish.”
“Scotch or Irish,” said Harrigan, and his head tilted back as it always did when he was excited. “You’re afther bein’ a real shport, Miss Malone!”
“Miss Malone,” she repeated, closing the door after him, and vainly attempting to imitate the thrill which he gave to the word. “What a man!”
She smiled for a moment into space and then pulled the cord for the cabin boy.
CHAPTER 5
The cabin boy did duty for all the dozen passengers, and therefore he was slow in answering. When he appeared, she asked him to carry the captain word that she wished to speak with him. He returned in a short time to say that Captain McTee would talk with her now in his cabin. She followed aft to the captain’s room. He did not rise when she entered, but turned in his chair and relinquished a long, black, fragrant cigar.
“Don’t stop smoking,” she said. “I want you in a pleasant mood to hear what I have to say.”
Without reply he placed the cigar in his mouth and the bright black eyes fastened upon her. That suddenly intent regard was startling, as if he had leaned over and spoken a word in her ear. She shrugged her shoulders as if trying to shake off a compelling hand and then settled into a chair.
“I’ve come to say something that’s disagreeable for you to hear and for me to speak.”
Still he would not talk. He was as silent as Harrigan. She clenched her hands and drove bravely ahead. She told how she had called the red-headed sailor up to the after-cabin and dressed his hurts, and she described succinctly, but with rising anger the raw and swollen condition of his fingers. The captain listened with apparent enjoyment; she could not tell whether he was relishing her story or his slowly puffed cigar. In the end she waited for his answer, but evidently none was forthcoming.
“Now,” she said at last, “I know something about ships and sailors, and I know that if this fellow was to appeal against you after you touch port, a judge would weigh a single word of yours against a whole sentence of Harrigan’s. It would be a different matter if a disinterested person pressed a charge of cruelty against you. I am such a person; I would press such a charge; I have the money, the time, and the inclination to do it.”
She read the slight hesitation in his manner, not as if he were impressed by what she had to say, but as though he was questioning himself as to whether he should give her any answer at all. It made her wish fervently that she were a man—and a big one. He spoke then, as if an illuminating thought had occurred to him.
“You know Harrigan’s record?”
“No,” she admitted grudgingly.
McTee sighed as if with deep relief and leaned back in his chair. His smile was sympathetic and it altered his face so marvelously that she caught her breath.
“Of course that explains it, Miss Malone. I don’t doubt that he was clever enough to make you think him abused.”
“He didn’t say a word of accusation against anyone.”
“Naturally not. When a man is bad enough to seem honest—”
He drew a long, slow puff on his cigar by way of finishing his sentence and his eyes smiled kindly upon her.
“I knew that he would do his worst to start mutiny among the crew; I didn’t think he could get as far as the passengers.”
Her confidence was shaken to the ground. Then a new suspicion came to her.
“If he is such a terrible character, why did you let him come aboard your ship?”
Instead of answering, he pulled a cord. The bos’n appeared in a moment.
“Tell this lady how Harrigan came aboard,” ordered the captain, and he fastened a keen eye upon the bos’n.
“Made it on the jump while we was pullin’ out of dock,” said the sailor. “Just managed to get his feet on the gangplank—came within an ace of falling into the sea.”
“That’s all.”
The bos’n retreated and McTee turned back to Kate Malone.
“He had asked me to sign him up for this trip,” he explained. “If I’d set him ashore, he’d probably have been in the police court the next morning. So I let him stay. To be perfectly frank with you, I had a vague hope that gratitude might make a decent sailor out of him for a few days. But the very first night he started his work he began to talk discontent among the men in the forecastle, and such fellows are always ready to listen. Of course I could throw Harrigan in irons and feed him on bread and water; my authority is absolute at sea.