A Man to His Mate Part 20

Rainey, dozing in his bunk, going over the sudden happenings of the day, had placed Carlsen's automatic under his pillow after loading it. He found that it lacked four sh.e.l.ls of full capacity, the two that Lund had fired at his bottle target, the one fired by Carlsen at Rainey, and the last ineffective shot at Lund, a shot that went astray, Rainey decided, largely through Lund's _coup-de-theatre_ of tearing off his gla.s.ses and flinging them at the doctor.

The dynamo that he had idly fancied he could hear purring away inside of Lund was apparent with vengeance now, driving with full force. That was what Lund would be from now on, a driver, imperative, relentless, overcoming all obstacles; as he had himself said, selfish at heart, keen for his own ends.

Rainey was neither a weakling nor a coward, but he shrank from open encounter with Lund, and knew himself, without fear, the weaker man. The challenge of Lund, splendidly daring any one of them to come out against him alone, and challenging them _en ma.s.se_, had found in Rainey an acknowledgment of inferiority that was not merely physical.

Lund knew far more than he did about the cla.s.s of men that made up the inhabitants of the _Karluk_. Rainey had once fondly hugged the delusion that he knew something of the nature of those who "went down to the sea in s.h.i.+ps."

Now he knew that his ignorance was colossal. Such men were not complex, they moved by instinct rather than reason, they were not guided by conscience, the values of right and wrong were not intuitive with them, muscle rather than mind ruled their universe.

Yet Rainey could not solve them, and Lund knew them as one may know a favorite book.

Lund had brains, cunning, brute force that commanded a respect not all bred of being weaker. In a way he was magnificent. And Rainey vaguely heralded trouble when Captain Simms was at last given to the deep. He felt certain that the hunters under Deming were hatching something but, in the main, his mental prophecy of trouble coming was connected with the girl.

Lund had shown no disrespect to her, rather the opposite. But the girl showed hatred of Lund and, in minor measure, of Rainey. Some of this would die out, naturally. Rainey intended to attempt an adjustment in his own behalf. But he held the feeling that Lund would not tolerate this hatred against him on the part of the girl. Such scorn would arouse something in the giant's nature, something that would either strike under the lash, or laugh at it.

Dimly, Rainey saw these things as the giant gropings of s.e.x, not as he had known it, surrounded by conventionalities, by courtesies of twentieth-century veneering, but a law, primitive, irresistible, sweeping away barriers and opposition, a thing bigger even than the l.u.s.t of gold; the lure of woman for man, and man for woman.

Both Lund and the girl, he felt, would have this thing in greater measure than he would. He shared his life with too many things, with books, with amus.e.m.e.nts, with the social ping-pong of the level in which he ordinarily moved.

There had been once a girl, perhaps there still was a girl, whom Rainey had known on a visit to the camp-palace of a lumber king, high in the Sierras, a girl who rode and hunted and lived out-of-doors, and yet danced gloriously, sang, sewed and was both feminine and masculine, a maddening latter-day Diana, who had swept Rainey off his feet for the time.

But he had known that he was not up to her standards, that he was but a paper-worm, aside from his lack of means. That latter detail would, he knew, have bothered him far more than her. But she announced openly that she would only mate with a man who had lived. He rather fancied that it had been a challenge--one he had not taken up. The matrix of his own life just then was too snug a bed. Well, he was living now, he told himself.

On the border of dreams he was brought back by a strange noise on deck, a rush of feet, many voices, and topping them all, the bellow of Lund, roaring, not for help, but in challenge.

Rainey, half asleep, jumped from his bunk and rushed out of the room. He had no doubt as to what had happened; the hunters had attacked Lund!

And, unused to the possession of firearms, still drowsy, he forgot the automatic, intent upon rallying to the cry of the giant. As he made for the companionway, the girl came out of her father's room.

"What is it?" she cried.

"Lund--hunters!" Rainey called back as he sped up the stairs. He thought he heard a "wait" from her, but the stamping and yelling were loud in his ears, and he plunged out on deck. As he emerged he saw the stolid face of Hansen at the wheel, his pale blue eyes glancing at the set of his canvas and then taking on a glint as they turned amids.h.i.+ps.

Lund looked like a bear surrounded by the dog-pack. He stood upright while the six hunters tore and smashed at him. Two had caught him by the middle, one from the front and one from the rear, and, as the fight raged back and forth, they were swung off their feet, bludgeoned and kicked by Lund to stop them getting at the gun in its holster slung under his coat close to his armpit.

Lund's arms swung like clubs, his great hands plucked at their holds, while he roared volleys of deep-sea, defiant oaths, shaking or striking off a man now and then, who charged back snarlingly to the attack.

Brief though the fight had been when Rainey arrived, there was ample evidence of it. Clothes were torn and faces b.l.o.o.d.y, and already the men were panting as Lund dragged them here and there, flailing, striking, half-smothered, but always coming up from under, like a rock that emerges from the bursting of a heavy wave.

And the voice of the combat, grunts and snarls, gasping shouts and broken curses, was the sound of ravening beasts. So far as Rainey could vision in one swift moment before he ran forward, no knives were being used.

A hunter lunged out heavily and confidently to meet him as the others got Lund to his knees for a fateful moment, piling on top of him, bludgeoning blows with guttural cries of fancied victory.

Rainey's man struck, and the strength of his arm, backed by his hurling weight, broke down Rainey's guard and left the arm numb. The next instant they were at close quarters, swinging madly, rife with the one desire to down the other, to maim, to kill. A blow crashed home on Rainey's cheek, sending him back dazed, striking madly, clinching to stop the piston-like smashes of the hunter clutching him, trying to trip him, hammering at the fierce face above him as they both went down and rolled into the scuppers, tearing at each other.

He felt the man's hands at his throat, gradually squeezing out sense and breath and strength, and threw up his knee with all his force. It struck the hunter fairly in the groin, and he heard the man groan with the sudden agony. But he himself was nearly out. The man seemed to fade away for the second, the choking fingers relaxed, and Rainey gulped for air.

His eyes seemed strained from bulging from their sockets in that fierce grip, and there was a fog before them through which he could hear the roar of Lund, sounding like a siren blast that told he was still fighting, still confident.

Then he saw the hunter's face close to his again, felt the whole weight of the man crus.h.i.+ng him, felt the bite of teeth through cloth and flesh, nipping down on his shoulder as the man lay on him, striving to hold him down until he regained the strength that the blow in the groin had temporarily broken down.

For just a moment Rainey's spirit sagged, his own strength was spent, his will sapped, his lungs flattened. For a moment he wanted to lie there--to quit.

Then the hunter's body tautened for action, and, at the feel, Rainey's ebbing pride came surging back, and he heaved and twisted, clubbing the other over his kidneys until the roll of the schooner sent them twisting, tumbling over to the lee once more.

He felt as if he had been fighting for an hour, yet it had all taken place during the leap of the _Karluk_ between two long swells that she had negotiated with a sidelong lurch to the cross seas and wind.

Rainey came up uppermost. The hunter's head struck the rail heavily. His shoulder was free, but he could see ravelings of his coat in the other's teeth. The pain in his shoulder was evident enough, and the sight of the woolly fragments maddened him. The tactics of boyish fights came back to him, and he broke loose from the arms that hugged him, hitched forward until he sat on the hunter's chest, set a knee on either bicep and battered at the other's face as it twisted from side to side helplessly, making a pulp of it, keen to efface all semblance of humanity, a brute like the rest of them, intent upon bruising, on blood-letting, on beating all resistance down to a quivering, spirit-broken ma.s.s.

The hunter lay still beneath him at last, his nerve centers shattered by some blow that had short-circuited them, and Rainey got wearily to his feet. The hunter's thumbs had pressed deep on each side of his neck, and his head felt like wood for heaviness, but shot with pain. The vigor was out of him. He knew he could not endure another hand-to-hand battle with one of the crowd still raging about Lund, who was on his feet again.

Rainey saw his face, one red mask of blood and hair, with his agate eyes flaring up with the glory of the fight. He roared no longer, saving his breath. Hands clutched for him and fists fell, a man was tugging at each knee of his legs, set far apart, st.u.r.dy as the masts themselves.

Lund's arm came up, lifting a hunter clean from the deck, shook him off somehow, and crashed down. One of the men tackling his legs dropped senseless from the buffet he got on the side of his skull, and Lund's kick sent him scudding across the deck, limp, out of the fight that could not last much longer.

All this came as Rainey, still dazed, helped himself by the skylight toward the companion, going as fast as he could to get his gun. If he did not hurry he was certain they would kill Lund. No man could withstand those odds much longer.

And, Lund killed, h.e.l.l would break loose. It would be his turn next, and the girl would be left at their mercy. The thought spurred him, cleared his throbbing head, jarred by the smashes of his still senseless opponent who would be coming to before long.

Then he saw the girl, standing by the rail, not crouching, as he had somehow expected her to be, shutting out the sight of the fight with trembling hands, but with her face aglow, her eyes s.h.i.+ning, watching, as a Roman maid might have watched a gladiatorial combat; thrilled with the spectacle, hands gripping the rail, leaning a little forward.

She did not notice Rainey as he crept by Hansen, still guiding the schooner, holding her to her course, imperturbable, apparently careless of the issue. As he staggered down the stairs the line of thought he had pursued in his bunk, broken by the noise of the fight and his partic.i.p.ation, flashed up in his brain.

This was s.e.x, primitive, predominant! The girl must sense what might happen to her if Lund went down. She had no eyes for Rainey, her soul was up in arms, backing Lund. The s.h.i.+ne in her eyes was for the strength of his prime manhood, matched against the rest, not as a person, an individual, but as an embodiment of the conquering male.

He got the gun, and he s.n.a.t.c.hed a drink of brandy that ran through his veins like quick fire, revivifying him so that he ran up the ladder and came on deck ready to take a decisive hand.

But he found it no easy matter to risk a shot in that swirling ma.s.s.

They all seemed to be arm weary. Blows no longer rose and fell. Lund was slowly dragging the dead weight of them all toward the mast. The two men on the deck still lay there. Rainey's opponent was trying to get up, wiping clumsily at the blood on his face, blinded.

The girl still stood by the rail. Back of the wrestling ma.s.s stood the seamen, offering to take no part, their arms aswing like apes, their dull faces working. Tamada stood by the forward companion, his arms folded, indifferent, neutral.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Then he saw the girl standing by the rail]

All this Rainey saw as he circled, while the ma.s.s whirled like a teetotum. The action raced like an overtimed kinetoscopic film. A man broke loose from the scrimmage, on the opposite side from Rainey, who barely recognized the disheveled figure with the b.l.o.o.d.y, battered face as Deming. The hunter had managed to get hold of Lund's gun. Rainey's aim was screened by a sudden lunge of the huddle of men. He saw Lund heave, saw his red face bob up, mouth open, roaring once more, saw his leg come up in a tremendous kick that caught Deming's outleveling arm close to the elbow, saw the gleam of the gun as it streaked up and overboard, and Deming staggering back, clutching at his broken limb, cursing with the pain, to bring up against the rail and shout to the seamen:

"Get into it, you d.a.m.ned cowards! Get into it, and settle him!"

Even in that instant the sarcasm of the cry of "cowards" struck home to Rainey. The next second the girl had jumped by him, a glint of metal in her hand as she brought it out of her blouse. This time she saw him.

"Come on!" she cried. And darted between the fighters and the storming figure of Deming, who tried to grasp her with his one good arm, but failed.

Rainey sped after her just as Lund reached the mast. The girl had a nickeled pistol in her hand and was threatening the sullen line of irresolute seamen. Rainey with his gun was not needed. He heard Lund shout out in a triumphant cry and saw him battering at the heads of three who still clung to him.

All through the fight Lund had kept his head, struggling to the purpose he had finally achieved, to reach the mast-rack of belaying pins, seize one of the hardwood clubs and, with this weapon, beat his a.s.sailants to the deck.

He stood against the mast, his clothes almost stripped from him, the white of his flesh gleaming through the tatters, streaked with blood.

Save for his eyes, his face was no longer human, only a ma.s.s of flayed flesh and clotted beard. But his eyes were alight with battle and then, as Rainey gazed, they changed. Something of surprise, then of delight, leaped into them, followed by a burning flare that was matched in those of the girl who, with Rainey herding back the seamen, had turned at Lund's yell of victory.