ho! below there!” I heard Latimer shout down the scuttle, too cautious to descend into the inferno of passion he could hear raging beneath him in the darkness.
“Won’t somebody get a knife? Oh, won’t somebody get a knife?” Leach pleaded in the first interval of comparative silence.
The number of the assailants was a cause of confusion. They blocked their own efforts, while Wolf Larsen, with but a single purpose, achieved his. This was to fight his way across the floor to the ladder. Though in total darkness, I followed his progress by its sound. No man less than a giant could have done what he did, once he had gained the foot of the ladder. Step by step, by the might of his arms, the whole pack of men striving to drag him back and down, he drew his body up from the floor till he stood erect. And then, step by step, hand and foot, he slowly struggled up the ladder.
The very last of all, I saw. For Latimer, having finally gone for a lantern, held it so that its light shone down the scuttle. Wolf Larsen was nearly to the top, though I could not see him. All that was visible was the mass of men fastened upon him. It squirmed about, like some huge many-legged spider, and swayed back and forth to the regular roll of the vessel. And still, step by step with long intervals between, the mass ascended. Once it tottered, about to fall back, but the broken hold was regained and it still went up.
“Who is it?” Latimer cried.
In the rays of the lantern I could see his perplexed face peering down.
“Larsen,” I heard a muffled voice from within the mass.
Latimer reached down with his free hand. I saw a hand shoot up to clasp his. Latimer pulled, and the next couple of steps were made with a rush. Then Wolf Larsen’s other hand reached up and clutched the edge of the scuttle. The mass swung clear of the ladder, the men still clinging to their escaping foe. They began to drop of, to be brushed off against the sharp edge of the scuttle, to be knocked off by the legs which were now kicking powerfully. Leach was the last to go, falling sheer back from the top of the scuttle and striking on head and shoulders upon his sprawling mates beneath. Wolf Larsen and the lantern disappeared, and we were left in darkness.
Chapter XV
There was a deal of cursing and groaning as the men at the bottom of the ladder crawled to their feet.
“Somebody strike a light, my thumb’s out of joint,” said one of the men, Parsons, a swarthy, saturnine man, boat-steerer in Standish’s boat, in which Harrison was puller.
“You’ll find it knockin’ about by the bitts,” Leach said, sitting down on the edge of the bunk in which I was concealed.
There was a fumbling and a scratching of matches, and the sea-lamp flared up, dim and smoky, and in its weird light bare-legged men moved about nursing their bruises and caring for their hurts. Oofty-Oofty laid hold of Parsons’s thumb, pulling it out stoutly and snapping it back into place. I noticed at the same time that the Kanaka’s knuckles were laid open clear across and to the bone. He exhibited them, exposing beautiful white teeth in a grin as he did so, and explaining that the wounds had come from striking Wolf Larsen in the mouth.
“So it was you, was it, you black beggar?” belligerently demanded one Kelly, an Irish-American and a longshoreman, making his first trip to sea, and boat-puller for Kerfoot.
As he made the demand he spat out a mouthful of blood and teeth and shoved his pugnacious face close to Oofty-Oofty. The Kanaka leaped backward to his bunk, to return with a second leap, flourishing a long knife.
“Aw, go lay down, you make me tired,” Leach interfered. He was evidently, for all of his youth and inexperience, cock of the forecastle. “G’wan, you Kelly. You leave Oofty alone. How in hell did he know it was you in the dark?”
Kelly subsided with some muttering, and the Kanaka flashed his white teeth in a grateful smile. He was a beautiful creature, almost feminine in the pleasing lines of his figure, and there was a softness and dreaminess in his large eyes which seemed to contradict his well-earned reputation for strife and action.
“How did he get away?” Johnson asked.
He was sitting on the side of his bunk, the whole pose of his figure indicating utter dejection and hopelessness. He was still breathing heavily from the exertion he had made. His shirt had been ripped entirely from him in the struggle, and blood from a gash in the cheek was flowing down his naked chest, marking a red path across his white thigh and dripping to the floor.
“Because he is the devil, as I told you before,” was Leach’s answer; and thereat he was on his feet and raging his disappointment with tears in his eyes.
“And not one of you to get a knife!” was his unceasing lament.
But the rest of the hands had a lively fear of consequences to come and gave no heed to him.
“How’ll he know which was which?” Kelly asked, and as he went on he looked murderously about him—“unless one of us peaches.”
“He’ll know as soon as ever he claps eyes on us,” Parsons replied. “One look at you’d be enough.”
“Tell him the deck flopped up and gouged yer teeth out iv yer jaw,” Louis grinned. He was the only man who was not out of his bunk, and he was jubilant in that he possessed no bruises to advertise that he had had a hand in the night’s work. “Just wait till he gets a glimpse iv yer mugs to-morrow, the gang iv ye,” he chuckled.
“We’ll say we thought it was the mate,” said one. And another, “I know what I’ll say—that I heered a row, jumped out of my bunk, got a jolly good crack on the jaw for my pains, and sailed in myself. Couldn’t tell who or what it was in the dark and just hit out.”
“An’ ‘twas me you hit, of course,” Kelly seconded, his face brightening for the moment.
Leach and Johnson took no part in the discussion, and it was plain to see that their mates looked upon them as men for whom the worst was inevitable, who were beyond hope and already dead. Leach stood their fears and reproaches for some time. Then he broke out:
“You make me tired! A nice lot of gazabas you are! If you talked less with yer mouth and did something with yer hands, he’d a-ben done with by now. Why couldn’t one of you, just one of you, get me a knife when I sung out? You make me sick! A-beefin’ and bellerin’ ‘round, as though he’d kill you when he gets you! You know damn well he wont. Can’t afford to. No shipping masters or beach-combers over here, and he wants yer in his business, and he wants yer bad. Who’s to pull or steer or sail ship if he loses yer? It’s me and Johnson have to face the music. Get into yer bunks, now, and shut yer faces; I want to get some sleep.”
“That’s all right all right,” Parsons spoke up. “Mebbe he won’t do for us, but mark my words, hell ‘ll be an ice-box to this ship from now on.”
All the while I had been apprehensive concerning my own predicament. What would happen to me when these men discovered my presence? I could never fight my way out as Wolf Larsen had done. And at this moment Latimer called down the scuttles:
“Hump! The old man wants you!”
“He ain’t down here!”
