J. Allan Dunn

“ Not to the girl, Rainey thought. At first he had considered Lund's character as comparatively simple—and brutal—but he had qualified this, without seeming consciousness, and he felt that Lund would never deliberately insult a woman—any sort of woman. He was beginning to feel something more than an admiration for Lund's strength; a liking for the man himself had, almost against his will, begun to assert itself.
They stood together by the weather-rail. It was still Rainey's deck-watch, and at any moment Carlsen might relinquish the wheel back to him as soon as the girl got tired. ”

“ Here was a girl who would demand certain standards in the man with whom she would mate, not merely accompany through life. There were times when Rainey felt irresistibly the charm of her as a woman, longed for her in the powerful sex reactions that inevitably follow hard labor. There were times when he felt that she did not consider that he measured up to her gages, and he would strive to change the atmosphere, to dominate the situation in which Lund was the greater figure of the two men. ”

“ They were going to toss the shovels and drills down to the seamen.
Tamada turned. His face did not change, but his eyes gleamed as he thrust a dipper in the steaming remnants of the pea-soup and flung the thick blistering mass fair in Deming's{321} face. At the same moment the girl's pistol cracked with a stab of red flame. Beale dropped, shot in the neck, close to the collarbone, twisting like a scotched snake, rolling down the trail to the beach again.
Deming, howling like a scorched devil, clawed with one hand at the sticky mass that masked him as he ran blind, wild with pain. ”

“ To its safety every member is a necessity, the lookout as much as the man at the wheel, the common seaman, the navigator. And, when a ship is engaged in a certain calling, those who are hired as experts in that line are equally essential with the rest."
"All the way from captain to—cook?" drawled Lund.
"Each depends upon his comrade's fulfilment of duty," went on Carlsen. "So an absolute equality is evolved. Each man's responsibility being equal, his reward should be also equal. ”

“ Rainey fancied whimsically that he could hear a dynamo purring inside of the giant's massiveness. He had seen him in open rage when he had first denounced Honest Simms, but the serious mood was far more impressive.
The big man stepped like a great cat, his head was thrust slightly forward, his great hands were half open. One forgot his blindness. Despite the unsightly black lenses, Lund appeared so absolutely prepared and, in a different way, fully as confident as Carlsen. ”

“ At the words Lund and Hansen tilted the grating. There was a slight pause as if the body were reluctant to start on its last journey, and then it slid from the platform and plunged into the sea, disappearing instantly under the urge of the weights, with a hissing aeration of the water. The flag, held inboard by the line, fluttered a moment and subsided over the grating. ”

“ Treachery, selfishness, cruelty, crime breed from the shining particles even before they are in actual sight and touch.
Rainey knew that. He had read many true yarns that had come down from the frozen North, in from the deserts and the mountains, tales of the mining records of the West.
He mistrusted the doctor. The man had drugged him. He was a man whose profession, where the mind was warped, belittled life. Captain Simms had been charged with leaving a blind man on a broken floe. Lund was the type whose passions left him ruthless. ”

“ Once in a while he would sit with closed eyes or pass his hands across his brows as if they pained him. But he never complained, and the ice, taking on the dull hues of sea and sky, gave off no glare that should affect the sight. Against all opposition Lund forced his way until, just after sunset one night, as the dusk swept down, he gave a shout and pointed to a fitful flare over the port bow. ”

“ In an instant Rainey caught the object of Lund's speech-making. He had done it to enrage Carlsen beyond endurance, to make him draw his gun. Giant as he was, he moved with the grace of a panther, with a swiftness too fast for the eye to register. Something flashed in his right hand, a gun, that he had drawn from a holster slung over his left breast. ”

“ Strong fingers, almost vibrant with a force manifest through serge and linen. Fingers that could grip like steel upon occasion.
Rainey wonderingly sized up his consort. The stranger's bulk was enormous. Rainey was well over the average himself, but he was only a stripling beside this hulk, this stranded hulk, of manhood. And, for all the spectacled eyes and shuffling feet, there was a stamp of coordinated strength about the giant that bespoke the blind Samson. ”

“ The stairs were carpeted with corrugated rubber that muffled all sound. Two men sat at the cabin table, leaning forward, hands and forearms outstretched, fingering{8} something. One Rainey recognized as the captain, Simms—a heavy, square-built man, gray-haired, clean-shaven, his flesh tanned, yet somehow unhealthy, as if the bronze was close to tarnishing. There were deep puffs under the gray tired eyes.
The other was younger, tall, nervously active, with dark eyes and a dark mustache and beard, the latter trimmed to a Vandyke. Between them was a long slim sack of leather, a miner's poke. ”

“ Lund's winning card he had bothered about until his brain was tired. The only thing he got out of all his fussing was the one new thought that seemed to fly out at a tangent and mock him.
If Carlsen was deposed, and the skipper continued ill—to face the worst but still plausible—if Carlsen, being deposed, refused to act, and the skipper was too sick to leave his room—who was going to navigate the schooner? Not a blind man. And Rainey couldn't learn navigation in a day. There was more to it in these perilous seas than mere reckoning. Ice was ahead. ”

“ And Rainey suspected that there was something back of Lund's charge of desertion. The girl's face, her graceful figure, the tones of her voice, clung in his still palsied recollection a long time before he could dismiss it and get round to the main factor of his imprisonment—what were they going to do with him?{28}
There was a fortune in sight. For gold, men forget the obligations of life and law in civilization; they revert to savage type, and their minds and actions are swayed by the primitive urge of lust. ”

“ He seemed to have a clear recollection of the fight. He smiled grimly at Deming, who glared at him, nursing his broken arm, then glanced at the man that Rainey had mastered.
"Did him up, eh? Good for you, matey! You didn't have to use your gun. Jest as well, you might have plugged me. An' the gal had one, after all."
He seemed to ruminate on this thought as if it gave him special cause for reflection.
"Game!" he said. "Game as they make 'em!"
He surveyed the rueful, groaning combatants with the smile of a conqueror, then turned to the seamen. ”

“ From that time on Peggy Simms came to the table and talked freely with Lund, more conservatively with Rainey.
The newspaperman was no experienced analyst of woman nature, but he saw, or thought he saw, the girl watching Lund closely when he talked, studying him, sometimes with more than a hint of approbation, at others with a look that was puzzled, seeming to be working at a problem. The giant's liking for her, boyish at times, or swiftly changing to bolder appraisal, grew daily. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As his wife Carlsen would retain her share. If he gave her up, it would go into the common purse. But, if he expected to trick the men out of it all, that would be unnecessary. Did he really love the girl? Or was his lust for gold mingled with a passion for possession of her? He might know that the girl would kill herself before she would submit to dishonor. Perhaps he knew she had the means!
One thing became paramount. To save Peggy Simms. Lund might fight for the gold; Rainey would battle for the girl's sanctity. And, armed with that resolve, Rainey went out into the main cabin. ”

“ He was keen to hold her in conversation, and she willing to listen, assenting almost{252} eagerly when he offered to point out their positions on the chart, spread on the cabin table. Lund talked well, for all his limited and at times luridly inclined vocabulary, whenever he talked of the sea and of his own adventures, stating them without brag, but bringing up striking pictures of action, full of the color and savor of life in the raw. ”

“ On the eleventh day out, Rainey went below in the middle of the afternoon for his sea-boots. The gale had suddenly strengthened and, under reefs, the Karluk heeled far over until the hissing seas flooded the scuppers and creamed even with the lee rail. In the main cabin he found Simms seated in a chair with his daughter leaning over him, speaking to her in a harsh, complaining voice.
"No, you can't do a thing for me," he was saying. "It's this sciatica. I've got to get Carlsen." ”

“ All night long they lay in a pandemonium of noise. After a while they would become used to it as do the workers in a stampmill, but that night it deafened them, kept them awake and alert, fearful, with the tremendous cannonading.{274} The bite of the frost made the timbers of the Karluk creak and its thrust continually worked among the stranded masses with groaning thunders and shrill grindings, while the surf ever boomed on the resonant sheets of ice. ”

“ Carlsen had been right. A ship at sea was a little world of its own, and Lund was now lord of it. A lord who would demand allegiance and enforce it. He held the power of life and death, not by brute force alone. He was the only navigator aboard, with the skipper seriously ill. As such alone he held them in his hand, once they were out of sight of land.
"Hansen," said Lund, "Mr. Rainey'll relieve you after we've eaten. Come on, Rainey. You ain't lost yore appetite, I hope. Watch me discard that spoon for a knife an' fork. I don't have to play blind man enny longer." ”

“ Rainey. Oh, Gord, they'll kill me sure! Oh, my Gord!" His staring eyes and loose mouth, working in fear, made him look like a fresh-landed cod.
"You ain't much use alive," said Lund.
"Mebbe I ain't," returned the lad, with the desperation of a cornered rat. "But I got a right to live. And I've lived worse'n a dorg on this bloody schooner. I'm fair striped an' bruised wi' boots an' knuckles an' ends o' rope. ”

“ So, as he came out of the grip of the drug that had been given him, slowly, with a brain-pan that seemed overstuffed with cotton and which throbbed with a dull persistent ache—with a throat that seemed to be coated with{26} ashes, strangely contracted—a nauseated stomach—eyes that saw things through a haze—limbs that ached as if bruised—the sounds that beat their way through his sluggish consciousness were familiar enough to place him almost instantly and aid his memory's flickering film to reel off what had happened. ”

“ Before Rainey could fling himself between them, the girl had snatched the little pistol that Lund had set on the table and fired point-blank. She seemed to have missed, though Lund halted, his mouth agape, astounded.
"You big bully!" said Rainey. Now that the time had come he found that he was not afraid of Lund, of his gun, of his strength. "Play fair, do you? Then show it! You{329} asked me once why I didn't make love to her. I told you. But you, you foul-minded bully! All you think of is your big body, to take what it wants. ”

“ The Karluk was bowling along northward toward landfall and the crisis between Lund and Carlsen at good speed. The weather had subsided and the half gale now served the schooner instead of hindering her. Rainey turned over the wheel to a seaman and paced the deck. The bite in the air had increased until even the smart walk he maintained failed to circulate the blood sufficiently to keep his fingers from becoming benumbed, so that he had to beat his arms across his chest. ”

“ I've an idea I can write better when I don't have to stand the bread-and-butter strain of routine."
"Goin' to write second-hand stuff?" asked Lund. "Why don't you live what you write? I don't see how yo're goin' to git under a man's skin by squattin' in a bungalow with a Jap servant, a porcelain bathtub, an' breakfast{255} in bed. Why don't you travel an' see stuff as it is? How in blazes are you goin' to write Adventure if you don't live it?
"Me, I'm goin' to git a schooner built accordin' to my own ideas. Have a kicker engine in it, mebbe, an' go round the world. ”

“ Lund asked the Japanese in a low voice.
"Fifteen grains, I think. Maybe more. Too much! Always too much drug in his veins. Much worse than opium for man."
"Carlsen's work," growled Lund. "Increased the stuff on him till he couldn't do without it. Made him a slave to dope an' Carlsen his boss. He deserved killin' jest for that, the skunk."
Rainey frantically searched through the medicine chest and, finding only five tablets marked Morphine 1 gr. in a bottle, sought elsewhere in vain. And he could find no needle. ”

“ Long Strait current splits on Wrangell Island, and we're in the trend of the northern loop. That's why the sea don't freeze up more solid. It's freezin' fast enough round us, where there ain't motion."
He seemed well satisfied with the prospect. "Had breakfast?" he asked Rainey, and then: "All right. We'll git the men aft."
He bellowed an order, and soon every one came trooping, to gather in two groups either{269} side of the cabin skylight. Their faces were eager with the proximity of the gold, yet half sullen as they waited to hear what Lund had to say. ”

“ Carlsen talked sense. Here you are on the road to a fortune. I'll see yore share's a fair one. There's plenty. It ain't a bad billet you've fallen into, my lad. But I'll look out for ye. I'm sort of responsible for yore trip, ye see, matey. And I'll need ye."
He lowered his voice mysteriously.
"Yo're a writer, Mister Rainey. You've got brains. You can see which way a thing's heading. You've heard enough. I'm blind. I've bin done dirt once aboard the Karluk, and I don't aim to stand for it ag'in. And I had my eyes, then. No use livin' in a rumpus. Got to keep watch. ”

“ There's adventure for you, an' we ain't ha'f through with it. An' romance, too, mebbe. We ain't developed much of a love-story as yit, but you never can tell."
He laughed, and Peggy Simms got up quietly, folded her sewing, and said "Good night" composedly before she went to her room.
"How about it, Rainey?" quizzed Lund. "How about the love part of it? She's a beauty, an' she'll be an heiress. Ain't you got enny red blood in yore veins? Don't you want her? You won't find many to hold a candle to her. Looks, built like a racin' yacht, smooth an' speedy. Smart, an' rich into the bargain. ”