Briggs

“ One smash of the fist and Bevans went staggering toward the forward companion ladder, near the foot of which a little knot of seamen, white, brown and yellow, had gathered in cheerful expectation of seeing murder done.
Briggs balanced himself, a strange figure in his [8] dandified silk and polished boots, with his topi hat awry, head thrust forward, brows scowling, massive neck swollen with rage and drink. Under the smudgy gleam of the lantern on the mizzen, his crimson face, muffled in jetty beard, and the evil-glowering eyes of him made a picture of wrath. ”

“ He peered at the lotus-bud handle, the wavy blade of steel, the dark groove where still lay the poison, the curaré.
“Merciful God!” whispered Captain Briggs, and covered his eyes with a shaking hand. He suddenly stretched out hands that shook. “Oh, haven’t I suffered enough and repented enough? Haven’t I labored enough and paid enough?” He pressed a hand to his forehead, moist and cold. “He’s all I’ve got, Lord—the boy is all I’ve got! Take me, me—but don’t let vengeance come through him! The sin was mine! Let me pay! Don’t drag him down to hell! Take me—but let him live and be a man!” ”

“ The afternoon on which Captain Alpheus Briggs once more comes to our sight—the 24th of June, 1918—was just one of those drowsy, perfumed afternoons, when the long roar of the breakers over Dry Shingle Reef seemed part of the secrets the breeze was whispering among the pine needles on Croft Hill, and when the droning of the captain’s bees, among his spotted tiger-lilies, his sweet peas, cannas and hydrangeas, seemed conspiring with the sun-drenched warmth of the old-fashioned garden to lull man’s spirit into rest and soothe life’s fever with nepenthe. ”

“ The knife-blade clicked on the planking, like the clicking of his teeth that showed black through slavering lips.
“Allah! il Allah!” he gulped, heaving himself up on one hand, slashing with the other.
Why do men, in a crisis, so often do stupid, unaccountable things? Why did Briggs kick at him, with a roaring oath, instead of shooting? Briggs felt the bite of steel in his leg. That broke the numbing spell of unreason. The captain’s pistol, at point-blank range, shattered the yellow man’s skull. Blood, smeared with an ooze of brain, colored the stewing deck. ”

“ Miss Briggs coughed apologetically. Victoria looked up. Miss Briggs reflectively tied knots in her apron string. She was a tall, lantern-jawed woman of no particular age; old looking for thirty-five perhaps or young looking for fifty. Her brown hair, plentifully sprinkled with grey, broke out in wisps over each ear and at the back of the neck. Her perfectly flat chest allowed big bags of coarse black serge to hang over her dirty white apron. Her hands played mechanically with the strings, while her water-coloured eye fixed upon the Telegraph.
'You shouldn't read that paper, mum,' she remarked. ”

“ Carefully tended beard, well-brushed coat and polished boots all proclaimed Alpheus Briggs a proud old man. Though the soul of him had utterly changed, still Captain Briggs held true to type. In him no laxity inhered, no falling away from the strict tenets of shipshape neatness.
The captain appeared to be waiting for something. Once in a while he raised the telescope and directed it toward the far blue sheet of the outer harbor, where the headland of Pigeon Cliff thrust itself against the gray-green of the ship channel, swimming in a distant set of haze. ”

“ The Kapellmeister watched the door grimly as it shut behind the miller, and then he glanced about the garret. "Poor," he said, "Humph! A place for a beggar!" His eyes roved from the pallet in the corner to the pitcher and the basin, the clothes on the pegs, the cobwebs hanging, the geraniums crushed on the sill.
Then he lifted the girl's head and held it between his hands, looking down at her face, supporting her in his arms. The lashes lay heavy on her cheeks and the tendrils of hair, curly and golden, lay on her neck and her forehead. Her throat was bare; it was white and full. ”

“ Yet another philosophy.
'Miss Briggs,' came a man's voice from the stairs.
'Coming, sir,' yelled Miss Briggs in the penetrating tone that calling from cellar to attic teaches.
'Where are my boots?' said the voice on the stairs.
'I'll get 'em for you, sir,' cried Miss Briggs shuffling to the door on her worn slippers.
Life is a hard thing, thought Victoria again. Another woman for the scrap heap. Fourteen hours work a day, nightmares of unlet rooms, boots to black and coals to carry, dirt, loneliness, harsh words and at the end 'I dunno.' Is that to be my fate? she wondered. ”

“ Briggs looks so commonplace in every-day clothes, other men, even I perhaps, might be as splendid as he was if we put on spangled tights.”
I had to whisper because Mr. Briggs was near me, and I did not want to hurt his feelings. Mrs. Ascher may not have heard me. She certainly did not answer; I went on:
“Thus there may be far more beauty in the world than we suspect. We may be meeting men every day who have the figures of Greek gods underneath their absurd coats. It’s a most consoling thought.” ”

“ In fact, one did not require much imagination to note resemblance to a bird in Peter Briggs—many folks likened him to a woodpecker—for he flitted to and fro in Colonel Dodd's anteroom, among those awaiting audience, tapping here and rapping there with the metaphorical beak of questions, starting up the moths and grubs of business which men who came and waited hid under the bark of their demeanor. ”

“ The first man that loosens his tongue, I’ll split him like a herring!”
“Captain Briggs, just a moment, sir!” exclaimed a voice at his left. A short, well-knit figure in blue, advancing out of the shadows, ’round the aft companion, laid a hand on the drunken brute’s arm.
“You keep out of this, doctor!” cried Briggs. “They’re a mutinous, black lot o’ dogs that need lickin’, and I’m the man to give it to ’em!”
“Yes, yes, sir, of course,” Dr. Filhiol soothed the beast. “But as the ship’s physician, let me advise you to go to your cabin, sir. The heat and humidity are extremely bad. ”

“ Briggs was perceptible. I kept my patient on the platform until every other [Pg 242] passenger had gone: I marched him up and down the main area of the station. Each time I caught sight of a woman who looked a possible Mrs. Briggs I steered my charge into her vicinity. In spite of a piece of information which Briggs had imparted to me on the journey—namely, that he expected soon to become a father—I was surprised that his wife had not come to the station to welcome him. However, it was plain that Briggs himself was not particularly surprised, nor, what was more important, disappointed. ”

“ Already the doctor’s drug had begun to loosen the bands of pain constricting the captain’s brow. Something of Briggs’s normal fighting energy was returning. The situation was already coming under his strong hand.
Careful inspection through the glass confirmed the opinion that a formidable war-fleet was headed toward Ulu Salama bar. The far, vague sound of chanting and of drums clinched matters.
“We’ve got to meet ’em with all we’ve got,” said Briggs, squinting through the tube. “There’s a few hundred o’ the devils. Our game is to keep ’em from closing in. ”

“ Fists, eyes and jaw all lusted battle.
Alpheus Briggs, captain and part owner of the Silver Fleece, had returned.
[6]
CHAPTER II ALPHEUS BRIGGS, BUCKO
For a moment, Briggs and Scurlock confronted each other, separated by the length of the gangway. Between them stretched silence; though on the bund a cackle and chatter of natives offended the night. Then Captain Briggs got sight of the kris. That sufficed, just as anything would have sufficed. He put his two huge, hairy fists on his hips; his neck swelled with rage born of samshu and a temper by nature the devil’s own ”

“ Again, as though I had disappeared from the face of the earth, Miss Briggs gazed coldly about her, and with dignity started to cross the street. Her dignity was so great that she glanced neither to the left nor right. In consequence she did not see an automobile that swung recklessly around a trolley-car and dived at her. But other people saw it and shrieked. I also shrieked, and dropping the suit-case and the “Log,” jumped into the street, grabbed Miss Briggs by both arms, and flung her back to the sidewalk. ”

“ He stuck.
“Yes, Briggs,” softly suggested the poet, spraying the night air with more sweetness.
“Briggs has spoken to you about—about your daughter Vanessa. You see, Briggs is my closest friend; his happiness is—er—important to me. I want to see Briggs happy; that’s why I want to stay here, just to see Briggs happy. I—I love Briggs. You understand me, don’t you, Mr. Guilford?”
The poet breathed a dulcet breath. “Perfectly,” he murmured. “The contemplation of Mr. Briggs’ happiness eliminates all thoughts of self within you. By this process of elimination you arrive at happiness yourself. ”

“ Briggs was well to do in the world, a circumstance owing to his long course of patient industry and economical habits. Several of his children were now nearly men and women grown, full of life and fond of fun, as most young folks are. Mrs. Briggs also was very fond of society, and a little vain of her smart family of children, as well as of her good cooking. ”

“ Briggs was the man who made Manaos endurable, who kept it cool and quenched its thirst, a man who always made one think of ice and iced drinks, though there was nothing icy about him. He was dictator and commander-in-chief of the ice-plant at the tall Manaos brewery, native owned but, strangely enough, run by a German. I hesitate to admit, failed, in fact, to compute, the number of times I might have been seen emerging from Briggs’ sanctum wiping from my mustache the circumstantial evidence of a glass of beer. ”

“ God! If I come back, it’ll only be to cut his black heart out an’ throw it to the sharks. We’re done!”
A moment Briggs stood drunkenly peering, half minded to pursue, to match his belaying-pin against the mate’s dirk. Gurgling in his throat—for excess of rage had closed upon all speech—he panted, with froth upon his black beard, while dim figures along the rail and on shore waited great deeds. Then all at once he laughed—a horrible, deep-throated laugh, rising, swelling to mighty and bestial merriment; the laugh of a gorilla, made man. ”

“ Daddy will dandle the Darling,
And show him his beautiful toy.
Hushaby, Pet! Baby, don't fret!
Sleepery, Peepery Boy!"
Briggs had just reached the end of the second verse when his keenly sensitive ear caught the sound of a latchkey turning in the door. A look of terror crossed his face. "It's she! It's she!" he cried. "Oh, Robinson, if she finds you here! Oh, if you love me, fly!" I needed no second bidding. With a hasty grip of the hand I bade my friend farewell, and this is the last that has been seen of Briggs of Balliol. ”

“ What a trim little maid brings in the top-boots which horrify Mrs. B! What a snug dressing-room he has, complete in all its appointments, and in which he appears trying on the delightful hunting-cap which Mrs. Briggs flings into the fire! How cosy all the Briggs party seem in their dining-room: Briggs reading a Treatise on Dog-breaking by a lamp; Mamma and Grannie with their respective needleworks; the children clustering round a great book of prints—a great book of prints such as this before us, which, at this season, must make thousands of children happy by as many firesides! ”

“ Mother Nature had blessed Reuel Briggs with superior physical endowments, but as yet he had never had reason to count them blessings. No one could fail to notice the vast breadth of shoulder, the strong throat that upheld a plain face, the long limbs, the sinewy hands. ”

“ Briggs read about that girl in the paper last night, and the strike wouldn't have been on at Lloyd's if it hadn't been for her. I would as soon take a lighted match into a powder-magazine.”
The foreman grinned. “She's a pretty, mild-looking thing,” he said; “doesn't look as if she could say boo to a goose.”
“That's all you can tell,” returned Briggs. “Deliver me from a light-complexioned woman. They're all the very devil. Mrs. Briggs says it's the same girl that read that composition that made such a stir at the high-school exhibition. ”

“ Men, when she clears, we’ll box her off with the fores’l—we’ll beat ’em yet!”
Once more allegiance knit itself to Briggs. Despite that double murder (as surely done by him as if his own hand had wielded the kris that had beheaded Mr. Scurlock and the boy) , the drums and shoutings of the war-fleet, added to this new hope of getting clear of Ulu Salama, fired every white man’s heart with sudden hope.
The growl that had begun to rise against Briggs died away.
“Mr. Crevay,” he commanded, striding aft, “livelier there with those pigs! They’re not doin’ half a trick o’ work!” ”

“ Briggs eyed him with grave concern, then took a step toward the stairway.
“If you wish, sir——”
“Never mind, Briggs,” Deering snapped. “It’s all right. I’d forgotten I had a guest coming; that’s all.”
He opened a letter with assumed carelessness and held it before his eyes until the door closed upon Briggs. Then his jaws tightened. He struck his hands together and mounted the steps doggedly, as though prepared for a disagreeable encounter. ”

“ Briggs would never consider herself in that light, and daily prayed that death might intervene between her and the poor farm. It was then that the child friend of her girlhood looked her up and asked her to come and live under the Carr roof tree. Mrs. Briggs accepted, never dreaming but that Philetus' welcome would be as warm as his wife's. ”