“Even though you flee to the ends of the earth, my curse will reach you. You shall pray to die, but still you cannot die! What is written in the Book must be fulfilled!”
Suddenly the captain got up and made his way into the house. Like a wounded animal seeking its lair he retreated into his cabin.
The doctor peered after him, letter in hand. From the galley Ezra’s voice drifted in nasal song, with words strangely trivial for so tragic a situation:
“Blow, boys, blow, for Californ-io!
There’s plenty of gold, so I’ve been told,
On the banks of Sacramento!”
“H-m!” grunted the doctor. “Poor old captain! God, but this will finish him! That Hal—damn that Hal! If something would only happen to him now, so I could have him for a patient! I’m a law-abiding man, but still—”
In the cabin Briggs sank down in the big rocking-chair before the fireplace. He was trembling. Something cold seemed clutching at his heart like tentacles. He looked about, as if he half-thought something were watching him from the far corner. Then his eye fell on the Malay kris suspended against the chimney. 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!”
No answer save that Briggs seemed to hear the words of the old witch-woman ringing with all the force of long-repressed memories:
“Your blood, your blood I will have! Even though you flee from me forever, your blood will I have!”
“Yes, yes! My blood, not his!” cried the old captain, standing up. Haggard, he peered at the kris, horrible reminder of a past he would have given life itself to obliterate so that it might not go on forever poisoning his race. There the kris hung like a sword of Damocles forever ready to fall upon his heart and pierce it. And all at once a burning rage and hate against the kris flared up in him. That thing accursed should be destroyed. No longer should it hang there on his fireplace to goad him into madness.