I looked aft and saw Garvin, the pugilist, standing bareheaded in the sunlight, steadying himself easily to the pitch and rise of the Wanderer’s deck.
Surprise and relief came to me as I saw him look around, blinking against the sun. I had feared to hear that he had been blinded, or that he had been scalded so fearfully that he might succumb, or lie helpless for weeks. Yet here he was, save for the bandages that covered most of his face, apparently in better physical condition than when he had come aboard. In reality this was true. Two days of medical treatment and rest had given his splendid vitality that opportunity to throw off the load of alcoholic poison with which it had been surcharged. His bony face, hardened by training and blows, had withstood without serious damage the stream of boiling water that would have blinded, probably killed, a normal man.
As he moved slowly forward along the port rail in the bright sunlight there was none of the weakened, defeated look of a badly injured man about him. With his head and shoulders thrust forward, the short neck completely hidden, the long arms hanging easily, and moving with the sure step of the man whose muscular feet grip the ground, he was formidable to look at, a fighting animal, unafraid and undefeated.
“One bad, tough guy!” whispered Pierce in admiration. “Say, Brains, even money that he takes a swing at Brack before the cruise is over.”
Brack had made a swift, impatient turn near the bow and was coming aft along the starboard rail. He was wearing his rough sea-clothes and he walked with his eyes on the deck, chewing tobacco viciously.
From the aft Garvin advanced slowly, and from the bow came Brack. And as I looked from one to the other now I was shocked with the impression that they were much alike. The same thickness about the neck and shoulders, the same sense of force about them both. But in Garvin it was a blind force, stupid and unenlightened as the force of a thick-necked bull, while in Brack the force was directed by one of the most efficient minds it had been my fortune to come in contact with.
“Pipe ’em off, pipe ’em off!” whispered Pierce excitedly. “They’re going to meet face to face in the companionway. Brains, a dollar says there’ll be something doing when Garvin looks up and sees himself alone with the guy who cooked him.”
“Hush!” I warned.
A sudden stillness and tension seemed to have settled down on the yacht. Above a hatchway aft I saw the heads of a pair of the crew eagerly watching Garvin as his steps carried him toward Brack. In the bow the cook and Simmons followed the captain with their eyes; and from the bridge, Wilson, the mate, erect and stanch, looked down with his calm, serious expression unchanged.
And then they met. It was almost directly beneath where Pierce and I sat. They stopped and looked at one another. I had the sensation of a calm before a storm. And then——