Hell's Hatches

by Lewis R. Freeman

But there was a smile of untold relief on Allen's face as he leaned over and laid his hand on my arm. "You were right, Whitney," he said in a voice that trembled with the depth of its fervour. "You were right. She did have good reason. I ought to have seen it all along."

"I don't quite understand," I said, greatly puzzled. "Do you mean that all you told me about your—your having nothing to do with Bell's death was not true?"

"Not at all," he replied, with unexpected vigour. "Everything that I told you that afternoon at the Australia was true—according to my understanding of the moment, I mean. But later my understanding broadened a bit, you must know. A chap doesn't spend a night tied up alone with the spirits of three or four white men, and Gawd knows how many blacks, without coming to comprehend some things that have eluded him before. I didn't go all the way off my chump till well along toward morning, you see; and I was broadening my understanding all the time."

"I was never able to make out," I remarked somewhat irrelevantly, "how the girl managed to get the best of you the way she did."

"Oh, that," he said lightly, in a voice that indicated he rated it as a negligible incidental to the "broader understanding" that had come to him as a consequence. "Well, I suppose you have a right to know if you are interested in that phase of the affair. I simply got tired of holding out against the girl, that was all. Her relentlessness wore me down. It was not long after our return to Townsville that I realized that her picture stunt was only a blind. She counted on it to get me away to the schooner, where she could finish me off on the scene of—of my offence. I won't need to tell you that hit me jolly hard. Training out Yusuf and making a clean-up for Doc Oakes' mission with him helped while it lasted; but I gave up as soon as that was over and there was nothing to do but wait and brood. Since I knew she'd have her way in the end, I told myself that the sooner it was over the better. That was the reason I finally consented to go off to the schooner with her when she waylaid me on the north road, the day after I paid you my last visit.

"She must have planned the whole thing in advance for the place at which she intercepted me was at the point where the road ran nearest to the wreck of the Cora. As it was low tide, we were able to walk on the sand to within fifty yards of the heeling hulk. Careless of consequences as I was, I readily enough consented to her suggestion that I wade the remainder of the way, carrying her in my arms. For the rest, it was more or less of repetition of her little coup at Kai. She pinched the knife from my belt while I was wading out with her, keeping it carefully out of sight while we were walking round the deck of the schooner. I missed it presently, but thought it had fallen from its sheath while I was clambering over the side. Leaning over to look for the knife in the water, I felt the point of it on my neck. Same old place—just over the jugular. Trick she learned from the Malays.

"I told her to hurry up and get the job over. She coolly replied that this wasn't the place she had had in mind for it, and would I mind coming aft to the cockpit? Confident that she knew how to do the thing with decency and dispatch, and heartily glad to get life's fitful dream over anyhow, I went. Just like a lamb to the slaughter, Whitney. It sounds foolish, but I assure you that's just the way it happened. The idea was so fixed in my mind that a plain every-day throat-cutting was all she was figuring on, that I let her get three or four hitches of the log-line around my shoulders before it occurred to me that she might have a few refinements in pickle. I started to put up a fight at that, trying to force her to use the knife straightaway. Do you think she would do it? No fear. She wouldn't deviate from her set program by a hair. Rather than risk having the joint jolted into my jugular so that I would bleed to death quickly and painlessly, she dropped the knife and used both hands on the log-line. We had a hell of a tussle, Whitney, but she wore me down. Those three or four well-thrown hitches she had to start with were too much of a handicap.

"When she finally had me bound fast, she sat down on the rail of the cockpit to recover her breath. I tried to argue with her, pointing out the certainty that I would be seen and rescued in the morning if she left me as I was; whereas, if she would cut my throat then and there, it would finish things for good and all. I also reminded her that dead men tell no tales; that she would be much less likely to get into trouble herself if there was no one to bear witness against her. (Fancy a man having to rack his brain for arguments like that, just to get his throat cut, Whitney.) The girl admitted the soundness of my contentions, but declared she was willing to run all the extra risk for the sake of cleaning up the job 'good an' propa.' (One of Bell's expressions, that, wasn't it?)

"Then—I must have begun losing my nerve a bit, I think—I told her I had never yet been able to twig why she had a grudge against me at all; said I'd only done for Bell what I'd be jolly glad to have another man do for me under similar circumstances, and probably a lot more twaddle along the same line. She listened for a while, as though she rather enjoyed hearing me rattle on in that vein. Then she got up and disappeared down the half-open companionway. When she came back on deck she had an empty whisky bottle in her hand, probably one of a stack left in my cabin. This, with some effort on her part and much to my further discomfort, she wriggled under the lashings about my chest until she seemed satisfied it was held securely. Then, binding a filthy gag of oakum in my mouth, she stood off and looked me over critically. 'I the-enk you will twe-ig ver-ee much pu-retty soon, Mista "Slan',"' she finally chirruped with a knowing nod of her head. Without once looking back, she stepped to the side, jumped over, and waded ashore. I never saw her again—in the flesh, I mean. It took a deal of squirming to shake that bottle out. The satisfaction of hearing it break when it hit the deck was the only comforting thing that happened in the whole night."

"And you say that you understand why she did it?—that you believe she was justified?" I exclaimed incredulously, shuddering at the horror of a cold-blooded cruelty that even Allen's deliberately matter-of-fact recital could not obscure.