The launch swung alongside. Stanwood was in her. He was having an altercation with the capitan, too, and the capitan had been taking more tequila, apparently. It would be the course of wisdom for the Gringo lanchero to hold his peace and his tongue, if he were not looking for a speedy exit from a bad sort of life. The capitan and his gang would like nothing better than severally and collectively to stick knives into him.
Once again the launch went off, discharged her cargo, and came back for another load. This time it was before the other launch was quite ready to be towed away, so she made fast, bow and stern, to her, and the idle lancheros fell to eating some food they had brought with them as they waited. They crouched together in a group, getting a good deal of fun out of it. There were the inevitable frijoles and bread and bottled coffee, and there was besides a most unwonted treat, a leg of mutton. They passed it from one to the other, and each gnawed at it with his gleaming teeth, grinning over the game.
Stanwood crouched among them. But he was not having fun out of it. He was not grinning. He scooped up the common mess of black beans with scraps of crust. He was ragged and dirty as they were. But he did not take his degradation with their good humor. He looked sullen and lean and hungry.
Marsden watched him. It was not a pleasant sight, and he felt a kind of sick disgust and pity. But he wanted to see if the bone of meat would go to the white man in the end, and if the white man would take it. It came to the last of the natives. He picked it all but clean with a show of keen enjoyment. There were a few shreds left. He examined them. Then, with the insolence of a base breed having the upper hand, he tossed it over at Stanwood. It struck him on the chest. Marsden could see the killing hate in his eyes, and the shutting of his teeth under the ragged black beard. Then—and he was conscious of a deep relief—he saw him pick up the bone, stand in the scow, and drop it over into the water.
Marsden turned away. It was not only of relief that he was conscious, but of a killing hate of the half-breed lancheros equal to Stanwood’s own, as well.
The clouds which, at noon, had been rising behind the mountains and dropping dark into the valleys and cañons, had spread half over the sky. There was a low, whining wind, growing steadily stronger. And the seven thousand miles of sea stretching unbroken to the west was sending in heavier ground swells to the open harbor. The steamer went heaving from side to side. Even the sailors were finding it not always easy to keep their footing. And it was now that the great iron chimney stacks had to be brought up. It would not have been a small matter at the best. At present it was extremely dangerous. The loaded lighter had gone off. The tackle had been changed on the block of the foremost derrick to new hemp, yellow and strong.
There was the huge clangor and rumble of hollow iron striking against iron down in the cargo-space. The mate had taken out his own whistle. The responsibility was too great to be intrusted to subordinates here. He shrilled one order after another, or shouted them in nautical English and strange Spanish, and they were answered from the depths of the hold. The monster tube rolled into the opening guided by a man naked to the waist, on whose brown torso, swelling with muscles, the sweat rolled and glistened. The stack rose slowly upward—roaring its vast basso protests as it struck—fifty feet long, a yard in diameter, heavy, unwieldy, plunging as the ship rolled to starboard, down and down, and back to port, down and down again.
It was a formidable thing, all but unmanageable even there. But once clear of the hatchway it flung itself, charging and swinging and threshing, with the great iron bellow of warning. The sailors jumped from its way. There was only the mate to handle it. The ship gave a heavy lurch to starboard. The chimney whirled and lunged toward him with a vibrating song of onslaught, and the voice of the white man in the launch below called an involuntary “Look out!” An instant of the hesitation of fear and the mate would have been struck overboard by all the force of the great cylinder of iron. But he put out his hand and pushed it, and it swung off harmlessly enough, as docile as it was formidable.
The little whistle shrilled, the derrick moved its long arm around and out, and the stack hung overside, directly above the launch. The lancheros had retreated to the sides, ready to scramble out of the way, or to jump overboard, if need should be. They stood looking up at it uneasily. If the rope were to break or slip, if the mate were to give a wrong order——
Suddenly the steamer came over to starboard with a deep roll, and the great stack dropped with her. The mate saw the chance of mishap. His whistle piped a sharp, quick order to hoist. The lancheros cowered, their arms over their heads—all but Stanwood. He stood watching a chance. The stack swung and whirled, gigantic and awful, not a foot above his reach. But the rope had been just too short. The ship heaved back, and with a reverberation of metal thunder as it struck against the hull, the cylinder swung up again.