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COUNCIL OF WAR

A moment the two men eyed the captain. Malay voices sounded under the awning. Forward, a laugh drifted on the heat-shimmering air. Briggs cursed, and still came on.

A sorry spectacle he made, tousled, bleary-eyed, with pain-contracted forehead where the devil’s own headache was driving spikes. Right hand showed lacerations, from having struck the wheel. Heavy shoulders sagged, head drooped. Angrily he blinked, his mood to have torn up the world and spat upon the fragments in very spite.

“Well, lost your tongues, have you?” he snarled. “I’m used to being answered on my own ship. You, Mr. Wansley, would do better reading your ’Bow-ditch’ than loafing. And you, doctor, I want you to mix me a stiff powder for the damnedest headache that ever tangled my top-hamper. I’ve had a drink or two, maybe three, already this morning. But that does no good. Fix me up something strong. Come, stir a stump, sir! I’m going to be obeyed on my own ship!”

“Yes, sir,” answered the doctor, keeping his tongue between his teeth, as the saying is. He started aft, followed by Wansley. Briggs burst out again:

“Insubordination, mutiny—that’s all I get, this voyage!” His fists swung, aching for a target. “Look what’s happened! Against my orders you, Mr. Wansley, try to take the Fleece to sea. And run her aground! By God, sir, I could have you disrated for that! I’d put you in irons for the rest of the voyage if I didn’t need you on deck. Understand me, sir?”

“Yes, sir,” answered Wansley, with exceeding meekness. Briggs was about to flare out at him again, and might very well have come to fist-work, when a hard, round little concussion, bowling seaward, struck his ear.

At sound of the shot, the captain swung on his heel, gripped the rail and stared shoreward.

“What the hell is that?” demanded he, unable to conceal a sudden fear that had stabbed through the thrice-dyed blackness of his venom.

“I rather think, sir,” answered Filhiol, blowing a ribbon of smoke on the still morning air, “it’s trouble brewing. By Jove, sir—see that, will you?”

His hand directed the captain’s reddened eyes far across the strait toward the coastal hills, palm-crowded. Vaguely the captain saw a long, dim line. At its forward end, just a speck against the greenery, a triangle of other color was creeping on. Briggs knew it for the high sail of a proa.

“H-m!” he grunted. Under the bushy blackness of his brows he stared with blood-injected eyes. His muscles tautened. Suddenly he commanded:

“Mr. Wansley, my glass, sir!”

The doctor pursed anxious lips as Wansley departed toward the companion.

“Trouble, sir?” asked he.

“I’ll tell you when there’s trouble! How can I hear anythin’, with your damned jaw-tackle always busy?”

The doctor shut up, clamwise, and leaned elbows on the rail, and so they stood there, each peering, each listening, each thinking his own thoughts.

Mr. Wansley’s return, brass telescope in hand, broke both lines of reflection. Briggs snatched the glass, yearning to knock Wansley flat, as he might have done a cabin-boy. Wansley peered at him with bitter malevolence.

“You hell-devil!” muttered he. “You’ve murdered two of us already, an’ like as not you’ll murder all of us before you’re done. If the sharks had you this minute—”

“By the Judas priest!” ejaculated Briggs, glass at eye. He swung it left and right. “Now you lubberly sons of swabs have got me on a lee-shore with all anchors draggin’!”

“What is it, sir?” demanded Filhiol, calmly.

“What is it?” roared the captain, neck and face scarlet. “After you help run the Silver Fleece on Ulu Salama bar, where that damned war-party can close in on her, you ask me what it is! Holy Jeremiah!”

“See here, Captain Briggs.” The doctor’s voice cut incisively. “If that’s a war-party, we’ve got no time to waste in abuse. Please let me use that glass and see for myself.”

“Use nothing!” shouted Briggs. “What? Call me a liar, do you? I tell you it is a war-party with five—eight—twelve—well, about sixteen boats and a proa, I make it; and you stand there and call me a liar!”

“I call you nothing, sir,” retorted the physician, his face impassive. In spite of anger, Filhiol comprehended that he and Briggs represented the best brain-power on the clipper. Under the urge of peril these two must temporarily sink all differences and stand together. “You say there’s a war-party coming out. I place myself at your orders.”

“Same here, sir,” put in Mr. Wansley. “What’s to be done, sir?” Urgent peril had stifled the fires of hate.

“Call Mr. Prass and Mr. Crevay,” answered the captain, sobered. “You, doctor, mix me up that powder, quick. Here, I’ll go with you. You’ve got to stop this damned headache of mine! Look lively, Mr. Wansley! Get Bevans, too, and Gascar!”

In five minutes the war-council was under way on the after-deck. 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. If they board us—well, they aren’t goin’ to, that’s all.”

“I don’t like the look o’ things forrard, sir,” put in Crevay, now bo’sun of the clipper, filling the position that Prass had vacated in becoming second mate. “Them Malays, sir—”

“That’s the hell of it, I know,” said Briggs. He spoke rationally, sobered into human decency. “If we had a straight white crew, we could laugh at the whole o’ Batu Kawan. But our own natives are liable to run amok.”

“We’d better iron the worst of ’em, sir, an’ clap hatches on ’em,” suggested Crevay. “There’s seventeen white men of us, an’ twenty natives. If we had more whites, I’d say shoot the whole damn lot o’ Malays an’ chuck ’em over to the sharks while there’s time!” His face was deep-lined, cruel almost as the captain’s.

Silence followed. Gascar nodded approval, Bevans went a trifle pale, and Wansley shook his head. Prass turned his quid and spat over the rail; the doctor glanced forward, squinting with eyes of calculation. Under the brightening sun, each face revealed the varying thoughts that lay in each man’s heart. Filhiol was first to speak.

“Those Malays are valuable to us,” said he. “They make excellent hostages, if properly restrained in the hold. But we can’t have them at large.”

“We can, and must, all of ’em!” snapped Briggs. His eye had cleared and once more swept up the situation with that virile intelligence which long had made him a leader of men. His nostrils widened, breathing the air of battle. His chest, expanding, seemed a barrier against weakness, indecision. The shadow of death had blotted out the madness of his orgy. He stood there at the rail, erect, square-jawed, a man once more. A man that even those who most bitterly hated him now had to respect and to obey.

“We need ’em all,” he repeated, with the resonance of hard decision. “We’re short-handed as it is. We need every man-jack of them, but not to fight. They won’t fight for us. We daren’t put so much as a clasp-knife in their murderin’ hands. But they can work for us, and, by the Judas priest, they shall! Our pistols can hold ’em to it. Work, sweat, damn ’em—sweat the yellow devils, as they never sweat before!”

“How so, captain?” asked the doctor.

“It’ll be an hour before that fleet lays alongside. There’s a good chance we can kedge off this damned bar. Twenty natives at the poop capstan, with you, Mr. Bevans—and I guess I’ll let the doctor lend a hand, too—standing over ’em with cold lead—that’s the game.” Briggs laughed discordantly. “How’s your nerve, Mr. Bevans? All right, sir?”

Sea-etiquette was returning. Confidence brightened.

“Nerve, sir? All right!”

“Ever shoot a man dead in his tracks?”

“I have, sir.”

“Good! Then you’ll do!” Briggs slapped Bevans on the shoulder. “I’ll put you and the doctor in charge of the natives. First one that raises a hand off a capstan-bar, drill him through the head. Understand?”

“Yes, sir,” said Bevans. The doctor nodded.

“That’s settled! To work! We won’t want the natives at large, though, till we get the kedge over. We’ll keep ’em in the ’midships deck-house for a while yet. Doctor, you stand at the break and shoot the first son of a hound that sticks his nose out. Mr. Wansley, muster all the white men aft for instructions. Mr. Prass, take what men you need and get up all the arms and ammunition. First thing, get out that stand of rifles in my cabin. Here’s two keys. One is my private locker-key, and the other the key to the arms-locker. In my locker you’ll find a kris. In the other, three revolvers. Bring those.” The captain’s words came crisp, sharp, decisive. “Bring up the six navy cutlasses from the rack in the cabin. Mr. Gascar will help you. Mr. Gascar, how many axes have you got in your carpenter’s chest?”

“Four, sir, and an adz.”

“Bring ’em all. Tell the cook to boil every drop of water he’s got room for on the galley range. Get the marline spikes from the bo’sun’s locker and lay ’em handy. Cast loose the signal-gun lashed down there on the main deck. We’ll haul that up and mount it at the taffrail. God! If they want war, they’ll get it, the black scuts!”

“We’re short of round-shot for the gun, sir,” said “Chips.” “I misdoubt there’s a dozen rounds.”

“No matter. Solid shot isn’t much good for this work. Get all the bolts, nuts and screws from your shop—all the old iron junk you can ram down her throat. How’s powder?”

“Plenty, sir.”

“Good! We’ve got powder enough, men enough and guts enough. To your work. Mr. Crevay!”

“Yes, sir?” A lank, bony man, Crevay, with fiery locks and a slashed cheek where a dirk had once ripped deep. An ex-navy man he, and of fighting blood.

“I’m goin’ to have you serve the gun when ready. You and any men you pick,” the captain told him, while the others departed each on his own errand, tensely, yet without haste or fear. “Meanwhile, I’ll put you in charge of kedgin’ us off. Cast loose and rig the kedge-anchor, lower it away from that davy there to the long-boat, and sink it about a hundred fathom off the starb’d quarter. With twenty Malays at the capstan-bars, we ought to start the Fleece. If not, we’ll shift cargo from forrard. Look alive, sir!”

“Yes, sir!” And Crevay, too, departed, filled with the energy that comes to every man when treated like a man and given a man’s work to do.

As by a miracle, the spirit of the Silver Fleece had changed. Discipline had all come back with a rush; the battling blood had risen. No longer, for the moment, were the captain’s heavy crimes and misdemeanors held against him. Briggs stood for authority, defense in face of the peril of death. His powerful body and stern spirit formed a rallying-point for every white man aboard. And even those who had most poisonously grisled in their hearts against the man, now ran loyally to do his bidding.

Forgotten was the cause of all this peril—the stealing of Kuala Pahang, in drunken lust. Forgotten the barbarities that had driven Mr. Scurlock and the boy ashore. Forgotten the brutal cynicism that had refused to buy their liberty at the price of giving up the girl. Of all these barbarities, no memory seemed now to survive. The deadly menace of twenty Malays already growling in the waist of the ship, and of the slow-advancing line of war-canoes, banished every thought save one—battle!

Once more Captain Alpheus Briggs had proved himself, in time of crisis, a man; more than a man—a master of men.

Thus, now, swift preparations had begun to play the game of war in which no quarter would be asked or given.