Cursed

“Oh, God!” she whispered, as she laid bare the wound; but though she felt giddy, she kept on. The sagging dead weight of Hal’s body almost overbore her strength. She held it up, however, and very tightly bound him, up around the massive neck, over the back, across the high-arched, muscular chest. She knotted her bandages, and let Hal sink down again.

Then she smoothed back his drabbled hair. She bent and kissed him; snatched the light, turned and fled up the companion, clambered down into the dory, and cast loose.

All the strength of her young arms had to strain their uttermost. Passionately she labored. The wounded man no longer was the brute who had so cruelly sought to wrong her. He was no longer the untamed savage, the bully, the thief. No, in his helplessness he had gone swiftly back to the boy she had known and loved – just Hal, her boy.

The storm-devils, snatching at her, seemed incarnate things that fought her for his life. The wind that drove her away from the shingle-beach and toward the rocks below Jim Gordon’s store, the lathering crests that spewed their cold surges into the dory as it heaved high and swung far down, seemed shouting: “Death to Hal!”

Laura, her hair down and flying wild, pulled till wrists and arms seemed breaking. For a few minutes she thought herself lost; but presently, when breath and strength were at the ragged edge, she began to hear the loud, rattling clamor of pebbles on the shingle. A breaker caught the dory, flung it half round, upset it. Into the water, strangling, struggling, Laura plunged. The backwash caught her, tugged at her. She found footing, lost it, fell and choked a cry in cold brine.

The next breaker heaved her up. She crawled through wrack and weed, over jagged stones, and fell exhausted on a sodden windrow of drift.

For a minute she could move no further, but had to lie under the pelting rain, with the dark hands of ocean clutching to drag her back. But presently a little strength revived. She crawled forward once more, staggered to her feet, and, falling, getting up again, won to the top of the dune.

Off to her left, dim through the shouting night, the vague light-blurs of old man Gordon’s windows were fronting the tempest. The girl struggled forward, sobbing for breath. Not all the fury of the North Atlantic, flung against that shore, had turned her from her task.

Astonished beyond words, the lobstermen and fishers eyed her with blank faces as she burst in the door. Under the light of tin reflectors, quids remained unchewed, pipes unsmoked. Bearded jaws fell. Eyes blinked.

The girl’s wet, draggled hair, her bloodless face and burning eyes stunned them all.

“Quick, quick!” she implored. “Hal Briggs – ”

“What’s he done now, girl?” cried old Sy Whittaker, starting up. “He ain’t hurt you, has he? If he has– ”

“He’s been stabbed, aboard the Kittiwink! He’s bleeding to death there!”

Chairs scraped. Excitement blazed.

“What’s that, Laura?” cried Gordon. “Stabbed? Who done it?”

“Oh, no matter – go, quick – go, go!”

“Damn funny!” growled a voice from behind the stove. “Gal goin’ aboard night like this, an’ him stabbed. Looks mighty bad!”

“You’ll look a damn sight wuss if you say that agin, or anythin’ like it!” shouted the old storekeeper with doubled fist. “Hal Briggs ain’t worryin’ me none, but this here is Laura, old man Maynard’s gal, an’ by the Jeeruzlem nobody ain’t goin’ to say nothin’ about her! Tell me, gal,” he added, “is he hurt bad?”

She caught him by the arm. He had to hold her up.

“Dying, Jim! Bleeding to death! Oh, for the love of God – hurry, hurry!”

Around them the rough, bearded men jostled in pea-coats, slickers, sou’westers. The tin reflectors struck harsh lights and shadows from rugged faces of astonishment.

“Who could o’ done it?” began Shorrocks, the blacksmith. “They’d oughta be ketched, an’ – ”

“Never you mind about that!” cried Gordon. He caught from a nail a formless old felt hat and jammed it on his head; he snatched up a lighted lantern standing on the counter, and with a hobnailed clatter ran for the door.

“Everybody out!” he bellowed. “Everybody out now, to help Laura!”

Into the storm he flung himself. All hands cascaded toward the door.

“You stay here, gal!” advised Asahel Calkins, lobsterman. “Ain’t no night fer you!”

“I can’t stay! Let me go, too!” she pleaded. They made way for her. With the men she ran. Two or three others had lanterns, but these made no more than tiny dancing blurs of light in the drenching dark. Along a path, then into the field and up to the storm-scourged dune they stumbled, pantingly, bucking the gale. The lanterns set giant legs of shadows striding up against the curtain of the rain-drive, as the men pressed onward. Snapping, Laura’s skirts flailed.

Over the dune they charged, and scuffled down to the dories. Disjointed words, cries, commands whipped away. Strong hands hustled a dory down. Laura was clambering in already, but Jim Gordon pulled her back.

“No, gal, no!” he ordered sternly. His voice flared on the wind as he shoved her into the arms of Shorrocks. “You, Henry, look out for her. Don’t let her do nothin’ foolish!”

He set his lantern in the dory, impressed Calkins and another into his service, and scrambled aboard. A dozen hands ran the dory out through the first breakers. Oars caught; and as the men came up the beach, dripping in the vague lantern-light, the dory pulled away.

To Laura, waiting with distracted fear among the fishermen, it seemed an hour; yet at the most hardly fifteen minutes had passed before the little boat came leaping shoreward in white smothers. Out jumped Gordon. Laura ran to him, knee-deep in a breaker.

“Is he —dead?” she shivered, with clacking teeth.

“Nope. Ain’t much time to lose, though, an’ that’s a fact. He’s cut some, looks like! Goddy mighty, but there must o’ been some fight out there!”

He turned to the dory. With others, he lifted out a heavy body, wrapped in sailcloth, horribly suggestive of a burial at sea. Laura gripped her hands together for self-mastery.

“Oh, hurry, hurry!” she entreated.

“We’ll do all we kin, gal,” some one answered, “but we ain’t no real amb’lance-corpse. It’s goin’ to be a slow job, gittin’ him home.”

“Here, Laura, you carry a lantern an’ go ahead, ’cross the field,” commanded Gordon, with deep wisdom. Only to give her something to do, something to occupy her mind, was kindness of the deepest. Into her hand old Calkins thrust a lantern.

“All ready!” cried he. “H’ist anchor, an’ away!”

Seven or eight men got hold, round the edges of the sailcloth, and so, swinging the inert Hal as in a cradle, they stumbled to the road, with Laura going on ahead.

To the right they turned, toward Snug Haven. Now Laura walked beside them. Once in a while she looked at the white face half seen in its white cradle, now beginning to be mottled with crimson stains.

But she said no other word. Strong with the calm that had reasserted itself, she walked that night road of storm and agony.

Thus was Hal Briggs borne back to his grandfather’s house.

In the cabin at Snug Haven old Captain Briggs – having finished his letter to Hal and put that, too, in the safe – had now come to the last task of all, the sacrifice that, so he faithfully believed, was to remove the curse of Dengan Jouga from his boy.

A strange lassitude weighed down upon the old man, the weariness that comes when a long journey is almost done and the lights of home begin to shine out through “the evening dews and damps.” The captain felt that he had come at last to journey’s end. He sat there at his desk, eying the revolver, a sturdy, resolute figure; an heroic figure, unflinchingly determined; a figure ennobled by impending sacrifice, thoughtful, quiet, strong. His face, that had been lined with grief, had grown quite calm. The light upon it seemed less from his old-time cabin-lamp than from some inner flame. With a new kind of happiness, more blessed than any he had ever known, he smiled.

“Thank God!” he murmured, with devout earnestness. “It won’t be long now afore I’m with the others that have waited for me all this time up there on Croft Hill. I’m glad to go. It isn’t everybody than can save the person they love best of anything in the world, by dying. I thought God was hard with me, but after all I find He’s very good. He’ll understand. He’d ought to know, Himself, what dying means to save something that must be saved!”

Once more he looked at Hal’s picture. Earnestly and simply, he kissed it. Then he laid it on the desk again.

“Good-by,” said he. “Maybe you won’t ever understand. Maybe you’ll blame me. Lots will. I’ll be called a coward. You’ll have to bear some burden on account of me, but this is the only way.”

His expression reflected the calm happiness which comes with realization that to die for one beloved is a better and more blessèd thing than life. Never had old Captain Briggs felt such joy. Not only was he opening the ways of life to Hal, but he was cleansing his own soul. And all at once he felt the horror of this brooding curse was lifting – this curse which, during fifty years, had been reaching out from the dark and violent past.

He breathed deeply and picked up the revolver.

“God, Thou art very good to me,” he said quietly. “I couldn’t understand the way till it was shown me. But now I understand.”

Toward his berth he turned, to lie down there for the last time. As he advanced toward it he became vaguely conscious of some confusion outside. A sound of voices, gusty and faint through the wind, reached him. These came nearer, grew louder.

Listening, he paused, with a frown. Of a sudden, feet clumped on the front steps. Heavily they thudded across the porch. And with sharp insistence his electric door-bell trilled its musical brrr!

“What’s that, now?” said the captain. Premonitions of evil pierced his heart. As he hesitated, not knowing what to do, the front door boomed with the thudding of stout fists. A heavy boot kicked the panels. A voice bawled hoarsely:

“Briggs! Ahoy, there, cap’n! Let us in! Fer God’s sake, let us in!”

CHAPTER XLIII

CURARÉ

“Who’s there?” cried Alpheus Briggs, astonished and afraid. He faced toward the front hall. “What’s wanted?”

A tapping at his window-pane, with eager knuckles, drew his attention. He heard a woman’s voice – the voice of Laura Maynard:

“Here’s Hal! Let us in; quick, quick!”

“Hal?” cried the old man, turning very white. That evil had indeed come to him was certain now. He strode to his desk, dropped the revolver into the top drawer and closed it, then crossed over to the window and raised the shade. The face of Laura, with disheveled hair and fear-widened eyes, was peering in at him. Briggs flung the window up.

“Where is he, Laura? What’s happened? Who’s here with him?”

“Oh, I can’t tell you, captain!” she whispered. He saw her trembling; he noted those big, terror-stricken eyes, and thrilled with panic. From the front door sounded a confused bass murmur; and again the bell sounded. “Men from the store,” she gulped, “Jim Gordon and others. They’re – ”

“They’re what, Laura? Bringing Hal back home?”

She nodded silently. He thought he had never seen a woman so pale.

“Captain, let them in!” she cried. “I’ve got to tell you. Hal – is injured. Open the door, quick! Get Dr. Filhiol!”

Everything else forgotten now, the captain turned, precipitated himself into the hall and snatched open the front door. Gusts of rain and wind tugged at him, flapping his bath robe. For a moment, not understanding anything, he stood peering out at what was all a blur of perfectly incomprehensible confusion. His fear-stricken eyes and brain failed to register any clear perception. A second or two, he neither heard nor saw. Then he became aware that some one – Jim Gordon, yes – was saying:

“We done the best we could, cap’n. Got him here as fast as we could. We’ll bring him right in.”

The captain saw something white out there on the dark, wet porch. In the midst of this whiteness a form was visible – and now the old man perceived a face; Hal’s face – and what, for God’s sake, was all this crimson stain?

He plunged forward, thrusting the men aside. A lantern swung, and he saw clearly.

“God above! They’ve – they’ve murdered him!”

“No, cap’n, he ain’t dead yit,” said some one, “but you’d better git him ’tended to, right snug off.”

Old Briggs was on his knees now gathering the lax figure to his arms.

“Hal! Hal!”

“Shhh!” exclaimed Gordon. “No use makin’ a touse, cap’n. He’s cut some, that’s a fact, but – ”

“Who killed my boy?” cried the old man, terrible to look upon. “Who did this thing?”

“Captain Briggs,” said Laura tremulously, as she pulled at his sleeve, “you mustn’t waste a minute! Not a second! He’s got to be put right to bed. We’ve got to get a doctor now!”

“Here, cap’n, we’ll carry him in, fer ye,” spoke up Shorrocks. “Git up, cap’n, an’ we’ll lug him right in the front room.”

“Nobody shall carry my boy into this house but just his grandfather!” cried the captain in a loud, strange voice.

The old-time strength of Alpheus Briggs surged back. His arms, that felt no weakness now, gathered up Hal as in the old days they had caught him when a child. Into the house he bore him, with the others following; into the cabin, and so to the berth. The boy’s head, hanging limp, rested against the old man’s arm, tensed with supreme effort. The crimson stain from the grandson’s breast tinged the grandsire’s. Down in the berth the captain laid him, and, raising his head, entreated:

“Hal, boy! Speak to me – speak!”

Gordon laid a hand on his shoulder.

“It ain’t no use, cap’n,” said he. “He’s too fur gone.” With a muffled clumping of feet the others, dripping, awed, silent, trickled into the room. Laura had already run up-stairs, swift-footed, in quest of Dr. Filhiol. “It ain’t no use. Though mebbe if we was to git a little whisky into him – ”

“Hal! Master Hal!” wailed a voice of agony. Old Ezra, ghastly and disheveled, appeared in the doorway. He would have run to the berth, but Shorrocks held him back.

“You can’t do no good, Ez!” he growled. “He’s gotta have air – don’t you go crowdin’ now!”

The shuffling of lame feet announced Dr. Filhiol. Laura, still in her drenched long coat, helped him move swiftly. Calkins shoved up a chair for him beside the berth, and the old doctor dropped into it.

“A light here!” commanded he, with sudden return of professional instinct and authority. Laura threw off her coat, seized the lamp from its swinging-ring over the desk, and held it close. Its shine revealed the pallor of her face, the great beauty of her eyes, the soul of her that seemed made visible in their compassionate depths, where dwelt an infinite forgiveness.

“You’ll have to stand back, captain,” ordered the doctor succinctly. “You’re only smothering him that way, holding him in your arms; and you must not kiss him! Lay him down – so! Ezra, stop that noise! Give me scissors or a knife, quick!”

Speaking, the doctor was already at work. With the sharp blade that Calkins passed him he cut away the blood-soaked bandage and threw it to the floor. His old hands did not tremble now; the call of duty had steeled his muscles with instinctive reactions. His eyes, narrowed behind their spectacles, made careful appraisal.

“Deep stab-wound,” said he. “How did he get this? Any one know anything about it?”

“He got it in the cabin of the Kittiwink,” answered Laura. “Everything was smashed up there. It looked to me as if Hal had fought three or four men.”

“McLaughlin’s!” cried the captain. His fists clenched passionately. “Oh, God! They’ve murdered my boy! Is he going to die, Filhiol? Is he?”

“That’s impossible to say. We’ll need plenty of hot water here, and soap and peroxide. Towels, lots of them! Ezra, you hear me? Get your local doctor at once. And have him bring his surgical kit as well as his medical. Tell him it’s a deep stab, with great loss of blood. Get a move on, somebody!”

Ezra, Gordon and Calkins departed. The front door slammed, feet ran across the porch, then down the steps and away.

“Everybody else go, too,” directed Filhiol. “We can’t have outsiders messing round here. Get out, all the rest of you – and mind now you don’t go making any loose talk about who did it!”

Silently the fishermen obeyed. A minute, and no one was left in the cabin save old Briggs, Filhiol and Laura, gathered beside the wounded, immobile figure in the berth.

“How long will it take to get your local doctor?” demanded Filhiol, inspecting the wound that still oozed bright, frothy blood, showing the lung to be involved in the injury.

“Ten minutes, perhaps,” said Laura.

“H-m! There’s no time to lose here.”

“Is he going to die?” asked the old captain, his voice now firm. He had grown calm again; only his lips were very tight, and under the lamp-glow his forehead gleamed with myriad tiny drops. “Is this boy of mine going to die?”

“How can I tell? Why ask?”

“If he does, I won’t survive him! That’s the simple truth.”

“H-m!” grunted Filhiol, once more. He cast an oblique glance at the captain. And in that second he realized that the thought, which had been germinating in his brain, could lead him nowhere; the thought that now his wish had really come to pass – that Hal was really now his patient, as he had wished the boy might be. He knew, now, that even though he could so far forget his ethics as to fail in his whole duty toward Hal Briggs, the captain held an unconscious whip-hand over him. Just those few simple words, spoken from the soul – ”I won’t survive him” – had closed the doors of possibility for a great crime.

Ezra came in with a steaming basin, with soap and many towels.

“Put those on this chair here,” commanded Filhiol. “And then either keep perfectly quiet, or get out and stay out!”

Cowed, the old man tremblingly obliterated himself in the shadow behind the desk. The doctor began a little superficial cleaning up of his patient. Hal had still shown no signs of consciousness, nor had he opened his eyes. Yet the fact was, he remained entirely conscious. Everything that was said he heard and understood. But the paralysis gripping him had made of him a thing wherein no slightest power lay to indicate his thought, or understanding. Alive, yet dead, he lay there, much as the amok Malay of fifty years before had lain upon the deck of the Silver Fleece. And all his vital forces now had narrowed to just one effort – to keep heart and lungs in laboring action.

Little by little the invading poison was attacking even this last citadel of his life. Little by little, heart and lungs were failing, as the curaré fingered its way into the last, inner nerve-centers. But still life fought. And as the doctor bent above Hal, washing away the blood from lips and throat and chest, a half-instinctive analysis of the situation forced itself upon him. This wound, these symptoms – well, what other diagnosis would apply?

“There’s something more at work here,” thought he, “than just loss of blood. This man could stand a deal of that and still not be in any such collapse. There’s poison of some kind at work. And if this wound isn’t the cut of a kris, I never saw one!”

He raised one eyelid, and peered at the pupil. Then he closed the eye again.

“By the Almighty!” he whispered.

“What is it, doctor?” demanded the captain. “Don’t keep anything from me!”

“I hate to tell you!”

The old man caught his breath, but never flinched.

“Tell me!” he commanded. Laura peered in silence, very white. “I can stand it. Tell me all there is to tell!”

“Well, captain, from what I find here – there can be no doubt – ”

“No doubt of what?”

“The blade that stabbed Hal was – ”

“That poisoned kris?”

Filhiol nodded silently.

“God above! The curse – retribution!”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, captain, drop all that nonsense!” flared out the doctor from taut nerves. “This is no time for your infernal superstitions! We’ve got all we can handle without cluttering things up with a mess of rubbish. We’ve got a long, hard fight on our hands.”

“I know. But you can save him, doctor! You must!”

“I’ll do all in human power. This wound here I’m not in a position to deal with. Your local doctor can attend to that. It isn’t the vital feature of this case. The poison is!”

“You’ve got a remedy for that, haven’t you? You said you had!”

“Do you realize it’s been an hour, perhaps, since this wound was made? If the curaré had been fresh and new – ” He finished with an expressive gesture. “It’s old and dried, and some of it must have been worn off the blade. Perhaps, not a great deal got into the cut. There’s a chance, a fighting chance – perhaps.”

“Then the remedy! Quick, doctor! Get it, make it!”

“I’ve got to wait till the physician comes. I’ve got no drugs with me.”

“Will he have the right ones?”

“They’re common enough. It all depends on the formula, the exact mixture.”

“You remember them?”

“Maybe I can, if you don’t disturb my mind too much.”

“I’ll be quiet, doctor. You just order me, and I’ll do anything you say,” the old man promised abjectly. His eyes were cavernous with suffering. “Lord God! why don’t Dr. Marsh come?”

“Hal here is suffering from a general paralysis,” said Filhiol. “This curaré is peculiar stuff.” He laid his ear to Hal’s chest, listened a moment, then raised his head. “There’s some heart-action yet,” said he. “Our problem is to keep it going, and the respiration, till the effects pass. It’s quite possible Hal isn’t unconscious. He may know what’s going on. With this poison the victim feels and knows and understands, and yet can’t move hand or foot. In fact, he’s reduced to complete helplessness.”

“And yet you call me superstitious when I talk retribution!” the captain whispered tensely. “I lived by force in the old days. He, poor boy, put all his faith and trust in it; he made it his God, and worshipped it. And now – he’s struck down, helpless – ”

“It is strange,” Filhiol had to admit. “I don’t believe in anything like that. But certainly this is very, very strange. Yes, your grandson is more helpless now than any child. Even if he lives, he’ll be helpless for a long time, and very weak for months and months. This kind of curaré used by the upper Malay people is the most diabolical stuff ever concocted. Its effects are swift and far-reaching; they last a long, long time, in case they don’t kill at once. Hal can never be the same man he used to be, captain. You’ve got to make up your mind to that, anyhow.”

“Thank the Lord for it!” the old man fervently ejaculated. “Thank the good Lord above!”

“If he lives, he may sometime get back a fair amount of strength. He may be as well as an average man, but the days of his unbridled power and his terrific force are all over. His fighting heart and arrogant soul are gone, never to return.”

“God is being very good to me!” cried Briggs, tears starting down his wrinkled cheeks.

“Amen to that!” said Laura. “I don’t care what he’ll be, doctor. Only give him back to me!”

“He’ll be an invalid a very long time, girl.”

“And all that time I can nurse him and love him back to health!”

Footsteps suddenly clattered on the porch. The front door flung open.

“Laura! Are you all right? Are you safe?” cried a new voice.

“There’s my father!” exclaimed the girl. “And there’s Dr. Marsh, with him!”

Into the cabin penetrated two men. Nathaniel Maynard – thin, gray, wiry – stood staring. The physician, brisk and competent, set his bag on a chair and peeled off his coat, dripping rain.

“Laura! Tell me – ”

“Not now, father! Shhh! I’m all right, every way. But Hal here – ”

“We won’t have any unnecessary conversation, Mr. Maynard,” directed Dr. Marsh. He approached the berth. “What is this, now? Stab-wound? Ah, yes. Well, I’ll wash right up and get to work.”

“Do, please,” answered Filhiol. “You can handle it alone, all right. I’ve got a job of my own. There’s poisoning present, too. Curaré.”

“Curaré!” exclaimed Marsh, amazed. “That’s most unusual! Are you sure?”

“I didn’t serve on ships in the Orient, for nothing,” answered Filhiol with asperity. “My diagnosis is absolute. There was dried curaré on the blade that stabbed this man. It’s a very complex poison – either C18H35N, or C10H35N. Only one man, Sir Robert Schomburg, ever found out how the natives make it, and only one man – myself – ever learned the secret of the antidote.”