A High Wind in Jamaica - Richard Hughes [54]
It was not surprising no one heard poor Emily, left alone in the cabin with the terrible Dutchman.
She screamed and screamed: but there was no awakening from _this_ nightmare.
By now he had managed to roll himself, in spite of the motion of the vessel, almost wiihin reach of the coveted knife. The veins on his forehead stood out with his exertion and the stricture of his bonds. His fingers were groping, behind his back, for the edge.
Emily, beside herself with terror, suddenly became possessed by the strength of despair. In spite of the agony it caused her leg she flung herself out of the bunk, and just managed to seize the knife before he could maneuver his bound hands within reach of it.
In the course of the next five seconds she had slashed and jabbed at him in a dozen places: then, flinging the knife towards the door, somehow managed to struggle back into the bunk.
The Dutchman, bleeding rapidly, blinded with his own blood, lay still and groaned. Emily, her own wound reopened, and overcome with pain and terror, fainted. The knife, flung wildly, missed its aim and clattered down the steps again onto the cabin floor: and the first witness of the scene was Margaret, who presently peered down from the deck above, her dulled eyes standing out from her small, skull-like face.
AS FOR JONSEN and Otto, unable by other means to rouse the dormant animals, they collected their men and with big levers managed to tilt the cages, spilling the beasts out onto the deck.
But not even so would they fight--or even show signs of resentment. As they had lain and groaned in their cages, so they now lay and groaned on the deck.
They were small specimens of their kind, and emaciated by travel. Otto with a sudden oath seized the tiger round its middle and hauled it upright on its hind legs: Jonsen did the same by the more top-heavy lion: and so the two principals to the duel faced each other, their heads lolling over the arms of their seconds.
But in the eyes of the tiger a slight ember of cons ciousness seemed to smolder. Suddenly it tautened its muscles: a slight effort, yet it burst from the merely human grip of Otto like Samson from the new ropes--nearly dislocated his arms before he had time to let go. Quicker than eye could see, it had cuffed him, rending half his face. Tigers are no plaything. Jonsen dropped the huge bulk of the lion on top of it, and escaped with Otto through an open door: while the pirates, tumbling over each other like people in a burning theater, struggled to get back in the rigging.
The lion rolled clear. The tiger, lurching unsteadily, crept back into its cage. The keening Malays took no notice of the whole scene.
And yet, what a scene it had been!
But now the heroic circus was over. Chastened, bruised by each other in their panic, the drunken pirates helped the mate into the first of the two boats, and pulling helter-skelter in the choppy sea, returned to the schooner. One by one they climbed the rail and vaulted on deck.
Sailors have keen noses. They smelt blood at once, and crowded round the companion-way: where Margaret still sat, as if numb, on the top step.
Emily lay in the bunk below, her eyes shut--conscious again, but her eyes shut.
The Dutch captain they could see on the floor, stretched in a pool of blood. "_But, Gentlemen, I have a wife and children!_" he suddenly said in Dutch, in a surprised and gentle tone: then died, not so much of any mortal wound as of the number of superficial gashes he had received.
IT WAS PLAINLY Margaret who had done it--killed a bound, defenseless man, for no reason at all; and now sat watching him die, with her dull, meaningless stare.
8
THE CONTEMPT THEY already felt for Margaret, their complete lack of pity in her obvious illness and misery, had been in direct proportion to the childhood she had belied.
This crime would have seemed to them grave on the part of a grown man, in its unrelieved wantonness: but done by one of her years, and nurture,