The Last Entry by William Clark Russell

Author:William Clark Russell
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781634210898
Publisher: Duke Classics

Chapter VI - The Murders

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'What's the meaning of this atrocious conduct, men?' shouted Mr. Vanderholt. 'I am sorry if anything's wrong with you. I am an old sailor—'

He was interrupted by Captain Glew roaring out: 'Tweed, help me to put that scoundrel in irons!' And he rushed forward, Tweed following.

'Oh, my God!' cried Mr. Vanderholt; 'stay your hands, men! This is my ship! I am master here! I'll see your wrongs righted!'

'There'll be murder!' shrieked Miss Vanderholt.

'Go below, for Christ's sake!' roared the distracted man; and, catching hold of his daughter's arm, he dragged her down the steps into the cabin.

'No man in this ship puts me in irons,' said the boatswain, showing his teeth, as he squared up at Captain Glew, with his immensely thick arms covered with hair, arrows and crucifixes. 'I've been wanting the killing of you this many a day, you rat! and, as you men hear me, by the living Lord, I'll kill him if he lays a finger upon me!'

For a few minutes Captain Glew paused, waiting for Mr. Tweed, who had disappeared. He stood one man to seven; his nostrils were dilated; his eyes were on fire; his skin was a ghastly white; and his fingers worked like those of one who plays a piano. His breath flew from him in sharp, quite audible hissings. He was the incarnation of wrath fiendish above anything human, and in that pause those of the men who met his gaze seemed to quail.

Mr. Vanderholt came running from the companion-hatch. His right hand was in the pocket of his coat.

'What is it, men?' he bawled. 'I am an old sailor, and was a man at sea when you were boys. Is your pork bad? Is the rest of your food bad?'

'Go and gut yourself!' roared Dabb. 'If that cuckoo had the victualling of this ship, you had the paying of him; and was there ever a Dutchman that didn't know good food from bad by the price of it?'

He was proceeding. Gordon, standing alongside, clipped the dog over the back of his neck, and silenced him.

Mr. Vanderholt swayed speechless on the slightly heaving deck of his vessel. He was petrified. He stared at the insolent villain; he couldn't credit his senses.

Indeed, it was shocking that that fine old gentleman, with his full gray beard, his dignified bearing, his knowledge of life and letters, his years, his great fortune, should be thus addressed by a brute of the sea, a scab, a wen of the ocean, who ashore, in liquor, was, of course, the swaggering, yelping terror of women and little children.

Mr. Tweed came along from the forecastle, grasping an iron bar with rings upon it The moment the men saw him, three or four—Scott, Toole, Allan, and another—flung themselves upon him. The irons were sent whizzing overboard, the man himself was felled to the deck. He rose in a minute, breathless and mad.

'But you shall come aft. Help me, Tweed!' And the captain, crying this out in a voice frightful to hear with its tension of passion, flung himself upon the boatswain.

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