Cursed

The doctor’s voice brought the ruffian about with a sharp turn.

“You mutinous, too?” shouted he, swinging his shoulders, loose, hulking, under the yellow silk of his jacket.

“By no means, sir. As a personal favor to me, however, I’m asking you not to strike that girl.” The doctor’s voice was shaking; yet still he sat there at the table, holding his cards in a quivering hand.

“You look out for your own skin, sawbones!” Briggs menaced. “The woman’s mine to do with as I please, an’ it’s nobody’s damn business, you lay to that! I’ll love her or beat her or throw her to the sharks, as I see fit. So now you hear me, an’ I warn you proper, stand clear o’ me, or watch out for squalls!”

Into the cabin he lunged, just as another door, opening, disclosed a sleepy-eyed, yellow-haired young man – Mr. Wansley, second-mate of the devil-ship. Wansley stared, and the doctor stood up with doubled fists, as they heard the sound of blows from within, then shriller cries, ending in a kind of gurgle – then silence.

The doctor gripped both hands together, striving to hold himself. The life of every white man aboard now depended absolutely on seeing this thing through without starting mutiny and war.

“Get back in your cabin, Mr. Wansley, for God’s sake!” he exclaimed, “or go on deck! The captain’s crazy drunk. If he sees you here, there’ll be hell to pay. Get out, quick!”

Wansley grasped the situation and made a speedy exit up the after-companion, just ahead of Briggs’s return. The captain banged his cabin door, and staggered back to the table. He dusted his palms one against the other.

“The black she-dog won’t whine again, for one while,” he grinned with white teeth through his mat of beard. “That’s the only way to teach ’em their lesson!” He clenched both fists, turning them, admiring them under the lamp-light. “Great pacifiers, eh, sawbones? I tell you! Beat a dog an’ a woman, an’ you can’t go far off your course. So now I’ll deal the cards, an’ win every cent you’ve got!”

“The cards are dealt, sir,” answered Filhiol, chalky to the lips.

“Yes, an’ you’ve been here with ’em, all alone!” retorted the captain. “No, sir, that won’t go. Fresh deal – here, I’ll do it!”

He gathered the dealt hands and unsteadily began shuffling, while the doctor, teeth set in lip, swallowed the affront. Some of the cards escaped the drunken brute’s thick fingers; two or three dropped to the floor.

“Pick ’em up, sir,” directed Briggs. “No captain of my stamp bends his back before another man – an’ besides, I know you’d be glad to knife me, while I was down!”

Filhiol made no answer. He merely obeyed, and handed the cards to Briggs, who was about to deal, when all at once his hands arrested their motion. His eyes fixed themselves in an incredulous, widening stare, at the forward cabin door. His massive jaw dropped. A sound escaped his throat, but no word came.

The doctor spun his chair around. He, too, beheld a singular apparition; though how it could have got there – unless collusion had been at work among the Malays in the waist – seemed hard to understand.

So silently the door had slid, that the coming of the aged native woman had made no sound. Aged she seemed, incredibly old, wizen, dried; though with these people who can tell of age? The dim light revealed her barefooted, clad in a short, gaudily-striped skirt, a tight-wrapped body-cloth that bound her shrunken breast. Coins dangled from her ears; her straight black hair was drawn back flatly; her lips, reddened with lime and betel, showed black, sharp-filed teeth in a horrible snarl of hatred.

Silent, a strange yellow ghostlike thing, she crept nearer. Briggs sprang up, snatched the rum-bottle by its neck and waited, quivering. Right well he knew the woman – old Dengan Jouga, mother of Kuala, his prey.

For the first time in years unnerved, he stood there. Had she rushed in at him, screamed, vociferated, clawed with hooked talons, beaten at him with skinny fists, he would have knocked her senseless, dragged her on deck and flung her to the bund; but this cold, silent, beady-eyed approach took all his sails aback.

Only for a moment, however. Briggs was none of your impressionable men, the less so when in drink.

“Get out!” he shouted, brandishing the bottle. “Out o’ this, or by God – ”

The door, opening again, disclosed the agitated face of Texel, a foremast hand.

“Cap’n Briggs, sir!” exclaimed this wight, touching his cap, “one o’ the Malays says she, there, has got news o’ Mr. Scurlock an’ the boy, sir, that you’ll want to hear. He’s out here now, the Malay is. Will I tell him to come in?”

“I could have you flogged, you scum, for darin’ to come into my cabin till you’re called,” shouted Briggs. “But send the pig in!”

The bottle lowered, as Briggs peered frowning at the silent hag. Uncanny, this stillness was. Tempests, hurricanes of passion and of hate would have quite suited him; but the old Malay crone, standing there half-way to the table, the light glinting from her deep coal-black eyes, her withered hands clutching each other across her wasted body, disconcerted even his bull-like crassness.

The seaman turned and whistled. At once, a Malay slid noiselessly in, salaamed and stood waiting. Texel, nervously fingering the cap he held in his hands, lingered by the door.

“Oh, it’s you again, Mud Baby, is it?” cried the bucko. “What’s the news Dengan Jouga has for me? Tell her to hand it over an’ then clear out! Savvy?”

“Captain, sahib, sar,” stammered Mahmud, almost gray with fear, every lean limb aquiver with the most extraordinary panic. “She says Mr. Scurlock, an’ boy, him prisoner. You give up girl, Kuala Pahang. No givem – ”

The sentence ended in a quick stroke of the Malay’s forefinger across the windpipe, a whistling sound.

Briggs stared and swore. The doctor laid a hand on his arm.

“Checkmated, sir,” said he. “The old woman wins.”

“Like hell!” roared the captain. “I don’t know what the devil she’s talkin’ about. If Scurlock an’ the boy get their fool throats cut, it’s their own fault. They’re bein’ punished for mutiny. No girl here, at all! You, Mud Baby, tell that to old Jezebel!”

Mahmud nodded, and slid into a sing-song chatter. The woman gave ear, all the while watching Briggs with the unwinking gaze of a snake. She flung back a few crisp words at Mahmud.

“Well, what now?” demanded Briggs.

“She say, you lie, captain, sar!”

“I lie, do I?” vociferated the bucko. He heaved the bottle aloft and would have struck the hag full force, had not the doctor caught his arm, and held it fast.

“My God, captain!” cried Filhiol, gusty with rage and fear. “You want mutiny? Want the whole damned town swarming over us, with torch and kris?”

Briggs tried to fling him off, but the doctor clung, in desperation. Mahmud Baba wailed:

“No, no, captain! No touch her! She very bad luck – she Nenek Kabayan!”

“What the devil do I care?” roared Briggs, staggering as he struggled with the doctor. “She’s got to get out o’ my cabin, or by – ”

“She’s a witch-woman!” shouted Filhiol, clinging fast. “That means a witch, Nenek Kabayan does. If you strike her, they’ll tear your heart out!”

Mahmud, in the extremity of his terror, clasped thin, brown hands, groveled, clutching at the captain’s knees. Briggs kicked him away like a dog.

“Get out, you an’ everybody!” he bellowed. “Doctor, I’ll lay you in irons for this. Into the lazaret you go, so help me!”

The witch-woman, raising crooked claws against him, hurled shrill curses at Briggs – wild, unintelligible things, in a wail so penetrantly heart-shaking, that even the captain’s bull-like rage shuddered.

From the floor, Mahmud raised appealing hands.

“She say, give girl or she make orang onto kill everybody!” cried the Malay. “Orang onto, bad ghost! She say she make sabali– sacrifice – of everybody on ship.” His voice broke, raw, in a frenzy of terror. “She say Vishnu lay curse on us, dead men come out of graves, be wolves, be tigers —menjelma kramat– follow us everywhere!”

“Shut your jaw, idiot!” shouted Briggs, but in a tone less brutal. The man was shaken. Not all his bluster could blink that fact. The doctor loosed his arm; Briggs did not raise the bottle, now, to strike. On and on wailed Mahmud:

“She say chandra wasi, birds of ocean foam, poison us, an’ Zemrud, him what keep life, leave us. She say blind face in sky watch you, cap’n, sahib, an’ laugh, an’ you want to die, but you not die. She say you’ life be more poison than katchubong flowers – she say evil seed grow in you’ heart, all life long – she say somethin’ you love, cap’n, sar, somethin’ you love more than you’ life, sometime die, an’ you die then but still you not die! She say – ”

Briggs chewed and spat a curse and, turning to the table, sat down heavily there. Astonished, Filhiol stared at him. Never had he seen the captain in this mood. A wild attack, assault, even murder, would not have surprised the doctor; but this strange quietude surpassed belief. Filhiol leaned over Briggs, as he sat there sagging, staring at the witch-woman still in furious tirade.

“Captain,” he whispered, “you’re going to give up the girl, of course? You’re going to save Mr. Scurlock and the boy, and keep this shriveled monkey of a witch from raising the town against us?”

Briggs only shook his head.