Cursed

“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!”