Back Aa

All the Brothers Were Valiant

Close

<h2>XVII</h2></div> THE story of that battle upon the tumbling decks of the Nathan Ross was to be told and re-told at many a gam upon the whaling grounds. It was such a story as strong men love; a story of overwhelming odds, of epic combat, of splendid death where blood ran hot and strong.... There were a full score of men in the group that came aft toward Joel. And as they came, others, running from the fo’c’s’le and dropping from the rigging, joined them. Every man was drunk with the vision of wealth that he had built upon Mark Shore’s story. The thing had grown and grown in the telling; it had fattened on the greed native in the men; and it was a monstrous thing now, and one that would not be denied.... The men, as they moved aft, 189 made grumbling sounds with their half-caught breath; and these sounds blended into a roaring growl like the growl of a beast. To face these men stood Joel. For an instant, he was alone. Then, without word, old Aaron took his stand beside his captain. Aaron held gripped in both hands an adze. Its edge was sharp enough to slice hard wood like cheese.... And at Joel’s other side, the cook. A round man, with greasy traces of his craft upon his countenance. He carried a heavy cleaver. There is an ancient feud between galley and fo’c’s’le; and the men greeting the cook’s coming with a hungry cry of delight.... Joel glanced at these new allies, and saw their weapons. He took the adze from Aaron, the cleaver from the other; and he turned and hurled them behind him, over the rail. And in the moment’s silence that followed on this action, he called to the men: 190 “Go back to your places.” They growled at him; they were wordless, but they knew the thing they desired. The cook complained at Joel’s elbow: “I could use that cleaver.” “I’ll not have blood spilled,” Joel told him. “If there’s fighting, it will be with fists....” And Mark touched Joel lightly on the shoulder, and took his place beside him. He was smiling, a twisted smile above the swollen lump upon his jaw. He said lightly: “If it’s fists, Joel—I think I’m safest to fight beside you.” Joel looked up at him with a swift glance, and he brushed his hand across his eyes, and nodded. “I counted on that, Mark—in the last, long run,” he said. Mark gripped his arm and pressed it; and in that moment the long, unspoken enmity between the brothers died forever. They faced the men.... 191 One howled like a wolf: “He’s done us. Done us in.” And another: “They’re going to hog it. Them two....” The little sea of scowling, twisting faces moved, it surged forward.... The men charged, more than a score, to overwhelm the four. In the moment before, Joel had marked young Dick Morrell, at one side, twisted with indecision; and in the instant when the men moved, he called: “With us, Mr. Morrell.” It was command, not question; and the boy answered with a shout and a blow.... On the flank of the men, he swept toward them. And Joel’s harpooner, and one of Asa Worthen’s old men formed a triumvirate that fought there.... They were thus seven against a score. But 192 they were seven good men. And the score were a mob.... It was fists, at the first, as Joel had sworn. The first, charging line broke upon them; and old Aaron was swept back, fighting like a cat, and crushed and bruised and left helpless in an instant. The fat cook dodged into his galley, and snatched a knife and held the door there, prodding the flanks of those who swirled past his stronghold. Joel dropped the first man who came to him; and likewise Mark. But another twined ’round Joel’s legs, and he could not kick them free, and there was no time to stoop and tear the man away. He and Mark kept back to back for a moment; but Mark was not a defensive fighter. He could not stand still and wait attack; and when his second man fell, he leaped the twisting body and charged into the clump of them. His black hair tossed, his eye was flaming; and his 193 long arms worked like pistons and like flails. He became the center of a group that writhed and dissolved, and formed again. His head rose above them all. The man who gripped Joel’s legs, freed one hand and began to beat at Joel’s body from below. Joel could not endure the blows; he bent, and took a rain of buffets on his head and shoulders while he caught the attacker by the throat, and lifted him up and flung him away. He staggered free, set his back against the galley wall; and when he shifted to avoid another attack, he found his place in the galley door. The fat cook crouched behind him, and Joel heard him shout: “I’ll watch your legs, Cap’n. Give ’em the iron, sir. Give ’em th’ iron.” Once Joel, looking down, saw the cook’s knife play like a flame between his knees.... None would seek to pin him there. 194 The black harpooner fought his way across the deck to Joel’s side. He left a trail of twisting bodies behind him. And he was grinning with a huge delight. “Now, sar, we’ll do ’em, sar,” he screamed. The sweat poured down his black cheeks; and his mouth was cut and bleeding. His shirt was torn away from one shoulder and arm.... “Good man,” said Joel, between his panting blows. “Good man!” Across the deck, one who had run forward for a handspike swept it down on young Dick Morrel’s brown head. Morrell dodged, but the blow cracked his shoulder and swept him to the deck. The man who had fought beside him spraddled the prostrate body, and jerked an iron from the boat on the davits at his back and held it like a lance, to keep all men at a distance. A sheath knife sped, and twisted in 195 the air, and struck him butt first above the eye, so that he fell limply and lay still.... Mark Shore had been forced against the rail near where Jim Finch was pinned. Big Finch was howling and weeping with fright; and a little man of the crew with a rat’s mean soul who hated Finch had found his hour. He was leaping about the mate, lashing him mercilessly with a heavy end of rope; and Finch screamed and twisted beneath the blows. So swiftly had the tumult of the battle arisen that all these things had come to pass before the harpooners asleep in the steerage could wake and reach the deck. When they climbed the ladder, and looked about them, they saw Morrell and his ally prostrate at one side, Joel and the cook holding the galley door against a half dozen men; and big Mark’s towering head amidst a knot of half a dozen more. And one 196 of the harpooners backed away toward the waist of the ship, watchful and wary, taking no part in the affair. But the other ... He was a Cape Verder, black blood crossed with Spanish; and Mark Shore had tied him to a davit, once upon a time, and lashed him till he bled, for faults committed. He saw Mark now, and his eyes shone greedily. This man crouched, and crossed to a boat—his own—and chose his own harpoon. He twisted off the wooden sheath that covered the point, and flung it across the deck; and he poised the heavy iron in his hands, and started slowly toward Mark, moving on tiptoe, lightly as a cat. Mark saw him coming; and the big man shouted joyfully: “Why, Silva! Come, you....” He flung aside the men encircling him. One 197 among them held the handspike with which he had struck down Morrell; and Mark smote this man in the body, and when he doubled, wrenched the great club from his hands. He swung this, leaped to meet the harpooner. They came together in mid-deck. The great handspike whistled through the air, and down. An egg-shell crunched beneath a heel.... Silva dropped. Mark stood for an instant above him; and in that instant, every man saw the harpoon which Silva had driven home. Its heavy shaft hung, dragging on the deck; it hung from Mark’s breast, high in the right shoulder; and the point stood out six inches behind his shoulder blade. It seemed to drag at him; he bent slowly beneath its weight, and drooped, and lay at last across the body of the man whose skull the handspike had crushed. There were, at that moment, about a dozen 198 of the men still on their feet; but in the instant of their paralyzed dismay, two things struck them; two furies ... Dick Morrell, tottering on unsteady feet, brandishing a razor-tipped lance full ten feet long. He came upon the men from the flank, shouting; and Joel, when he saw his brother fall, left his shelter in the galley door and swept upon them. The fat cook, with the knife, fought nobly at his side. The men broke; they fled headlong, forward; and Joel and Morrell and the cook pursued them, through the waist, past the trypots, till they tumbled down the fo’c’s’le scuttle and huddled in their bunks and howled.... A dozen limp bodies sprawled upon the deck, bodies of moaning men with heads that would ache and pound for days.... Joel left Morrell to guard the fo’c’s’le, and went back among them, going swiftly from man to man.... 199 Silva was dead. The others would not die—save only Mark. The iron had pierced his chest, had ripped a lung.... <hr class='major' /> <div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'> 200 <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

1 of 2

2 of 2