Read Ebook: Jack Derringer by Lubbock Basil

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 2944 lines and 90477 words, and 59 pages

"THE YANKEE HELL-SHIP" 3

"THE RULE OF THE BELAYING-PIN" 13

"THE USE OF A SHEATH-KNIFE" 27

"BARBARISM" 37

"IN THE WATCHES OF THE NIGHT" 48

"THE FATAL RED LEAD" 59

"IN THE SECOND DOG-WATCH" 75

"ON THE FOC'S'LE HEAD" 89

"THE GLORY OF THE STARS" 99

"STUDPOKER BOB'S MALADY" 109

"THE STORMFIEND" 118

"A CALL FOR NERVE" 132

"THE MAN WITH THE GUN" 143

"ADRIFT" 157

"THE BURNING OF THE SOUTH SEAMAN" 179

"THE OPEN BOAT" 194

"THE SPELL OF THE MOON" 209

"THE ATOLL" 218

"LOYOLA" 230

"THE FIGHT ON THE SANDS" 239

"THE LYNCHING" 253

"A SEA FIGHT UNDER THE STARS" 291

"THE PLUCK OF WOMAN" 303

"PAPEETE" 318

PART I

"THE YANKEE HELL-SHIP"

Bucking Broncho awoke to the familiar cry of "Roll out, roll out, show a leg!" and thinking it was the call of the Round Up Boss in the early morning, he opened his eyes and sat up.

The sight that met his gaze considerably astonished him, and the foc's'le, with its double row of bunks, its stuffy atmosphere, and its swinging oil-lamp, he mistook for some mining-camp shanty.

Slowly his half-shut eyes took in the details of the gloomy den, into which the grey light of dawn had as yet hardly penetrated.

Round him lay men in every condition of drunkenness, some prone upon the deck, others hanging half in and half out of their bunks, all apparently still in the stupors of a late carouse.

Stretched upon a chest right under his bunk lay a ghastly object clothed in greasy, blood-stained rags, which but for its hoarse rattling breathing he would have taken for a corpse.

From the bunk above him came a spasmodic grunt at intervals, sudden and unexpected, whilst opposite him a cadaverous-looking deadbeat in a miner's shirt whistled discordantly through a hawk-like, fiery-tinted nose.

As his eyes grew accustomed to the dim light he discovered other forms scattered in a variety of grotesque attitudes amongst the litter of chests and sea-bags on the deck, and through the open door he beheld a man, in a pair of overalls, sluicing himself with a bucket of water.

Then a gigantic form with a hairy face of kindly aspect blocked up the doorway, and in hurricane tones besought the snoring crowd to tumble up and man the capstan. Advancing into the foc's'le, this leather-lunged apparition coolly and methodically began to haul the insensible scarecrows out of their bunks, and to shake them until their teeth rattled.

"Say, stranger, whatever's the hock kyard to all this? What be you-alls aimin' for to do?" inquired Bucking Broncho in his soft Western drawl, as he watched the big man handling the drunks.

"Just you tumble out, my son, and get outside, or you'll reap a skinful of trouble. You'll get the hang o' things quick enough by-and-by," returned the other shortly.

"I'm clean stampeded in my intellec' complete," declared the cowboy; "but assuming you're the boss of this outfit, your word goes; I plays your hand, stranger, an' I rolls out."

The big, hairy-faced man was too busy pushing, pommelling, thumping, and hustling the rest of the inmates to take any more notice of Bucking Broncho, who, gaining the door, stared round in amazement as he found himself upon the deck of a large sailing-ship.

The last of the wheat fleet, this vessel had been lying at anchor in San Francisco Bay for some weeks, delayed from sailing for want of a crew, which her bad name made impossible for her to get except by foul means.

With lavish hands her "old man" scattered his blood-money amongst the boarding-house runners and crimps, and then patiently awaited the result.

Slowly but surely his crew began to arrive, heels first to a man, some drugged, some sandbagged, some set upon and kidnapped along the water-front.

Night after night boats sneaked up to the gangway grating and deposited insensible bundles of rags, which the ghoulish traders in blood callously slung aboard.

But before signing the note, the experienced mate took care to ascertain if his new hand still breathed, for more than once in the past he had had dead men palmed off upon him. Then, if satisfied after his careful scrutiny, he ordered the watchman to drag the shanghaied man forward whilst he ticked off Able-bodied Seaman Jones or Smith, whichever name happened to come first on his list.

The cowpuncher, discovered in Chinatown busy celebrating his first night off the prairie, was pounced upon by these vultures as "an easy thing." Skilfully they drugged him, cheerfully they possessed themselves of his wad of notes, then, overcome by the humour of the idea, instead of substituting the trade rags for his clothes as usual in shanghai-ing men, they slung him aboard an hour after midnight in all the glory of chaps and spurs.

Wholly oblivious of the events of the past night, thanks to the strength of the dope, with buzzing head and half-fuddled senses the cowboy stood gazing stupidly at the scene before him.

"I'm shorely plumb locoed," he muttered. "What for of a play is this I'm into?"

Overhearing this, the man sluicing himself turned round.

This man formed a big contrast to the broken-looking crowd in the foc's'le.

As he stood there in the morning light, stripped as he was to the waist, he looked the beau ideal of health: the muscles on his arms and shoulders stretched the skin till it shone, and heightened the artistic effect of the beautiful Japanese tattooing which, in the shape of dragons, butterflies, Geisha girls, and other quaint designs, made a picture gallery of his body.

Six foot high at least, he stood lightly on his feet with the careless grace of one used to a heaving deck.

A peculiar look of devil-may-care good nature stamped his clean-cut, deeply tanned features, yet there was a keen glint of shrewdness in his blue eyes, decision in his firm chin and resolute lips, with just a touch of martial fierceness in the twirl of his small moustache.

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet