Hell's Hatches

R. Freeman Lewis

Description

American author Lewis Ransome Freeman lived a remarkable life, serving as a fearless war correspondent, traveling the world, and even serving as one of the first football coaches for the University of Southern California while he himself was still enrolled as an undergraduate at Stanford. In the novel Hell's Hatches, set in the islands of the South Seas, a trio of travelers come to the aid of a beautiful and brave indigenous woman.

Sujets

• Adventure (Guyana)
• Adventure

Informations

• Publié par: The Floating Press
• Date de parution: 01 mai 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781776589838
• Langue: English

Extrait

HELL'S HATCHES
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LEWIS R. FREEMAN
 
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Hell's Hatches First published in 1921 Epub ISBN 978-1-77658-983-8 Also available: PDF ISBN 978-1-77658-984-5 © 2014 The Floating Press and its licensors. All rights reserved. While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in The Floating Press edition of this book, The Floating Press does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. The Floating Press does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Many suitcases look alike. Visit www.thefloatingpress.com
Contents
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Chapter I - A Reputation Questioned Chapter II - Hard-Bit Derelicts Chapter III - The Girl Herself Chapter IV - "Slant" Allen Retires Again Chapter V - A Ship of Death Chapter VI - Compulsory Volunteering Chapter VII - Rona Comes Aboard Chapter VIII - I Leave the Island Chapter IX - A Grim Tale of the Sea Chapter X - Art and Suspense Chapter XI - A Hero's Homecoming Chapter XII - A Bad Man's Plea Chapter XIII - The Scene of the Final Drama Chapter XIV - Hell's Hatches Off Chapter XV - The Face Chapter XVI - A Sudden Visitor Chapter XVII - Down the Flume Chapter XVIII - The Masterpiece Chapter XIX - After All
Chapter I - A Reputation Questioned
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"Slant" Allen and I, between us, had been monopolizing a good share ofthe feature space in the Queensland and New South Wales papers for aweek or more—he as "the Hero-Ticket-of-Leave-Man" and I as "the giftedFranco-American painter whose brilliant South Sea marines have taken theAustralian art world by storm"—and now that it was definitely reportedthat he had left Brisbane on his way to connect with the reception theboyhood home from which he had been shipped in disgrace five yearsbefore had prepared for him, I knew it was but a matter of hours beforehe would be doing me the honour of a call.
He simply had to see me, I figured; that was all there was to it: forwith Bell and the girl dead (that much seemed certain, both from thenewspaper accounts of the affair and from what I had been able to pickup in the few minutes I had been ashore during the stop of my southboundpacket at Townsville) I was the only living person who knew he was notthe hero of the astonishing Cora Andrews affair, the audacious daringand almost sublime courage characterizing which had touched theimagination of the whole world; that, far from having volunteered tonavigate a shipload of plague-stricken blacks through some hundreds ofmiles of the worst reef-beset—and likewise the most ill-charted—watersof the Seven Seas on the off chance of saving the lives of perhaps onein ten of them, he had been brought off and forced to mount the gangwayof that ill-fated schooner at the point of a knife in the hands of aslender slip of a Kanaka girl.
To be sure, two or three of the blacks who were hanging over the rail atthe end of that accursed afternoon may have been among the survivors(for it could have been only the strongest of them that had been able tofight their way up to the air when Bell chopped open the hatches theyhad been battened under ever since the Cora's officers had succumbedwho knows how many hours before); but, even so, their rolling, bloodshoteyes could have fixed on nothing to have led them to believe that thegreasy shawl of Chinese embroidery the girl appeared to have thrownaffectionately over the shoulder of the belated passenger in the leakingoutrigger concealed the diminutive Malay kris whose point she waspressing into the fleshy part of his neck above the jugular.
No, there could be no doubt that I was all that stood between "Slant"Allen, "Ticket-of-Leavester," beachcomber, black-birder, pearl-pirateand (more or less incidentally to all of the foregoing) murderer, andthe Hon. Hartley Allen, second son of the late James Allen, Bart.,racing man, polo player and once the greatest gentleman jockey on theAustralian turf. Pardon for the comparative peccadilloes—a "pulled"horse or two, a money fraud in connection with a "sweep," and the ratherrough treatment of a chorus girl, who had foolishly asked for "time toconsider" his proposal that she come to him at once from theQueensland stockman who was only just finishing refurnishing her GeorgeStreet flat—which, cumulatively, had been responsible for his beingpacked off to "The Islands," was already assured, and it looked asthough more was to come—that his "spectacular and self-sacrificingheroism" was going to wipe out the unpleasant memories that had barredhim from sporting and social circles even before the law stepped in. Asporting writer in that morning's Herald had speculated as to whetheror not he would be seen again riding "Number 1" for the unbeaten"Boomerang" Four, with whom he had qualified for his handicap of "8,"still standing as the highest ever given an Australian polo player; andthe racing column of the latest Bulletin had devoted a good part ofits restricted space to a discussion of the possibility that the weighthe had put on in his years of "easy life in 'The Islands'" might forcehim to confine his riding to steeplechases. Of the record which had madethe name of "Slant" Allen a byword for all that was desperate anddevilish from Port Moresby to Papeete, from Yap to Suva, little seemedto be known and nothing at all was said. But then, that oldbeach-combers' maxim to the effect that "What a man does in 'TheIslands' don't figure in St. Peter's 'dope sheet,'" was one from whicheven I myself had been wont to extract no little solace.
With nothing but my fever-wracked and absinthe-soaked (I may as wellconfess at the outset that I was "in the grip of the green" at thistime) anatomy standing between, on the one hand, and Allen moredespicable than even I, who was fairly familiar with the lurid swath hehad cut across Polynesia, had ever dreamed he could be, and, on theother hand, an Allen who might easily become more the idol of sporting(which is, of course, the real) Australia than he had ever been at thezenith of his meteoric career as a turfman and athlete, it was plainenough that he would not—nay, could not—ignore for long my presence ina city that was standing on tiptoe to acclaim him as a native son whosedeed had done it honour in the eyes of the world. It was something likethat the Telegraph had it, I believe.
Where a word from me (and Allen would know that my friendship for Bell,to say nothing of the girl, would impel me to speak it in my own goodtime) would dash him from the heights to depths which even he had notyet sounded—there were degrees of treachery which "The Islands"themselves would not stand for—it was only to be expected that a man ofhis stamp would make some well-thought-out move calculated to imposeboth immediate and eventual silence upon me. If we were still "north oftwenty-two" I would have had no doubt what form that "move" would take,and even here in the heart of the Antipodean metropolis—well, that Iwas leaving no unnecessary loop-holes of attack open was attested by thefact that I was awaiting his coming wearing a roomy old shooting jacket,in the wide pockets of which a man's fingers could work both freely andunobtrusively. I had shot away a good half-dozen patch pockets from thatold jacket in practising "unostentatious self-defence," and when a mangets to a point where he can spatter a sea-slug at five paces from hiship he really hasn't a great deal to fear from the frontal attack ofanyone—or anything—that hunts by daylight.
Yes, though I hardly expected to have to shoot Allen, at least on thisfirst showdown, I was quite prepared to do so if he gave me any excuseat all for it; indeed, I may as well admit that I was going to bedisappointed if he did not furnish me such an excuse. There need benothing on my conscience, that was sure, for, if the fellow had had hisdeserts according to civilized law, he would have been put out of theway something like twenty times already. I had heard him make that boasthimself one night in Kai, just before he went under Jackson's table as aconsequence of trying to toss off three-fingers of "Three Star" forevery man he claimed to have killed. Moreover, I had a sort of a feelingthat old Bell would have liked to have seen his score evened up thatway, for he, more than almost anyone I could recall, had marvelled atwhat he called the tricks I had tucked away in my "starboard triggerpocket." But—I may as well own it—my principal reason for hoping for adecisive showdown straightaway was that I felt sure I could see my waythrough an affair of that kind, even with so cool and resourceful a handas I knew Allen to be. As an absinthe drinker, what I dreaded was tohave the crisis postponed, knowing all the while that during only aboutfrom four to six hours of the twenty-four would I be fit in mind or bodyto oppose a child, let alone a man who, for five years and among asdesperate a lot of cut-throats as the South Pacific had ever known, hadlived up to his boast that he drew the line at no act under heaven togain his end.
It had struck me as just a bit providential that Allen almost certainlywould be coming to see me in the early afternoon—the very time atwhich, physically and mentally, I would be best prepared for him. Itvaries somewhat with different addicts of the drug, but with me the"hour of strength"—the interval of the swinging back of the pendulum,when all the faculties are as much above normal as they have been belowit during the preceding interval of depression—was mid-afternoon. Fromabout ten in the morning I was just about my natural self—just about atthe turn of the tide between weakness and strength—for three or fourhours; but from about three to five, when the renewed cravings began tostir and it had long been my custom to pour my first thin trickle ofgreen into the cracked ice, I was preternaturally alive in hand andbr