“I’m through with you, you rum-soaked hellbender! He’s through, too, the boy is. We’ll take our chances with the Malays an’ the plague.”
Scurlock’s voice, rising out of the softly-lit tropic evening, died suddenly.
“Come back, Mr. Scurlock, and bring that boy!” cried the doctor, from the rail.
“I’ve got nothin’ against you, sir,” answered Scurlock. “But against _him_. God! If I come back, it’ll only be to cut his black heart out an’ throw it to the sharks. We’re done!”
A moment Briggs stood drunkenly peering, half minded to pursue, to match his belaying-pin against the mate’s dirk. Gurgling in his throat—for excess of rage had closed upon all speech—he panted, with froth upon his black beard, while dim figures along the rail and on shore waited great deeds. Then all at once he laughed—a horrible, deep-throated laugh, rising, swelling to mighty and bestial merriment; the laugh of a gorilla, made man.
“The Malays and the plague,” he thickly stammered. “—He’s said it—let ’em go! They’re good as dead already, and hell take ’em!”
He swung on his heel, then strode back unsteadily to the companion. Down it he lunged. Still laughing, he burst into the heat and reek of the cabin.
“Come on, doctor,” cried he, “our cards, our cards!”
“He’ll steal no more of my Old Jamaica,” exulted Briggs, flinging himself into a chair by the table. “And that sniveling boy will give me no more of his infernal lip! Skunks!” He picked up the bottle, still containing a little rum, and poured a gulp of liquor down his throat. “On my own ship!”
“Where are the cards, sir?” asked Filhiol. His voice, quivering, was hardly audible.
“Petty game,” burst out the captain, “no good. Make it a real one, and I’ll go you!”
“Stakes worth playin’ for! Man-size stakes! You got money in Boston, sir. Some fifteen thousand. I’ll play you for that, plus your wages this voyage!”
“Against my share of the ship’s cargo, and my share of the _Silver Fleece_, herself. And if I scuttle her, as scuttle her I may, in case the insurance money foots bigger than the ship’s worth and the cargo, I stake that money, too!”
The doctor pondered a moment, while Briggs pressed a hand to his thick neck, redly swollen with heat and rum. Suddenly the captain broke out again: