CUTLASSES
There was no thought of guns or pistols.There was no time to aim or fire.Loge's rush had lodged him on the deck.Roaring like a wild animal, he carried the fight to the defenders.He meant to make a finish of it this time, and with the edged and bitter steel.
As the women scurried into the cabin the two lines met, with a ringing clash of blades, on the deck of the Jasper B., and the sparks flew from the stricken metal.Cleggett strove to engage Loge hand to hand; and Loge, on his part, attempted to fight his way to Cleggett; they shouted insults at each other across the press of battle.But in affairs of this sort a man must give his attention to the person directly in front of him; otherwise he is lost.As Cleggett cut and thrust and parried, a sudden seizure overtook him; he moved as if in a dream; he had the eerie feeling that he had done all this before, sometime, perhaps in a previous existence, and would do it again.The clangor of the meeting swords, the inarticulate shouts and curses, the dance of struggling men across the deck, the whirling confusion of the whole fantastic scene beneath the quiet skies, struck upon his consciousness with that strange phantasmagoric quality which makes the hurrying unreality of dreams so much more vivid and more real than anything in waking life.
In the center of Cleggett's line stood the three detectives shoulder to shoulder.Their three swords rose and fell as one.They cut and lunged and guarded with a machine-like regularity, advancing, giving ground, advancing again, with a rhythmic unanimity which was baffling to their opponents.
On either flank of the detectives fought one of the gigantic negroes.
Washington Artillery Lamb, almost at once, had broken his cutlass, and now he raged in the waist of the Jasper B.with a long iron bar in his hand.Miss Pringle's Jefferson, with his high cockaded hat still firmly fixed upon his head, laid about him with a heavy cavalry saber; in his excitement he still held his harmonica in his mouth and blew blasts upon it as he fought.The Rev.Simeon Calthrop, in a loud agitated voice, sang hymns as he swung his cutlass.And, among the legs of the combatants, leapt and snapped Teddy the Pomeranian, biting friend and foe indiscriminately upon the ankles.
But gradually the weight of superior numbers began to tell.Farnsworth staggered from the fight with a face covered with blood which blinded him.Cap'n Abernethy likewise was bleeding from a wound in the head; George the Greek and Watson Bard were hurt, but both fought on.The crew of the Jasper B.and their allies of the Annabel Lee were being slowly forced back towards the cabin, when there came a sudden and decisive turn in the fortunes of the fight.
Cleggett, straining to meet Loge, who hung sword to sword with Wilton Barnstable, saw Giuseppe Jones, deserted by his nurses, tumbling feebly over the bow of the Jasper B.in the rear of Loge's line.Barelegged, a red blanket fastened about his throat with a big brass safety pin, a thermometer in one hand and a medicine bottle in the other, he tottered, crazily and weakly between Loge and Barnstable, chanting a vers libre poem in a shrill, insane voice.
Loge, who had extended himself in a vigorous lunge, was struck by the weight of the young anarchist's body at the crook of the knees, and came down on the deck at full length, his machete flying from his hand as he fell.
Cleggett was upon the criminal in an instant, his hand at the outlaw's throat.They grappled and rolled upon the deck.But in another second Wilton Barnstable and Barton Ward, coming to Cleggett's assistance, had snapped irons upon the president of the crime trust, hand and foot.
His overthrow was the signal of his men's defeat.As he went downthey hesitated and wavered.The two great negroes, taking advantage of this hesitation, burst among them with mighty blows and strange Afro- American oaths, Castor and Pollux in bronze.With a shout of "Banzai!" Kuroki rushed forward with his kris; the other defenders added weight and fury to the rally.Before the irons were on the wrists of Loge his men were routed.They leaped the rail and made off for their fleet of taxicabs, flinging away their weapons as they ran.
Loge writhed and twisted and lashed the deck with his legs and body for a moment, striving even against the bands of steel that bit into his wrists and ankles.And then he lay still with his face against the planks as if in a vast and overwhelming bitterness of despair.
It had been Cleggett's earlier thought to take the man alive, if possible, and turn him over to the authorities.But now that Loge was taken he burned with the wish for personal combat with him.He desired to be the agent of society, and put an end to Logan Black himself.
Cleggett, as he gazed at the fellow lying prone upon the deck, could not repress a murmur of dissatisfaction.
"We never fought it out," he said.
Whether Loge heard him or not, the same thought was evidently running is his mind.He lifted his head.A slow, malignant grin that showed his yellow canine teeth lifted his upper lip.He fixed his eyes on Cleggett with a cold deadliness of hatred and said:
"You are lucky."
Outwardly Cleggett remained calm, but inwardly he was shaken with an intensity of passion that matched Loge's own.
"Lucky?" he said quietly."That is as may be.And if, as I infer, you desire a settlement of a more personal nature than the law recognizes, it is still not too late to accommodate you.""Desire!" cried Loge, with a movement of his manacled hands."I would go to Hell happy if I sent you ahead of me!""Very well," said Cleggett."Since you have challenged me I will fight you.I will do you that honor."Loge was about to answer when Wilton Barnstable broke in:
