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<h2>CHAPTER 26</h2> <div class="figleft"><ANTIMG src="images/image_t.jpg" alt="T" width-obs="85" height-obs="75" /></div> he tropic coolness of the night intensified as the hours advanced. An added freshness swept out from the shore carrying its scent of flowers and earth. The feasting pirates had evidently fallen asleep over their food and empty wine mugs, for they did not return. With a growing sense of uneasiness, Chris cautiously brought his head out from under his jade-green wing. He had had for the past hour the eerie feeling of being stared at, and he pecked at his scarlet and yellow breast feathers while sending a glance about the cabin. He knew without having to look, where the source of his uneasiness lay. Claggett Chew had turned on his right side and fixed him with a pale, piercing, and unblinking eye. So fixed, it was, that for a heart-thudding moment Chris imagined his enemy to be dead. But after a longer pause than usual, the pale heavy lids finally blinked, though the unwavering eyes did not move from where Chris was perched, as nonchalantly as he knew how to, on the back of Osterbridge Hawsey's chair. The intelligence behind the stare was infinitely keen and resourceful. Chris, preening himself in a difficult effort to appear what he was not, knew that if Claggett Chew had not already guessed his disguise, he was certainly more than suspicious. Hastily, and with increasing starts of fear that sent the blood spurting through his veins, Chris cast about in his mind as to how he could distract Claggett Chew. As a parakeet, he was chained by the tough silk cord that bound his bird's foot. He glanced down. Osterbridge Hawsey's now sleeping head lolled like a child's to one side. Chris eyed the length of the coral silk cord, and then hopped lightly from the back of the chair to Osterbridge Hawsey's shoulder. A blink of his parakeet's eyes, from under their gray lids, showed him that Claggett Chew had him fixed in a penetrating and unwavering stare. In his role as parakeet, he moved sideways up Osterbridge Hawsey's shoulder, making for the shelter that the lolling head would afford to hide him from his enemy's eyes. As he moved step by step, the parakeet made small low, raucous noises—not loud enough to awaken Osterbridge Hawsey, but enough, he hoped, to make him seem a natural creature to the man who watched him so intently. As he neared Osterbridge Hawsey's neck, seeing the ridge of collar on which he intended to perch, Chris took heart and with a last quick effort, climbed the collar to hide behind Osterbridge Hawsey's head, under the thick cluster of curls tied with what was now a ratty black bow. He was, in this precarious shelter, about to change himself into a fly, when a scraping noise froze him with fear. Looking around Osterbridge's neck he saw that Captain Chew was making desperate efforts to get out of his berth, and had not taken his eyes from the place where he had last seen the parakeet. Chris knew in that moment with what an astute and formidable enemy he was faced. Paralyzed, he remained in his green and red parakeet feathers watching the motions of the injured pirate. Claggett Chew might be suspicious but he was also a fevered and badly wounded man. From his insecure hiding place, terrified at every sleeping movement from Osterbridge Hawsey, and even more fearful of what Claggett Chew intended, Chris stared out as purposefully as Claggett Chew had only a few moments before. <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="images/image_195.jpg" width-obs="600" height-obs="307" alt="Illustration" /></div> The ashen-faced man across the room in the glare of the hanging lamp heaved and pushed at the sides of the bunk, his eyes brilliant with high fever; the sweat of illness and strain glistening over his bare head and colorless face. He ground his teeth at the sudden, almost intolerable flashes of pain that gripped him when he moved his leg. Still he persevered, grasped at a corner of the bunk and pushed himself upright. If it was possible for his white face to become paler, some last vestige of color seemed to leave it. Claggett Chew threw up an arm to catch on something to steady himself, swayed and closed his sunken eyes. His arm caught the lamp, which, rocking, threw jet shadows as jagged as its light was harsh. Claggett Chew's prominent broken nose, and the deeply grooved lines running down from it to the thin lips under his mustache, changed the cruelty of his face into a brutal mask. To Chris, he scarcely looked human. He was a picture of all that was heartless and evil. But holding to the edge of his bunk, weakened and ill though he was, the power of his will still ruled his body. He doesn't know when he's licked, Chris thought, and not knowing—he isn't! Then, trying to hoist himself upright, Claggett Chew began beckoning and appealing to Osterbridge Hawsey, and Chris shook at the momentary possibility that some noise or word would awaken his sleeping hiding place. "Osterbridge! Osterbridge!" Claggett Chew cried hoarsely. "Wake up! Hear me!—Fire take your eyes!" he muttered in his rage, "can you not rouse? Osterbridge! Osterbridge!" But after a slight shift in position, Osterbridge Hawsey slept on. Claggett Chew, his face livid with pain, blood weaving down his chin where he had bitten his lip in an attempt to stifle his groans, managed to push himself up and totter to a chair against which he leaned weakly, calling out again: "Plague your bones! Osterbridge! You sot! Help me—you sleazy fashionable!" He started across the few feet of floor separating him from his friend, and, stooped though he was to adjust his height to the low-ceilinged cabin, nevertheless his bulk was a terrifying sight as he stumbled and staggered forward. His hairless head nearly scraped the ceiling, and his shoulders were as broad across as those of two men. His hands, white but strong and bony, twitched at the finger ends as if they were unused to idleness without hurting, or without the handle of his whip to grasp. Two steps forward, Chris saw, was all Claggett Chew needed to show him where the parakeet had gone, snatch him up, and snuff out his life as a candleflame is pinched between finger and thumb. Chris was tearing with his beak at the silk cord on his foot, raking at it between every look he sent towards Claggett Chew. Chris knew that if the pirate touched Osterbridge Hawsey, or worse, fell, the touch or the noise would succeed in awakening the heavily sleeping fop and the parakeet, exposed, would be an easy prey for Claggett Chew. The Captain of the Vulture, sweat rolling down his tortured face, his eyes starting from their deep-sunk sockets with the strain of keeping himself on his feet, began roaring at Osterbridge once more. "Osterbridge! Scummy no-good! Wake! That parrot has a scar on his jaw such as I once gave a boy! Osterbridge!" he roared with a final terrible effort. Then everything happened at once. Osterbridge Hawsey was aroused at last and sat up abruptly, heavy-headed and bleary, thickly asking: "Claggett! What a noise! Cannot a man be allowed to doze in peace? Where are your manners?" In the same instant, Claggett Chew reached out to pluck the parakeet from behind the sheltering head and neck of "the fashionable." Chris, with a superhuman effort, changed himself to a mouse, tearing his foot from the frayed cord that held it, and leaped into the air. Simultaneously, Claggett Chew, overcome by the approaching blackness he had been fighting, crashed to the floor unconscious. <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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