第63章 TRANSFORMATION OF MARTIN BURNEY(2)

After dinner Burney walked thirty yards down the river bank away from the maddening smell of the others' pipes.He sat down upon a stone.He was thinking he would set out for the Bronx.At least he could earn tobacco there.What if the books did say he owed Corrigan? Any man's work was worth his keep.But then he hated to go without getting even with the hard-hearted screw who had put his pipe out.Was there any way to do it?

Softly stepping among the clods came Tony, he of the race of Goths, who worked in the kitchen.He grinned at Burney's elbow, and that unhappy man, full of race animosity and holding urbanity in contempt, growled at him: "What d'ye want, ye -- Dago?"Tony also contained a grievance -- and a plot.He, too, was a Corrigan hater, and had been primed to see it in others.

"How you like-a Mr.Corrigan?" he asked."You think-a him a nice-a man?""To hell with 'm," he said."May his liver turn to water, and the bones of him crack in the cold of his heart.May dog fennel grow upon his ancestors' graves, and the grandsons of his children be born without eyes.May whiskey turn to clabber in his mouth, and every time he sneezes may he blister the soles of his feet.And the smoke of his pipe -- may it make his eyes water, and the drops fall on the grass that his cows eat and poison the butter that he spreads on his bread."Though Tony remained a stranger to the beauties of this imagery, he gathered from it the conviction that it was sufficiently anti-Corrigan in its tendency.So, with the confidence of a fellow-conspirator, he sat by Burney upon the stone and unfolded his plot.

It was very simple in design.Every day after dinner it was Corrigan's habit to sleep for an hour in his bunk.At such times it was the duty of the cook and his helper, Tony, to leave the boat so that no noise might disturb the autocrat.The cook always spent this hour in walking exercise.Tony's plan was this: After Corrigan should be asleep he (Tony)and Burney would cut the mooring ropes that held the boat to the shore.

Tony lacked the nerve to do the deed alone.Then the awkward boat would swing out into a swift current and surely overturn against a rock there was below.

"Come on and do it," said Burney."If the back of ye aches from the lick he gave ye as the pit of me stomach does for the taste of a bit of smoke, we can't cut the ropes too quick.""All a-right," said Tony."But better wait 'bout-a ten minute more.

Give-a Corrigan plenty time get good-a sleep."They waited, sitting upon the stone.The rest of the men were at work out of sight around a bend in the road.Everything would have gone well --except, perhaps, with Corrigan, had not Tony been moved to decorate the plot with its conventional accompaniment.He was of dramatic blood, and perhaps he intuitively divined the appendage to villainous machinations as prescribed by the stage.He pulled from his shirt bosom a long, black, beautiful, venomous cigar, and handed it to Burney.

"You like-a smoke while we wait?" he asked.

Burney clutched it and snapped off the end as a terrier bites at a rat.

He laid it to his lips like a long-lost sweetheart.When the smoke began to draw he gave a long, deep sigh, and the bristles of his gray-red moustache curled down over the cigar like the talons of an eagle.Slowly the red faded from the whites of his eyes.He fixed his gaze dreamily upon the hills across the river.The minutes came and went.

"'Bout time to go now," said Tony."That damn-a Corrigan he be in the reever very quick."Burney started out of his trance with a grunt.He turned his head and gazed with a surprised and pained severity at his accomplice.He took the cigar partly from his mouth, but sucked it back again immediately, chewed it lovingly once or twice, and spoke, in virulent puffs, from the corner of his mouth:

"What is it, ye yaller haythen? Would ye lay contrivances against the enlightened races of the earth, ye instigator of illegal crimes? Would ye seek to persuade Martin Burney into the dirty tricks of an indecent Dago?

Would ye be for murderin' your benefactor, the good man that gives ye food and work? Take that, ye punkin-coloured assassin!"The torrent of Burney's indignation carried with it bodily assault.The toe of his shoe sent the would-be cutter of ropes tumbling from his seat.

Tony arose and fled.His vendetta he again relegated to the files of things that might have been.Beyond the boat he fled and away-away; he was afraid to remain.

Burney, with expanded chest, watched his late coplotter disappear.Then he, too, departed, setting his face in the direction of the Bronx.

In his wake was a rank and pernicious trail of noisome smoke that brought peace to his heart and drove the birds from the roadside into the deepest thickets.