Читать книгу Hidden Country - Henry Oyen - Страница 7

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The Captain was bowing to me with the easy impressiveness of the man to whom ceremonial is no novelty. He was smiling. There was in his smile the good humor of an adult toward a half-grown child. He stood up very straight and precise, his shoulders at exact right angles to his thick neck, his out-thrust chest almost pompous in its roundness.

He was, I judged, exactly my own height, which was five feet nine, but so thick was he in every portion of his anatomy that the physical impression which he made was overpowering. His head and face were large and, thanks to a closely cropped pompadour, gave, in spite of considerable fat, the impression of being square. The eyes were out of place in his head. Hidden under half-closed, fat lids they were mere specks in size, yet when I had once looked into them I stared in fascination.

The head, and the fat, square face with its brutalized lines were frankly, flauntingly animal. The eyes betrayed a great mind. In that gross, brutal countenance the gleam of such an intellect seemed a shocking accident, one of those perversions of Nature’s plans which result in the production of abnormalities. What was this man? Was he the common creature of his thick jowls? or was he the developed man to whom belonged those eyes? Was that animal countenance but a mask? Or did the low instincts, which its lines betrayed, dominate, while the mind struggled in vain beneath such a handicap?

Those tiny eyes held mine and studied me cruelly. Before them I felt stripped to the marrow of my soul. My dreams, my weaknesses, my failures seemed to stand out like print for Brack to read. His superior smile indicated that he had read, that he had appraised me for a weakling; and for the life of me I could not control the resentment that leaped within me.

I looked him as steadily in the eyes as I could. He saw the resentment that lay there; for an instant there flickered a new look in his eyes; then they were bland and smiling again. But that instant was enough for each of us to know that one could never be aught but the other’s enemy.

“I am glad to see you on board, Mr. Pitt, as they say in the navy,” said Captain Brack with deepest courtesy.

“I am glad to be on board, Captain Brack,” I replied steadfastly.

“It is a pleasure to have for shipmate a literary man like Mr. Pitt.”

“It is a pleasure to contemplate a voyage in such company as Captain Brack’s.”

“We shall strive to make the voyage as interesting as possible, for you, Mr. Pitt,” said he.

“I am sure of that,” said I, “and I will do my poor best to reciprocate.”

“In a rough seaman’s way I have studied a little—enough to be interested in books. So we have, in a way, a bond of interest to begin with.”

“Mr. Chanler has told me something of your achievements, Captain Brack; I am sure you belittle them.”

It was very ridiculous. Brack had put me on my mettle; so there we stood and slavered each other with fine speeches, each knowing well that the other meant not a word of the esteem that he uttered. Yet as the luncheon progressed I was inclined to agree with George: Brack was a wonderful chap. The man’s mind seemed to be a great, well-ordered storehouse of facts and impressions which he had collected in his travels. Sitting back in his chair he dominated the company, led the talk whither he willed, and having said his say, beamed contentedly. And before the meal was over I had a distinct impression that Brack not Chanler, was master on the yacht.

Chanler, Brack, Riordan and Dr. Olson drank steadily throughout the luncheon. Mr. Wilson and myself drank not at all. As the luncheon neared its end, Chanler, his eyes steady but his under lip hanging drunkenly, broke out:

“Well, how about it, cappy? Did you land your two bad men?”

“Yes,” said Brack. “After luncheon I can promise you a little sport.”

Chanler laughed a dreary, half-drunken laugh.

“Gardy, we’ve fixed up a little sport. Awf’lly dull lying here. Have to pass the time some way.”

“If I may make the suggestion,” said Brack courteously, “perhaps Mr. Pitt has duties or wishes which will prevent him from viewing our little sport.”

“Not ’tall, not ’tall,” said Chanler.

“Perhaps it would be well for Mr. Pitt to wait a few days until—shall we say until he has become more accustomed to our ways—before treating himself to a sight of our little amusements?”

“Why so?” I demanded.

“Oh, it is merely a suggestion. Our sport is rather primitive—the bare, crawling stuff of life without the perfumery, wrappings, or other fanciful hypocrisies of civilization. Mr. Pitt does not look like a man who would admit that life so exists, and therefore must refuse to behold it.”

Chanler turned from Brack to me, his teeth showing in a pleased smile.

“Ha! Hot shot for you, that, Gardy. What say, old peg; where’s your comeback—repartee, and all that?”

As I hesitated for a reply, he tapped the table impatiently.

“Come, come, Gardy! A little brilliance, please. We don’t let him touch us and get away without a counter, do we? Ha! At ’im, boy; at ’im!”

“As Mr. Brack——”

“Ha! Mister Brack! Well, struck, Gardy; go on.”

“As Captain Brack has failed to inform me what it is we are about to see I, of course, can not be expected to express any opinion on it,” I said. “But as concerns ‘the bare, crawling stuff of life,’ I will reply that Life no longer crawls, nor is it bare.”

Chanler turned his eyes upon Brack.

“Your shot, cappy. What say to that?”

Brack bowed.

“I will reply by asking Mr. Pitt why he thinks life no longer is bare and crawling?”

“Because,” said I, “the mind of man has decreed that it should not be so. Because mas has erected a civilization in order to insure that life shall not be bare and crawling.”

“Civilization is not the point,” said Brack. “We spoke of Life. We, as we stand here, clothed, barbered, wearing the products of machinery to hide our bodies, we are Civilization. We, as we enter the bathtub in the morning, are Life—forked radishes.” He rolled his great head far back and looked down his thick cheeks at me appraisingly. “Some are small radishes; others are large.”

“Ha! Rather raw on you with that last one, Gardy. Small and large ones. You are small, you know, Gardy, compared to me or the captain.”

“Size can scarcely matter to radishes,” I said.

“Cappy, cappy! He scored on you there. What say to that?”

“I will say—” began Captain Brack, but Chanler had tired of his sport as suddenly as he had become interested.

“Rot, rot!” he said, tapping on the table. “You were going to amuse us with your new finds. Let’s have it.”

“Very well,” said the captain, arising. “It will be ready in fifteen minutes.”

I was glad of that respite of fifteen minutes. It gave me an opportunity to slip into my stateroom and pull myself together. Brack had shaken and stirred me as I had not thought possible. His terrific personality had exerted upon me the effects of a powerful stimulant. Once or twice in my life I had taken whisky in sufficient quantity to cause me to experience thoughts, emotions, elations which did not properly belong in the normal, self-controlled Me. Now I experienced something of the same sensation. My mind was buzzing with a hundred swift impressions and conjectures upon Brack.

The picture I had beheld and the words I had heard through the swinging doors of Billy Taylor’s repeated themselves to me, and I felt the same sensation of a chill that I had felt upon recognizing in Brack the big man from the saloon. The words which the small man had uttered were fraught with sinister suggestion. From them it was apparent that he recognized in the captain a man who was known as “Laughing Devil,” whose reputation, if the seaman’s words might be taken for truth, was not of the sort that one would care to have in the captain of the yacht on which one was sailing into far seas. Also it was apparent from the man’s words that Brack had made some sort of proposition: “a rich sucker,” had been mentioned.

My course was plain before me: to go to Chanler’s state-room, tell him what I had seen and heard, and demand that he investigate Brack’s actions or permit me to resign my position. I had no definite idea of what the words between Brack and Madigan might portend, but there was no doubt that they established faithfully the captain’s character. In my depressed condition I shuddered at the idea of putting to sea with such a man.

But—Captain Brack had smiled. That smile stopped me. The appalling brutality of the captain’s mental processes had started within me a slow, steady flame. It was ghastly; the man’s expression had shown that he considered me a thing to play with! The brute had looked in my eyes, had stripped me to the marrow, read me for a weakling, and smiled, so that I might know that he had seen all! And the worst of it was that he was doing it with a mind which weighed me calmly, without prejudice, with scientific calmness.

It was not fair, it was not human. The man should at least have refrained from forcing me to see how weak he considered me. And was I so weak? Was I the worm he thought me to be?

“No!” I cried aloud; and I was pacing the floor when Simmons knocked on my door.