Читать книгу The Remittance Man - Ambrose Pratt - Страница 9

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"I can't understand why it is, Mr. Digby," said Marion, "that you have caught fourteen schnapper while Jack has only succeeded in hooking three. Your lines perfectly resemble; the hooks are the same, and the bait is the same."

"It's my beastly luck," growled Jack. "There, look at him—and I haven't had a bite for ten minutes!"

Digby swung a fine fish into the boat before the boy had completed his sentence. Casting it into the basket, he rebaited his hook and allowed it to fall over the side.

"Is it luck?" demanded Marion.

Digby shook his head. "Very often when several are fishing together from the same boat, one person will secure the bulk of the fish," he replied. "It may be luck, but I have noticed that fortune usually favors the oldest fisherman. I have over Jack the advantage of years."

"I've fished schnapper ever since I was a baby," grumbled Jack; "and you never saw one until a couple of months back. Confound it!" he shouted suddenly.

"What is it?" asked Marion.

"I've lost another. May his jaws ache for a month of Sundays! Blow him!"

Digby began to haul up his line.

"Baited?" queried, the boy.

"No, a small one—a 'squire,' I think."

"Weighs two pounds if it weighs an ounce!" said Jack, as the fish appeared. "Here, Marion, I'm full; take my line, and I'll get the lunch ready."

"No thank you," replied the girl.

"'Fraid of dirtying your hands?"

"No."

"Don't want to hurt the fish, I suppose," sneered the boy. "Oh Lord, you ought to go out and lose yourself! What do you think, Jan? I told her you could shoot 'Jacky Wintons' on the wing, and she nearly fainted with horror."

Digby glanced up at Marion. "I do not wonder you disapproved," he said; "they are harmless little creatures, and useless for food. It was a shame to shoot them."

"Then why did you?" asked the girl, her serious eye fixed upon him with an expression of surprised remonstrance.

"I was once upon a time in a black mood," answered Digby, "and it seemed to me that the poor little Jacky Wintons had so much in common with myself, that I shot one as a protest against the fate which sent us both into the world. Have you never committed suicide by proxy?"

"Never!" declared Marion. "And I cannot accept your excuse. Wanton cruelty is a thing I can neither understand nor forgive."

Digby pointed gravely at the fishing basket. "There is murder, too," he murmured.

The girl looked shocked. "They are needed for food," she cried, "and besides, they are slimy, cold-blooded creatures—ugh! Their very touch makes me feel creepy all over."

Digby smiled silently.

"Lots of people say that they cannot feel," protested Marion, who was nettled by his smile.

Digby made no reply, but he began to roll up his line, and when that was done, he put Jack's away as well.

"Are you not going to fish any more?" asked Marion.

"No."

"Why not? Are there no more about?"

"Yes—but——" he shrugged his shoulders. "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. We have enough for our joint requirements, and I am tired of shedding blood, even cold blood, in cold blood."

"You intended to rebuke me, I know," said Marion musingly. "I suppose I was inconsequent to blame you for killing a bird, and practically applaud your indiscriminate slaughter of fish."

"You judged either butchery from the standpoint of household economics," replied Digby, laughing lightly; "most women do. When I was a boy my mother used to wink at my playing truant if I brought home a basket of trout; but she invariably abused me if I employed my holidays in shooting rabbits. 'How you can find it in your heart to kill those sweet little pets, I don't know,' was her formula on such occasions. The fact was that our family shared a gastronomic objection to bunnies, while they adored trout."

"I call that drawing a herring across the track," asserted Marion severely. "Yours was the original crime."

"Peccavi!" laughed the man. "You have discovered me. If I could bring that Jacky Winton to life again I would."

"It would better become you to be sorry that you killed him."

Digby smiled on. "My virtues are countless," he muttered. "Of your charity permit me to cherish that one small sin."

Marion smiled in spite of herself. "Since I cannot bring you to a sense of its enormity, I may as well resist; but I am disappointed in you," she declared.

"The way of the reformer is always hard," said Digby, with a hypocritical sigh.

Marion laughed outright. "How absurd you are!" she cried.

"All women are priests at heart," he retorted. "And you have furnished the latest example of the proverb's wisdom."

"Hot beans, bread and butter," chanted Jack. "Ladies and gentlemen, come to your supper!"

"Hurrah!" cried Marion. "I am ravenous!"

Digby stood up and surveyed the horizon.

"Like your bread buttered, sis?" demanded Jack, his knife poised in mid-air above a loaf.

"And cut very thin," replied Marion, rising. "Will you help me forward, please, Mr. Digby—I am terribly awkward in a boat?"

"Kindly resume your seat," said Digby, in tones of sharp command. "Jack, put those things away at once. There will be no lunch for any of us to-day."

"What are you getting at?" cried Jack.

Marion, much startled, sat down and then looked up at Digby with fearful and inquiring eyes. "What has happened?" she asked.

"A black squall is coming," he replied, and he sprang forward to the mast.

Marion only half comprehended, but looking to sea she perceived a long line of purple clouds that had already enclosed the horizon was reaching shorewards slowly, but without a break in its dark impenetrable face. She noted, too, that the sea seemed strangely agitated. The gradual rolling swell of the morning had subsided, and the breeze had fallen almost still, but here and there without apparent reason a heavy oily wave would rise at intervals, then sink in tiny jots of spray.

The surface of the ocean, moreover, was splashed with long parallel glittering streaks of glass-still water that were interspersed with lines of ripples.

Marion was curiously regarding a flock of homing sea-birds that seemed to her to have sprung from the cloud-bank, when she became conscious that Digby had resumed his seat beside her and that the boat had begun to move.

"This coast is treacherous," she said. "I remember when a child to have seen storms arise in an hour and blow fearfully."

"I too;—the more fool I am to be caught unawares."

The hoarse voice that answered her surprised Marion so much that she turned to observe him. Digby seemed deeply moved, his brow was disfigured with a frown, and a line of strong white teeth were buried in his underlip.

"Is there danger?" she asked.

He nodded.

"Much?"

He nodded again, then faced her. "The squall must overtake us before we could possibly reach the bar!" he said grimly. "But we have one chance for our lives. I know of a little sandy cove about two miles away; if we can get there in time I shall beach the boat."

"And if not?"

"The worst, it is my fault, Miss Reay."

"Yes," said Marion, "I suppose it is." She was very pale, but she contrived to smile. "You might apologise," she murmured.

"I begin to envy the Jacky Winton," said Digby grimly. "I shall never transact business by proxy again."

"Look out there, Jack! A gust," he shouted presently. "Hold on for your life."

Marion saw a great wave rise behind them, and the boat seemed to stand on end. She clung desperately to her seat as with a sickening plunge the boat slid downwards in the trough and slipped its nose into a dark green mass of water. Next second it rose again staggering and quivering throughout its length. Marion shrieked aloud, but the sound was lost in a sudden roar of wind, and her eyes were blinded by a whirl of spray. She thought all was over, but the gust passed as suddenly as it had caught them, and, when her smarting eyes permitted her to see, she looked forth on a tumbling waste of foam through which they were moving with increasing speed. Jack was kneeling in a pool of water, at the bottom of the boat looking up at Digby and stammering excitedly. The boy's face was white, but his eyes were shining. "I don't believe there is another man in Ballina who would or could have done it!" he cried breathlessly.

"What did he do?" gasped Marion.

"He slipped the sheet and jumped overboard when the boat reeled over to his side, so as to ease her," cried the boy. "If he hadn't, we'd all have been in Davy Jones's locker now."

"That will do," cut in Digby. "More work, and less talk. We are half full of water. Bail her out, boy. Bail her out!"

Jack seized a dipper, and set to work forthwith, displaying a feverish energy that contrasted happily with his former indolence.

Marion watched him for a while trying to collect her thoughts. She was astonished and a little elated to discover that the worst of her fear had passed. She felt excited rather than terrified, and yet a glance to the windward convinced her that the danger was not over. The black cloud bank was above them now, racing for the sun with alarming speed; the sea was capped with multitudinous white horses, and the breeze had already grown to half a gale.

She looked last of all at Digby. He was sitting as far as possible from her, bent forward in a crouched position. His clothes were saturated and his wet face, glistened in the sunlight. She noted that his hand grasped the tiller with his full strength, perhaps unconsciously exerted. The tendons of his forearm and wrist stood out tautly like strained whip cords. Momentarily he shot a glance seawards, but his eyes always returned to their keen and anxious contemplation of the rocky shore. She was still curiously observing him when a sudden darkness enveloped the earth. The sun had fallen victim to the clouds.

Marion exclaimed, for the wind blew cold on instant and increased in vigor. Ten minutes of strained endurance followed, then came a blinding flash of forked lightning and a terrific crash of thunder.

The air was filled thereafter with a loud moaning howl that seemed to float far overhead.

"Thank God! It is blowing high!" said Digby.

Marion heard him distinctly and was comforted, but not for long. The motion of the boat grew labored and uneasy. She could distinguish nothing except in silhouette, and a drenching whirl of spray shut out all prospect of the land. She closed her eyes and began to pray. It seemed to her that an age had passed when she felt herself plucked from her seat and hurled downwards. Half insensible, she looked up and saw Digby standing erect fighting fiercely with the boom. The boat seemed to have stopped. Next moment a crash of thunder deafened her. She felt the planks on which she lay heave and tumble, and then the boat shot forward like a thing of life, caught in the grip of the squall. The mad rush that followed was a thing that she could never forget. Sick and half swooning, she gazed like one in a dream at the swaying stump of broken mast from which the sail and boom had been reft as by a giant's hand, and with every nauseous rise and plunge, she expected death.

A hand fumbled into hers at length and held it fast; Jack, overcome with terror, had crept to her for comfort, and presently he lay beside her moaning dismally. Marion forgot the world thenceforward, and if she prayed, it was only that the end might not be prolonged, for hope had fled from her and her heart was given over to despair. She had drifted by degrees into a state of lethargy when a painful shock partially revived her energies. It was as though she had fallen from a great height upon hard ground. She was bruised and shaken, and conscious of pain. She made an effort to rise but fell back weakly, uttering a groan. A second shock wrung from her lips a shriek, and then she swooned.

She recovered to find herself reclining on the edge of a small circular beach beneath the shelter of an overhanging cliff. The greater darkness of the storm had passed, but the world was curtained with a deluge of driving rain. Her brother and Jan Digby knelt beside her chafing her hands between their own. They looked inexpressibly wretched and bedraggled, but meeting her eyes both smiled, and Jack broke out into a stream of words.

"The fright you have given us," he cried. "My word, sis, I thought you were dead, and I was making up my mind to cut my hook and clear out. Face the governor and tell him I'd lost you—oh, no—not much! How do you feel, old girl? You look a bit butter-faced, but you'll soon buck up now. That's right, try and sit up. There's nerve for you, Jan, though she is a girl. There's nerve!"

Marion, however, fell back again as he spoke. "Water!" she gasped.

Jack thrust the mouth of a spirit flask none too gently between her lips. Marion swallowed a few mouthfuls with a wry face, but the color came quickly to her cheeks and presently she sat up unaided.

"How were we saved?" she asked.

"Ask Jan," cried the boy.

Digby met her eyes with a grave smile. "We had reached the mouth of this cove, the one, in fact, we were making for, when the black squall struck us," he explained. "It was providentially the case, for we had lost our sail and mast, and we could have beaten no farther, but the wind drove us straight in and beached the boat as well as I could have wished to do it myself."

"Of course you had nothing to do with it," growled Jack. "You let her drift in on her own—oh—of course!"

Digby laughed outright.

"Where is the boat?" asked Marion, searching with her eyes the foaming beach.

"Ask of the winds. She was smashed to bits at the first shock," laughed Jack. "Dad will be furious, he gave forty pounds for her last spring."

Marion looked hard at Digby. "If the boat was smashed, as Jack says, someone must have taken Jack and me from the water."

"I had the honor to render you that service," he answered, smiling; "and believe me, Miss Reay, no man ever found a task more grateful to his hands."

Marion nodded and rose slowly to her feet. "Father will be so anxious about us," she exclaimed. "Is there a path up those cliffs, Mr. Digby?"

"Yes; but a dangerous one to climb in such rain as this."

The girl laughed lightly. "That word has lost a great deal of its meaning to me after all we have gone through to-day."

"Better wait till the rain moderates a bit, sis," said Jack. "You haven't seen the path. It's an ugly one in the finest of weather."

"I am thinking of father," replied Marion. "He must be suffering agonies. Will you help me, Mr. Digby?"

Digby nodded and offered her his arm. So they moved out into the rain, followed by the boy, who grumbled ceaselessly in undertones.

The enterprise, however, proved so difficult that Marion more than once repented of her purpose. The path was narrow, slippery, and steep. It always overhung a precipice, and their journey was only rendered possible by the wind, which, blowing a steady gale in the right direction, sealed their bodies to the cliff's face when perilous angles had to be negotiated. They arrived at length upon the summit with bleeding hands and unstrung nerves, and not one of the three cared to glance back upon the dangers they had passed. Digby led the way in silence through a tangled maze of scrub to a little hilltop clearing that was bisected with a white, shell patched road.

At the knees of the hill they entered the scrub again. Half an hour's walk brought them to a swampy flat where the road was covered ankle deep in water. Crossing the swamp, Digby halted in the shelter of an enormous banyan-like fig tree, before whose base the road branched into two forks. Indicating one with a somewhat weary gesture to his companions, he bowed to Marion and said, "Our ways divide here, Miss Reay. Your house is but a quarter mile off by the path, while mine is yonder."

"But surely you will accompany us home?" said Marion. "My father will want to thank you—and besides——"

He interrupted her with a movement of his hand. "I must ask you to excuse me," he replied, his tones courteous but resolved. "Good afternoon, Miss Reay. Good day, Jack."

"Hold on, Jan," cried the boy. "I want to tell you something."

"Indeed." Digby paused and looked back.

"I spoke to dad this morning about you—and he is willing to give you a billet if you'll take it."

"Ah!" The man's face lighted up on instant, and he swung on heel, eager and excited as a lad. "A billet!" he exclaimed. "That's brave news, Jack; why did you not tell me before?"

"I was too disgusted," Jack answered bitterly. "Stoker on the launch was all he'd rise to."

Marion watched him keenly, her feelings divided between shame and curiosity. It seemed to her that Digby ought to treat the proposition as an insult, but to her surprise he merely smiled.

"When will my duties commence?" he asked. "Soon, I hope?"

"Dad said for you to see him at the house to-morrow morning at ten sharp," answered the boy.

"You may bet your boots, however, that we'll do our best for you in the meantime, won't we, Marion?"

The girl flushed painfully. "Why—yes," she stammered, "I am sure that father, when he knows——"

"Excuse me, Miss Reay," struck in the man, "I need employment badly, and I trust you will not make it impossible for me to find it in Ballina. It seems that Major Reay requires a stoker; well, I am prepared to serve him in that capacity, but in no other. I hope you comprehend me?"

Marion looked into his eyes, and found them hard as steel. "Yes," she faltered, "I—I think I do. Good-bye, Mr. Digby." She extended her hand, but he did not appear to see it.

"Good-bye!" he said, and was off.

Sister and brother watched him until a turn of the path shut his figure from their view.

"Come on," then said Jack. "No use loafing here. Fine colds we'll have to-morrow, any way."

When almost at the gate of "The Folly," Marion paused and laid her hand on the boy's arm. "If I were you, Jack," she murmured, "I would take your friend some whisky and things—before I changed my clothes. He doesn't live very far away, does he?"

"Going to," growled Jack. "Didn't want you to give me the office, either."

"What do you think of him now?" he asked a moment later. "Not such a bad sort after all's said and done, hey?"

"I think he is a gentleman," answered Marion.

"What did I tell you?" cried Jack, shaking his fist with a savage sneer in the direction of rain-washed Ballina. "Some of those women would hang an angel with their magging, if they could get a show. Don't talk to me of Lena Best again! Paugh!"

"Oh, Jack, what dreadful language you use!" said Marion. "And, indeed, you have no right to speak of my friends like that."

"Make them leave my pal alone, and I'll let them alone," retorted Jack as he opened the gate. "Lena Best told dad only the other day that she was game to bet that Jan was the burglar who broke into Phelan's store, and dad half believed her. Are you going to defend a cat like that?"

But Marion made no reply.