Читать книгу The Cruise of The Violetta - Arthur Willis Colton - Страница 9

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Trinidad—January.

WHAT a world! What a woman!

From the way in which Mrs. Mink collected you and me, it was clear that she had a knack, a genius, nay, even let us say, a tendency toward collecting people. In point of fact, no sooner were you gone than she collected a Professor of Logic.

His name was Simpson, Professor Simpson. It was at San Juan. Why did she collect him? Now you speak of it, I reckon it was for a sort of a breakwater to me. Gracious heavens! It wasn't for want of logic. Never! But it is just possible that she found me, at the time,—I suspected it—that she found me rather—shall I say?—overflowing, rather a deluge.

Professor Simpson was a man whose presence I should ordinarily have welcomed for the educational value of his company, but I didn't welcome him. He was small in person, dry of face, categorical in manner, testy in temper, Presbyterian in religion, pedantic in language, undoubtedly learned. But did he understand his function to be merely a breakwater to me? He did not. Let that pass for the present. Mrs. Mink collected him at San Juan, and we steamed away to Martinique. Here, one day, on or about the tenth of December, we lay in the roadstead of St. Pierre.

We were intending to go on that day, but about two-thirds of the Violetta's crew were in St. Pierre on shore leave. Captain Jansen came aboard some time after noon, and finding the men had not returned, became excited, took all the boats, and the remainder of the crew, even down to the cook, to help him collect delinquent mariners the faster, and went ashore again. We four were left on the Violetta: Mrs. Mink, Norah, Professor Simpson, and I.

The weather was calm to the point of deadness. Mont Pelée, that smouldering volcano, that suppressed Titan, was asleep. Not a cloud in the sky, not a ripple in the bay. Jansen appeared to be having trouble, for an hour passed, and the missing crew had not returned.

Between you and me, as man and man, the delinquent mariners were in the lockup, but Mrs. Mink does not know that, as yet. You can't rivet a nail in a boiled potato, nor temperance in the tempestuous seaman, but Mrs. Mink doesn't know that, as yet.

We were just commenting upon a dark, small, condensed looking cloud which had appeared above the shoulder of Mont Pelée, questioning whether it was an exhalation of the volcano, Pelée in eruption. Was Mont Pelée about to overwhelm St. Pierre, a Vesuvius to Pompeii? Was I, like the elder Pliny, to perish, a suffocated naturalist, a philosopher in cinder?

But it grew with enormous rapidity. It seemed to have an uncommon knack of taking in nourishment, a terrifying appetite. I saw a house on the mountain side rise up and vanish, swallowed at a gulp. Professor Simpson got out his note-book and took notes. He described the cloud in his notebook as “bulbous, or bulging in form, in colour a bluish black, and unfolding centrifugally toward the edges.”

“In my opinion,” he said, “we are ourselves in some personal danger. I believe this is what is commonly called a tornado. Do you differ from me, Dr. Uls-water?”

I said: “Not there, professor, though it's late in the year for West-Indian hurricanes. The most pointed opinion I've got is that this deck is going to be a wet place in a minute.”

We'd hardly got to the cabin before the roar was audible, and grew till we could not hear ourselves. One minute more and the Violetta gave a jerk that threw us on the floor, Norah on Professor Simpson and Mrs. Mink on Norah. Between them they obscured him, on the whole, very well. I got up and looked through the port-hole, and saw only spray and splashing water. The ship was engaged in a sort of circular high-kicking dance, something between a waltz and a cancan. The professor remained obscure. Neither Mrs. Mink nor Norah saw their way clearly to getting off him, and for myself,—seeing that he kicked but vaguely, harmlessly,—I thought Mrs. Mink and Norah might as well suit themselves about it.

At the end of four minutes, perhaps five or ten, the tumult had subsided to a strong wind and heavy sea. I went on deck, and discovered that the Violetta had been torn loose from her anchor, and was drifting rapidly. The mist, however, was too thick to see far in any direction. By the point from which the tornado had come, I judged that we had been driven out of the roadstead and were moving perhaps west, or northwest, on the open sea. A broken spar hung from the short rigging and beat against the mast, and the deck was awash with water. I went back to the cabin, and mentioned my inferences. Mrs. Mink jumped up and said:

“Nonsense! It's impossible.”

“But, my dear Mrs. Mink,” said the professor, rising, “surely a situation that is in esse, in actual existence, cannot be described as 'impossible.' It is, as you mean to imply, however, most distressing.”

“Fiddlesticks! What shall we do?”

The professor reflected. On reflection, he said he thought it needed reflection. I thought we might as well remain where we were. He objected that, being in motion with the ship, it was not in our power to remain where we were, but, as regards our relations to the ship, I was perhaps right.

What a man!

Mrs. Mink said we'd better have supper.

The mist was turning to rain, the violence of the waves gradually subsiding, and the wind growing more moderate. Norah and I went to the galley. She cooked and I carried. After supper it was dark. A pitch-black and rainy night came down on the troubled sea. The professor and I agreed to watch alternately. He went to bed and I lay down on the cabin sofa. I listened to the creak and thump of the loose spar, the murmur of the rain, the splash of waves against the Violetta's sides. I reflected that our situation was perhaps more unusual than perilous; that we were likely to be seen by somebody if the weather cleared; that after all the sea is in reality a less eventful element than the land; that a philosophic mind is better than a feather bed; that with reasonable good luck and a philosophic mind I might have the credit of a nightlong watch over Mrs. Mink's slumbers, along with the benefit of a night's rest. So reflecting, I went to sleep.