Читать книгу Mary's Neck - Booth Tarkington - Страница 10

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THE crashing and scraping and breaking didn’t last long; then the engine stopped and we seemed to be flopping around in deep enough water, not bumping any more; but Captain Turner looked a good deal disturbed.

“Might ’a’ been better for us if we’d hung up on that bunch o’ rock,” he said. “But now she’s banged and scraped all the way over it, and Lord knows what’s happened to her under water!”

“You mean there might be a bad leak?” I asked him.

“There certainly might!” he said. “We’d better get that dinghy into the water, the first thing we do, in case——”

I saw what he meant and it made me pretty uncomfortable, because there were five of us on the Wanda; that dinghy was only a little, flat-bottomed rowboat nine feet long and couldn’t possibly carry more than three people. If the Wanda had been damaged enough to make her sink, it looked like hard times ahead for somebody.

Back in the cockpit Clarissa was calling to know what had happened and what we were going to do. Mr. Bicksit wasn’t saying anything and Mr. Sweetmus was stating that in his opinion we’d hit something which in his opinion was a rock, though others were entitled to their own opinions upon the matter. Captain Turner and I hurried back to the davits, which were at one side of the cockpit, and got the dinghy lowered into the water; then Turner hustled forward again and disappeared down the little stairway that led into the cabin and to the engine compartment under the bridge. Right that same instant, Mr. Sweetmus, not saying anything, rolled himself over the side of the Wanda and plumped down into the stern seat—the best one—in the dinghy.

“What on earth are you doing?” I asked him pretty severely, though the truth is I wanted to do exactly the same thing that he’d done and only controlled the impulse by an effort. “What do you mean? Get back in this boat at once!”

“Why, no, Mr. Massish,” he said in a mild voice, and he looked up at me as though he felt surprised and maybe a little hurt by the severe tone I’d used to him. “Why, no. Course it’s only my own ’pinion, Mr. Massish; but, the way I look at it, that there vessell you’re in got an awful dreadful bump back yonder. Sounded to me like she got all creation busted out of her, and, the way I look at it the water must be fairly a-pourin’ into her on her under side somewuz. Course that’s only my own ’pinion and you——”

“Get back into this boat!” I told him. “That dinghy’ll only carry three people; there are five of us and we haven’t decided which three——”

“I couldn’t hardly do it, Mr. Massish,” he said argumentatively. “Way I look at it, that vessell you’re in is li’ble to take and go right straight to the bottom of the ocean almost any minute. Way I look at it, I’d be awful li’ble to git drowned in that there vessell. I wouldn’t be on her right now fer a million dolluhs, Mr. Massish. Way I look at it——”

He went on talking; but I turned to Clarissa, who was pretty white and trying not to tremble. “Get into the dinghy,” I told her. “Get in there quick!”

“No,” she said, and her voice wasn’t steady. “I won’t unless Paul——”

But young Mr. Bicksit interrupted her, and I certainly admired him for what he said and the way he behaved. “Don’t be absurd,” he told her. “Do what your father says and get into the dinghy immediately—you and your father both. Make her get in, Mr. Massey, and go with her, yourself. It’s the only thing to do.”

That young man looked pretty heroic to me, as he said this, and handsome, too. It seemed to me I’d never seen a better-looking young man—or one with better ideas, either. Of course when he spoke of me I said, “No, no,” in a protesting manner, though I didn’t want to sound too firm and kind of hoped that this fine young man would go ahead and argue me into doing what he said; but Clarissa was agitated and didn’t seem to get his point clearly. It made me nervous, too, the way Captain Turner and I didn’t seem to have much place in her consciousness just then.

She stamped her foot. “I won’t move one step!” she said, addressing Mr. Bicksit exclusively. “Never! Not unless you come with me! I refuse unless you——”

“Never!” he said, speaking the word even louder than she did; and he took off his coat, showing that he meant to put up a man’s struggle before he went down. “You and your father get into that boat and don’t talk any more about it!”

Clarissa began to cry. “This is a nice way to treat me!” she sobbed. “Do you think I could ever believe half what you told me this morning if you’re going to act like this?” It was curious, but her voice sounded really angry with him, and it seemed to me she was crying more because she was furious over the way he was behaving than because of anything else. “You told me I was the greatest influence in your life,” she went on. “Do you think this is any way to prove it? Do you dream you could swim to shore? It’s at least more than a mile! In this fog how would you even know what direction to swim in? If you don’t get into that boat this second I’ll never——”

Young Bicksit stepped toward her as if he meant to pick her up and put her into the dinghy. “You do as I say!” he told her. “Get into that boat!”

“I won’t! Never! Never! Never!”

“You will——”

“Never——”

“Hee-uh!” Mr. Sweetmus said, speaking up earnestly and interrupting. “Listen hee-uh!” He was holding to the side of the Wanda with one hand and looked uncomfortable because of the way his weight in the stern made the bow of the dinghy stick up out of the water. “I dun’t know nothin’ ’bout rowin’ and the way I look at it, whoever gits in hee-uh with me ought to be able to row this little boat. Course it’s only my own ’pinion, but the way that vessell you’re in ’pears to be saggin’ down to one side, looks like you better git the matter settled ’mong yourselves one way or ’nother ’fore very long. Better git it settled; better git it settled.”

Well, there’s no denying that what he said and the way he said it made me irritated with him. I was beginning to be a little seasick, too, on account of the boat’s having a soggy sort of roll after she stopped, and I knew I’d be more so if I didn’t get drowned pretty soon. Clarissa and her friend didn’t pay any attention to Mr. Sweetmus—they were in a state about saving each other and going on with their argument loudly—but I spoke to him with a good deal of indignation. Matters didn’t look right to me; he was a bachelor, and both Captain Turner and I had families to support—or at least, in my own case, investments had to be looked after and protected—and Mrs. Massey’s garden wasn’t so terribly important. She could get along without it if she had to, it seemed to me. “Get out,” I said to Mr. Sweetmus. “You get out o’ that boat! You climb back here and wait till we decide which three of the five of us——”

“Why, no, Mr. Massish,” he told me again, and looked at me reproachfully. “Way I look at it, I wouldn’t care to take the risk. That there vessell you’re in——”

But just then there was a startling, strange loud sound from inside the boat, as if it was giving a terrible sort of scream. I jumped, Clarissa shrieked, Mr. Bicksit got paler than he had been and Mr. Sweetmus gave kind of a flop in the dinghy and put his other hand on his stomach. But the noise was only Captain Turner coming up the little stairway and blowing a tin foghorn he’d got out of a locker; it certainly gave all of us a turn.

“My Orry!” Mr. Sweetmus called complainingly to Captain Turner. “Dun’t you know no better’n to make a noise like that without givin’ a man no warnin’?”

Captain Turner had brought a brass bell with him, as well as the horn, and now he began to ring it while he was blowing the horn. “What chance have we got?” I asked him, going up to him and shouting. “How long do you think there’s any hope this boat will——”

“Looks fairly bad,” he said, letting up on the horn. “Strut’s gone, keel’s splintered, I think, shaft’s busted and she’s taking in a good deal of water. If somebody doesn’t come along pretty soon and give us a tow, I guess we’ll have to get out the rubber boat for you and me. I didn’t want to do it because it’s quite a job to inflate her with the pump we got; but——”

“What rubber boat?” I asked him. “You mean to say we’ve got another boat on board?”

“Yes. It came with the Wanda; it’s under that after hatch. If we had to, you and I could use it and let the others take the dinghy; but——” He broke off, stopped ringing the bell and peered through the fog. “Guess we won’t have to, because we’re going to get a tow.” I couldn’t see anything anywhere; but he put his hands around his mouth and yelled: “That you, Ben?”

Then there was a hoarse voice out somewhere to the right of us. “Lookin’ fer a tow, George?”

“Guess you better!” Captain Turner shouted, and a lumbering, grey old fishing-boat with a two-cylinder motor chugging away in it and three men in oilskins, looking uninterested, came out of that thick smokiness and began to manoeuver alongside. Captain Turner passed them a towline; they went ahead, and, when the line tightened, the Wanda gave a stubborn kind of lurch and began to follow, upon which there was a loud complaint from behind, alongside the cockpit.

“Hee-uh!” Mr. Sweetmus called. “Ain’t you got no sense? Git me out o’ this little boat! Expeck me to drag my arm out of its slockit, holdin’ on all the way home!”

For my part I didn’t care much what happened to him, because it seemed to me that if I’d ever seen any human being make an exhibition of himself, he’d been the one. He didn’t know we had a rubber boat on board any more than I did, myself, which was a fact that made his disgrace apparent to everybody; but you never saw a more complacent expression than his after young Bicksit and Captain Turner hauled him aboard and he settled himself down in one of the comfortable chairs. “Nicer place to set on than that there hard board in the rowboat,” he said. “Long as they ain’t no more danger, why, the cushion in this chair is pleasanter to set on, though course that’s only my own ’pinion.”

We hoisted the dinghy back upon its davits; Captain Turner went below to see what he could do about the leak and a temporary repair of the steering-gear so as to help with the towing, and we began to get ourselves kind of settled down again and less emotional. As a matter of fact, though, this remark of mine about getting less emotional mightn’t properly apply to Clarissa; she seemed to want it known that she was indignant and had got her feelings hurt. Her face wore that expression; tears kept coming to her eyes, and she wouldn’t speak to that fine young Bicksit at all. If he came to her end of the cockpit she’d go to the other, and if he came there she’d go up on the bridge and turn her back to him. Mr. Sweetmus kept talking to both of them, and sometimes she’d answer him right politely to make it more pointed that she wasn’t speaking to her young friend. Mr. Sweetmus put his own interpretation upon this conduct of hers and I heard him explaining it to Mr. Bicksit, though the young man didn’t seem to take much interest, and very likely agreed mentally with me that Mr. Sweetmus’s tone was just about insufferable.

“Animals and childern and women,” he said. “Funny, but that’s always b’en the way; they’ll leave other people anywuz I go and come around me.”

He was still talking about this when we got back on shore, and I heard him saying more about it the next morning; but by that time the family’d got excited over something important, and Mrs. Massey wouldn’t even come and listen to what I wanted her to.