Читать книгу The Men Who Wrought - Cullum Ridgwell - Страница 8

A grey, northern day devoid of all sunshine; a forbidding, rock-bound coast lost in a depressing mist; a flat, oily sea, as threatening to the mariner as the mounting hillocks of storm-swept water; a dull sense of hopelessness prevailing upon the still air. All these things marked the approach to Borga; for Nature was in a repellent mood, a thing of repugnance, of distrust and fear.

A long, low craft was approaching the gaping jaws which marked the entrance to the heart of the island, somewhere away in the distance, lost in the grey mists which seemed to envelop the whole land.

The deck was narrow, and guarded by a simple surrounding of low rails. Amidships was a curious construction which was at once the support of the periscope, the conning-tower, and the entrance to the interior of the vessel. Dotted about the deck were several sealed hatchways, and the sheen of glassed skylights. The whole thing was colored to match the surrounding grey-green waters.

Two uniformed figures were standing for'ard in the bows. One of them was beating the air with twin flags, one in each hand. The other stood by contemplating the book in his hand, and at intervals scanning the repellent shore through a pair of binoculars.

Presently the signaller spoke.

"One, six, four, seven, nine, three, two," he said, reciting the combination of numerals in German with the certainty of familiarity.

"One, six, four, seven, nine, three, two, it is," replied the observer, in a similar, ill-spoken tongue. "That's 'proceed,'" he added, referring to his book.

Forthwith the signaller produced a pocket telephone connected with the conning-tower by a long insulated "flex," and spoke over it. A moment later the throb of engines made itself felt, and, in response, the spume broke on the vessel's cut-water, and left a frothing wake astern.

The vessel passed the mist-hooded granite headlands. It left them behind, and itself became engulfed in the grey threat lying between the overshadowing heights towering upwards nearly five hundred feet towards the leaden sky.

The two men on deck gave no heed to their immediate surroundings. They were men of the sea, hard and unimaginative. They were concerned only with the safety of the vessel under them. They would drive her into the very gates of Hell, if such were their orders. But they would avoid, with all their skill, the pitfalls by the way. They knew that the secrets of this gloomy abode were many, as many perhaps as those of the very Hades they would have been willing enough to face. They knew, too, that those secrets, just as the secrets of the other place, were calculated to destroy them if they diverged one iota from the laws which governed the place. So they worked exactly, and took no chances.

The channel quickly began to narrow. The vast cliffs drew in upon them in their overpowering might. The barren shores were visible to the naked eye, and the white line of heavy surf boomed and boomed again in its incessant attack upon the grim walls. Higher up small patches of pine trees clung desperately to insecure root-holds, like the intrepid Alpini seeking to scale impossible heights.

A few minutes passed and a boat, a small petrol-driven vessel, like some cockle-shell amidst its tremendous surroundings, shot out from the shore and raced towards them. It had a high, protected prow, and its great speed threw up a pair of huge white wings of water till it had something of the appearance of an enraged swan charging to the attack of an enemy. Again the signaller spoke over his telephone, and the vessel slowed down, and finally hove-to.

The patrol boat drew alongside. Two men, amidships, in oilskins, held a brief conversation with those on board the intruder. Then their vessel passed ahead, and the bigger craft was left to amble leisurely along in its wake.

The cliffs had closed down till less than half a mile of water divided them. The narrow strip of leaden sky above looked pinched between them. For a mile and more ahead there was no change. The narrow passage, with its racing tide, was full of hidden dangers, not the least amongst which being a crowded mine-field which lined either side of the channel.

As the journey proceeded the gloom increased. Added to the natural mists the atmosphere took on a yellow tint, which suggested an overhanging pall of smoke. There was no joy in the aspect anywhere.

The end of the passage came at last, and the pilot boat dropped astern. Its work was finished, and it raced back to its watching-post.

Now a complete change came over the scene. But it was scarcely a change for the better. It was only that Nature, having done her worst, left the rest in the safe hands of human ingenuity.

The frowning cliffs abandoned their threat. They ended as abruptly as they had arisen out of the sea. They fell back on either hand, carrying the shore with them, and merged into a mist-crowned hinterland of dark woods and wide ravines, with a wide-stretching foreshore, upon which was built a great city, entirely surrounding what had developed into a miniature, landlocked sea.

Nature had certainly left her incomplete effort in capable hands. Whatever beauty a brilliant sunshine, accompanied by a smart breeze, might have discovered upon the inhospitable shores of Borga in their pristine state, man's hand had contrived to destroy it. The whole prospect was sordid, uncouth, and suggested something of a nether world of lugubrious fancy. All that could be said for it was the suggestion of feverish industry on every hand. The buildings looked all unfinished, yet they were in full work under a great strain of pressure. Borga had been built in a hurry, and all connected with it suggested only haste and industry.

There were no public buildings of classic model. There were no roads and avenues beautified by Nature's decorations. Just alleys and thoroughfares there were, and only sufficiently paved for the needs of the work in hand. The quays and docks were solid – only. The great machine shops, staring-eyed and baldly angular, suggested only the barest necessity. And though their hundreds of floors sheltered thousands of human workers, and acres of elaborate machinery, not even a cornice, or coping, or variation of brickwork had been permitted to make sightly a structure purely for utilitarian purposes. The slipways at the water's edge, and the gaunt steel skeletons they contained, were merely slipways, without other pretensions. A thousand smokestacks belched out of their fetid bowels an endless flow of yellow, sulphurous smoke upon an already overladen atmosphere. They stood up like the teeth of a broken comb, and added to the sordidness of the picture.

A faint relief might have been found for the primitive mind in the numberless blast furnaces to be detected on almost every hand by their shooting tongues of flame. Like all else in Borga they never ceased from their efforts. Theirs it was to give birth to an everlasting stream of molten metal with which to fill the crudely-wrought sand moulds for the containing of pig-iron. The rolling mills, too, might have been not without effect. Those cavernous worlds of incessant clamor rolled the hours and days away, and took no count but of the output from their soulless wombs. The homes of the deep-noted steam hammers, and the fierce puddling furnaces, where men, bare to the skin except for a loin-cloth, with greased bodies, endure under showers of flying sparks and a heat which no other living creature would face. These sights were perhaps not without inspiration. But the sordidness of it all, its crudity, its suggestion of hideous life were on every hand; in the shrieking locomotives, with their tails of laden, protesting trucks; in the beer-drinking booths; in the vast heaps of rubbish and waste lying about in every direction; even to the almost bestial type of man whose brain and muscle made such a waste of industry possible.