Читать книгу American Captain - Эдисон Маршалл - Страница 16

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The girl’s clean lines gave a trimness to her figure and a vividness to her face. They curved boldly or subtly, with no straight line on her, unless it was her nose; and on second look, it had a little upward tilt. Barefoot girls almost never look tall. She did so, for she was a good five and a half feet and slimly made; but that slimness never suggested fragility or dimmed her femininity. Bosom and butt are the badge: in her case neither was large, but both were prominent enough to take a sailor’s eye and breath, trim, and, as is proper to young girls with spirit, rode somewhat high.

Her hair and rather heavy eyebrows appeared dusky black, and her skin might be called dusky too, as compared to the fair skins of England and New England. Actually it was only what we call a deep brunette, but it looked darker than her light gray eyes and set them off. The sea lights upon them in contrast with their thickets of sable lashes gave them a jewel-like brilliance my gaze could not resist.

Over her small, prominent, finely worked and fitted facial bone, the flesh was spare, taut, and given to high lights. Her mouth was unevenly shaped—the upper-lip thin, the lower full, and the curved line at one corner was deeper than at the other. I did not know what had attracted my eyes to this minor oddity until I perceived it as a clue to her identity. Perhaps it was a flaw in her beauty. If so, I did not want it changed. Perhaps it only caused her mouth to appear wistful and childlike, denying that she had everything and no use for me.

I had not yet seen her smile, but wished I could.

“Won’t you sit down and go back to your fishing?” she asked. “I’d like to watch you the little while before I must go.”

“I reckon I haven’t stopped fishing. I just haven’t paid it any mind.” This last was a Maine expression.

I sat down at my old place by the old snag, and she dropped on the sand beside me.

“My name is Sophia,” she told me. “What’s yours?”

This was deeper water than it seemed but, aroused and alert, I almost instantly saw through it. My last name did not matter, but hers did. I might have already heard it and its placing of her would prevent any easy communion between us. She wanted our meeting to be pleasant and interesting and uncomplicated; she might meet me a good halfway in that. But when we had parted, it would be over with.

“Homer,” I answered.

“Homer?” she echoed in agreeable surprise. “How would you like to be named Ulysses?” She was watching me closely.

“It would suit me all right. I liked him a lot better than Achilles.”

“Then you have read Homer! How wonderful!”

“Of course I read the poet I was named after!”

“Well—forgive me—but I was under the impression that most Americans can’t read, and if they can, they read only the Bible and their account books and that terrible traitor and mob-inciter—maybe I’m mistaken about him, too—Thomas Paine.”

“I think, ma’am, that you are.”

“Don’t get stuffy, Homer. Tell me about him later. Now I’ve got a surprise for you. The poet Homer visited this very island, possibly this very beach.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“I’m sure of it. Do you remember that Ulysses fell under the spell of the witch Calypso on an island? That island has since been identified as Malta. So doesn’t it stand to reason that Homer came here to get the proper background? In fact, I’ve positive evidence of it, but it’s secret.”

“I know what it is. You saw him with your own eyes three thousand years ago. You’re the witch Calypso.”

Her smile broke then, not a very brilliant one or beautiful either, yet wonderful to see. I could not have explained this very well. It broke slowly and was one-sided and twisted her mouth out of shape—not a smile that an artist would try to paint unless he was very great, then no one could forget the picture. I felt she did not smile much in front of folk—that kind of smiling was hard for her. But she smiled a great deal when she was alone at little things that amused and delighted her.

“Good for you, Homer!” she cried. “Only a London beau would say that, giving himself airs; but even they are more fun than the rough-and-ready fox hunters. I like Americans.”

“Good for you, Sophia.”

She was just a little startled, but remembered and smiled more.

“And you didn’t miss it as far as you think—about Calypso. I’ve been here only six months, but at least she and I know the same secret. I might even tell you someday. How long have you been here?”

“Nearly three months.”

“You said you are a sailor, no doubt ’fore the mast. But in America where people can get ahead——”

“I’m a second mate.” I did not tell her my honors were brevet only.

“Oh, that’s fine!”

“Why did you assume I was ’fore the mast? I have been until very lately.”

“Well, the only ship officers I know are Royal Navy. The younger they are, the more swagger—but some of the old captains are plain as you are. What are you doing in Malta?”

“Resting my leg after breaking it in an accident at sea.”

“Will you tell me about it?”

“Not now, if you please. Did you say you were from Wiltshire?”

“No, I didn’t. I said I knew Wiltshire. I was raised in Cornwall. My mother was Cornish—she was dark Cornish as I am—and I lived at her old home while Papa was at sea.”

“Well, I’ve been to Cornwall. We put in at Boscastle when running Napoleon’s blockade—and had a heavy haul getting in.”

As I spoke, her expression was changing in a wonderful way. The color rose in it until her cheeks were a dark quince and her mouth was a dark red.

“Did you hear the ghost bells?” she asked.

“No, but a passel of us went inland——”

“Wait just a minute. What does ‘passel’ mean?”

“We use it to mean a bunch of us.”

“Go on. If you went to Bodmin moor——”

“That’s where we did go. We went to see the stone monuments. They were more strange than the ghost bells. The whole moor was strange.”

“Tell me about it.”

“It’s a great green and gray and brown waste. The only houses are stone huts where shepherds live. There are no roads but sheep paths and grass-grown ruts. I didn’t see many trees, but there are great masses of granite that look like shapes of things——”

I stopped, because I knew from her eyes that she knew all this far better than I.

“Please go on,” she said. “Like the shapes of what?”

“Of nothing you could recognize—something outside the world; they suggest mystery and sorrow.”

“How did you come to have such clear eyes, Homer? What did you hear?”

“Nothing but the wind—I reckon it never stops blowing—and curlews shrieking and gulls crying and once in a while the bray of a marsh donkey way out on the moor.”

“Did you see Brown Willie?”

“How could we miss it? We would have climbed it if we’d had time.”

“I’ve climbed it a score of times.”

Those few words painted a picture for me of Sophia on the moors, her dusky hair blowing in the wind. It caused me to look at her again. She was long-legged and of light build and light on her feet, so she could walk far and fast when the way was long, or run with an old shepherd dog till his tongue hung out. This was so out of keeping with my ideas of a daughter of nobility that I reviewed the evidence. No, I had not been misled. She was of ancient lineage and proud name. But her mouth was not proud and cold, one that could not speak to me in a common language. I could not keep my eyes off of it. Her strained and crooked smile, at once joyful and forlorn, had made us intimates.

Then there came an exciting interruption. The line coiled about my wrist, with one loop in my hand, tightened so violently as to jerk my arm straight and me half off my seat. I caught it with the other hand and sprang to my feet. There was a great splashing and tugging as the fish’s run was checked and some excited squealing from my beautiful companion. Since I must not hoist him in lest the hook pull out—or give him any slack with which to throw it—he gave me a busy time for a minute or two, paying out and taking in line. When he tired, I worked him into the surf, then slid him onto the sand.

He was a beautiful blue-backed sea bass weighing at least twenty pounds.

“Oh, how wonderful!” Sophia cried.

“Would you like to catch one?”

“I’d adore to—to show Papa. He laughs at me when I tell him about the salmon I used to catch in the moor rivers—he thinks I made it up.”

“If a school’s come in to feed, the biting might be right lively. I’ll cast for you——”

“No, I can do that.”

When I had baited the hook and coiled the line at her feet, she whirled the lead and made a sixty-foot cast. Evidently she was a handy girl as well as a healthy one. However, the hook fouled the lead just before it plunged, and she had to haul in.

I reached to untangle the gear, but she showed eager as a child to do everything herself, so I sat down at my ease. Looping the end of the line about her waist to free her hands, she soon had it clear. Her second cast was clean and apparently the bait fell just in front of a fish’s nose. The line began to run out. With a shriek she seized it with both hands, but it ran through them, no doubt burning the skin. The thought flashed through me that she had hooked a shark, so swift and powerful was the run, so I rose quickly to give her a hand if she needed it, or if it came to that—such things had happened at beach-fishing—cut the rope.

By now the last coil had jerked straight and, being caught off balance, she was being tugged toward the surf, her legs flying to save her a fall. But I was quite sure now that she had hooked nothing more formidable than an oversize bass, and watched her in great joy. As soon as she could apply her strength, she began to break his run. When she had splashed into shallow water, she stopped and held fast.

But the fish had not yet confessed her his master. He fought with fury, causing the line that held him yet to flay her waist and burn her hands. I had no idea of helping her, for my own satisfaction as much as hers, but I waded out to stand beside her. Of course I watched her instead of the fish. I had seen few sights as thrilling as this slender young girl, her skirt flying like a dancer’s, careless of showing her shapely legs, her jacket so tight that her saucy breasts bid fair to break through the cloth, her hands gripped on the rigid line that ripped in great arcs through the water, her face quince-red from excitement, and her eyes ablaze. She did not squeal or shriek, for she had no breath to spare. And I, too, was short of it from wanting her to win.

My fear of the hook tearing out proved groundless, but he was trying hard to throw it, and once the fish leaped clear of the water, shaking himself and shining, splendid and immense. Soon Sophia began to force him in. Whenever he yielded line, she took and held it, her face dripping with sweat and splashings, and its bound-and-determined look gave me great joy. Before long she hauled him into the low surf where he flopped and threshed in a final frenzy, then to the water’s edge. There he lay, all blue and silver, a wild, new-found sixty-pound inmate of the ocean, brought up from the dark depths to shine in the shallows at our feet.

But he was not yet in hand. A ridge of sand prevented Sophia from sliding him up the beach. Then my eyes bulged to see the hook hanging, all but torn loose and its barb exposed, at the corner of his mouth. One flop could easily dislodge the point; then instantly he would feel the thrill of freedom and surge back to sea.

“Be careful,” I told her.

She nodded, and carefully shortened her line to about a yard. Then she waited for the next high wave—the seventh, as it is called, although truly such waves do not come at any regular sequence. It rolled lightly in and lifted the fish to the top of the ridge of sand. At the same instant she drew him gently over. Then I must holler, for a second later she had him by the gill, dragging him clean up the beach.