Читать книгу American Captain - Эдисон Маршалл - Страница 20

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Despite temptation to put on my best clothes, I went to the rendezvous dressed the same as yesterday—a linen shirt with a fly collar and rolled-up sleeves, kersey trousers slashed off at the knee, and brogue slippers unhurt by wet. At first I was inclined to walk fast, but on thinking this might not be good for my leg, as well as lowering to my self-esteem, I took an easy pace. My haversack contained a flask of Tokay wine instead of Marsala, imported from Hungary and of deeper color and more heady, but hardly more dear.

By the time I arrived, I had convinced myself that Sophia would not come. I took out my silver watch and looked at it. It had been found in my father’s pocket, strapped to his belt, and I had thought I could never bear the sight of it until I remembered what a friend it had been to him, serving him almost as well as an Earnshaw chronometer serves a great ship o’ the line; then I had felt ashamed of my weakness, had it cleaned and oiled, and kept it by me constantly. Even in gales at sea I had worn it in a bag of oilskin lashed to my pocket. Gazing now into its candid face, as cheerful to instruct a man of the hour of his hanging as a child in the long time ere she must go to bed, I came to a sober conclusion.

I was not going to count time in my affairs with Sophia. I had nothing important to do with it even if I saved it, so I would give the day to her. If she made no use of it, it was still hers. If she never knew of the gift, I would still be glad I had made it. There were plenty of rocks to sit on, sand to doze in, sea to look out upon, sky to gaze into, birds to watch, wool to gather, castles in Spain to build. I was still aglow with the wisdom of the resolve when a little warm hand slipped into mine. From some unseen station behind the rocks, Sophia had stolen upon me, noiseless as an Indian. A thrill of happiness filled my body and being.

She was dressed more gaily than yesterday. Presently I recognized her costume as that worn by Sicilian peasant women, whose husbands and fathers leased vineyards in and about Notabile, and whom I had seen tending vines. She wore her hair in two black braids. In her hand was an almost empty oilskin bag of the expensive kind used by English naval officers to protect precious belongings from salt water.

“Homer, did you bring any lunch?” she asked before I could quit grinning.

“Of course.”

“Will you be hungry for it in an hour? Bad news first—I can stay only two hours. I brought something nice to go with it.”

I nodded.

“Now here’s something much more important. Can you swim? Papa says lots of sailors can’t swim.”

“I could swim from here to ...” But I stopped, deciding not to brag.

“Oh, good. I can swim a little—I learned on the moor pools, with an old nurse who could swim like a salmon. We’re not going swimming, but we have to go in deep water to get where we’re going. And we must start at once.”

She led me to the end of the stretch of beach, then up and on rugged cliffs. When we had kept the high ground for about a half a mile, she took me down what looked like a goat path into a cove, surrounded by crags and cliffs except for a cleft, clean-cut, blue with the light of sea and sky, appearing more narrow than it was, but still not forty fathoms broad, by which a ship might enter. The water lay as still as in one of our little lakes in the hollows of the Maine hills in deep summer. Since the cove opened to the south, sheltered from the prevailing northeast winds, I thought it would rarely roughen enough to rock a fishing smack. It was a deeper blue than the darkest sapphire, except on the shoals, where it appeared emerald green.

Part of the cliffs rose almost sheer; some of the multi-colored crags overhung the water, shutting out the sun, so the effect was of wild grandeur. I had seen many coves somewhat like it on Malta’s rockbound coasts, but had missed this one somehow, the most impressive of all.

A rough path, part of which appeared hewn out of the rock, encircled the basin. We followed this until a steep crag barred our way.

“We’ve got to swim for it now,” Sophia told me, flushed and sweating from the exercise and lovely with happiness. “When we’re ready, the most proper way would be for me to leave you here, go alone, and then call you.”

“Don’t leave me.”

“What have you under your breeches?”

She perceived the odd sound of this as soon as it came forth, but she gave no sign of embarrassment and trusted me to make courteous reply.

“Nothing but me.”

“Do you mind getting them wet?”

“Not in the least.”

“Well, I brought an old pair of our groom’s breeches for you to put on when you get there. Take off your shirt and brogues and put them in my bag, also the lunch, and your valuables. Leave your haversack here. I’ve got to strip down to my shift and slashed-off pantalettes. My aunt in Bodmin wouldn’t think that very modest, but I think it’s all right. When we’ve got everything we need in the bag, we can ferry it over on a board. Even if it falls off, it won’t sink with the air in it, or let in any water. There are plenty of boards around here—I see one close by the path.”

I saw it also and two more. They were hand-hewn, four feet long and two feet wide—very handy for the purpose. Obviously more than one swimmer had employed them to convey small articles and bundles across a water gap.

“Then we’ll get ready,” she went on. At once she went half out of sight in a cleft in the rock.

I caught only one clear glimpse of her before she slipped into the water, and it would take not a gentleman, only a clod, not to catch his breath. Suspended by a band on each side, her shift was cut below the round of her shoulders and across the swell of her breasts. No doubt it was the kind she wore at balls to permit a low-cut bodice, often the strings tucked away not to mar her partner’s view of her glossy shoulders; but she could have worn a more modest kind on today’s adventure. The white cloth enhanced the dark glow of her flesh. As she laved, she did not shrink from the crystal clarity of the water. Indeed no crystal I had ever seen had its illuminating quality; it emphasized every tint of color and grace of movement. I made haste to put in her oilskin bag my shirt, silver watch, flint-and-tinder which no sailor respectful of the elements ever goes without, and my packet of lunch; then clamped it watertight and balanced it on my board. The latter was easy to steer with one hand, and I needed only my feet for paddling, so when I came up to her, I took her hand.

A little way around the side of the crag, she stopped and tread water.

“You see the dark shadow on the limestone beginning about three feet down?” she asked.

“Of course.”

“It’s the mouth of a cave, but its floor rises steeply, and within fifteen feet comes up above water. All the rest of the cave is dry as a barn.”

Such are the vagaries of the human mind that I thought of the beaver houses on the ponds at home, whose entrances are likewise water-sealed, but whose interiors are snug and warm.

“It’s easy to go in empty handed,” Sophia went on. “Do you think you’ll have trouble taking in the bag?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Then I’ll lead the way.”

She dived, kicked once, and disappeared. Close in her wake, I carried down the bag and swam head first into the arched aperture in the rock. The sudden loss of the brilliant Mediterranean sunlight all but blinded me, but I had entered no realm of total darkness, and after a stroke or two I became aware of diffused light and then the ghostly form of Sophia emerging from the water above me. It shoaled swiftly with plenty of headroom. I waded out of a luminous pool, about twenty feet in diameter, lying in the lower end of a dim chamber in the rock. Entering had been no feat at all. Anyone who could hold his breath for a few seconds could do so with ease.

I had already guessed that the gap in the limestone had once been the outlet of an underground watercourse. Except that this lay some feet below sea level, the cave was no doubt similar to numerous others in the rockbound coasts I knew. However, it was very strangely lighted, partly by starlike fissures high aloft, but mainly by the luminous waters over the cavern mouth. These cast a glimmer into the cave as soft as candlelight and no stronger than that poured down from a rounding moon, yet having a fairy quality such as imaginative people associate with fata morgana and will-o’-the-wisp.

“I know now the secret you share with Calypso,” I told my beautiful companion.

“I thought you’d guess it when I brought you here. Of course this is her cave. Where else could she have held Ulysses in enchantment for seven years?”

She was more beautiful than ever—my Calypso—in the dim, blue-tinted luminance; and my pulse leaped at our utter solitude. Still my wonder at her bringing me here lived on. I did not find a cheap explanation of a kind dear to riffraff. Whatever she gave me would be Beauty’s gift to a chosen one; whatever she yielded to me, it would be my fair winning in her sight. At present she held me her companion in a happy adventure.