Читать книгу Martin of Old London - George Herbert Ely - Страница 9
ОглавлениеA BLOW IN THE DARK
Martin found himself to be taking a rather unusual interest in this Portugal ship. It was impossible in the dusk to see her lines clearly; indeed, she was lying so low in the dock that even in the daylight one could not have obtained a good view of her. And the shipwrights’ work being over for the day, there was nothing going on upon her deck.
What interested Martin was not so much the vessel herself as the persons with whom she seemed to be connected. There was the foreign seaman whom he had twice seen waiting at the foot of the stairs. There was Mr. Slocum, who had embarked on that seaman’s boat. And now there was this third man, who had come with Mr. Slocum to the stairs, who spoke like an Englishman and also like a foreigner, and who was evidently very well known to the sleepy-headed seaman.
“There’s some mystery about all this,” Martin said to himself. “Mr. Slocum said it wasn’t safe for him to wait about at the stairs. Why? What reason can he have for coming or sending to this Portugal ship at all? Has she jewels or plate among her cargo, and he’s buying them? But why should he do it secretly?”
It was quite clear that he would not get answers to his questions by staring at the vessel. Two or three swarthy men in outlandish costumes were now moving about the deck: he heard their strange voices, so unlike the sing-song of English sailors. The lighting of a lamp reminded him that black night would soon lie upon the river.
“It’s time to be off,” he thought, and, turning about, he walked back without hurry to his boat, cast her off, and began to pull out into mid-stream.
The tide was now slack, just on the turn, and he was glad that he would not have to row against the current.
He had taken no more than half a dozen strokes when the silence was broken by loud shouts from the direction of the repairing yard. Turning his head, he saw a small figure in the act of diving into the river from a little jetty at the angle of the yard, and behind him a number of much taller forms rushing along as if in pursuit.
It was so nearly dark that all these figures were only just visible. But in a moment Martin was able to see a black head and two splashing arms on the surface of the water. The swimmer was making straight across towards the opposite bank.
He was seen also by the men on the jetty. With cries of excitement they dashed back to the shore, and ran towards a boat that was drawn up on the mud.
Martin had ceased rowing; his interest in the Portugal ship was whetted anew, for surely those excitable men were foreigners from that vessel. Who was the fugitive?
As he rested on his oars he noticed that the swimmer had suddenly changed his course, and was coming with swift over-hand strokes straight for the boat. Meanwhile, the pursuers had hauled their boat off the mud, got afloat, and were now pulling hard in the same direction.
Martin felt a throb of excitement as he watched the chase. By this time he realised that the fugitive was swimming to him for help, and he checked the motion of his boat, which had been drifting slowly on the turning tide, and edged it towards the swimmer.
Next moment a hand shot out of the water and grasped the gunwale. The second hand followed. Then a husky, spluttering voice whispered:
“Take me in, quick! They will catch me.”
Martin was thrilled when he saw that the speaker was a boy, a little younger than himself, as he guessed. Without reasoning, acting on a natural impulse, he shipped his oars, and trimming the boat as well as he could by lying across it, managed with some difficulty to help the little fellow to clamber in.
“Quick! They will catch me,” gasped the boy again as he sank exhausted into the bottom of the boat.
In a moment Martin had the oars in the rowlocks and began to pull with all his strength. He caught sight of the pursuing boat forging out of the darkness, and the shouts of the men aboard her told him that they had seen what had happened to the boy.
Spurred on by the angry menace of their voices, he bent to his oars with a will. He had seen a look of terror in the boy’s eyes as he climbed into the boat, and afterwards he remembered, what he had not consciously observed at the time, that the boy’s skin was dark, though his features were not those of a Negro.
But Martin did not look at the boy as he lay in the boat. His whole attention was concentrated on the pursuers. His heart sank; they were gaining on him. How could it be otherwise? The Thames wherry of those days was a heavy lumbering craft, and a half-grown boy could not hope to outrow the two men who were urging their boat along with strong, sweeping strokes.
He heard encouraging cries from the third man who sat in the stern, and as the pursuing boat gained on him yard by yard, he saw with a strange thrill, in spite of the darkness, that this man was the mysterious bearded passenger whom he had rowed down the river an hour before.
Without knowing why, this recognition urged him to still greater exertions. But the strain was telling upon his muscles; already they were aching almost to numbness. Yet he rowed on and on, doggedly, not dropping his sculls until the other boat sheered up alongside, and one of the men, swinging round the butt of his oar, dealt Martin a blow that sent him backward off his thwart. His head struck the thwart behind, and he lay doubled up between the two, stunned.
How long he remained thus he never knew. When he came to himself, conscious of a stiff back and an aching head, and raised himself, he found that he was alone in the boat, which was drifting towards the mud flats on the Surrey shore.
He looked around; the other boat, the fugitive boy, the pursuers, all had disappeared.
“Where am I?” he thought.
There were few lights on the banks; in the darkness he could not recognise his whereabouts. Seizing his sculls, he rowed slowly, painfully, across the stream towards the northern shore. Presently, in the distance, he caught sight of dim lights stretching across the river, and knew that they shone from the houses on London Bridge.
With a sigh he swung the boat about, and pulled still more slowly against the running tide, keeping close to the shore. It seemed hours before he came to the well-known stairs. He tied up the boat and then deliberated.
“Shall I go and tell Boulter what’s happened? He’ll be at the Pig and Whistle: I’d better go home.”
Dragging himself along, more distressed at his failure to save the boy than at his own injuries, he reached his house, groped stumblingly down the dark stairs, and found Susan Gollop placidly knitting.
“Why, sakes alive, what’s come to you?” she cried, as the candlelight fell upon his pale face.
“I’ve hurt my head,” he replied, dropping into a chair.
“There! If my thumbs didn’t prick!” she exclaimed. “I knew something had happened to you, you’re so late. I said to Gollop: ‘That boy’s got into mischief, and you can’t deny it.’ Now just you sit still and let me look at the place and tell me all about it.”
The good woman lifted his hair gently.
“Gracious me! A lump as big as a duck’s egg,” she cried. “You’ve been fighting again, I’ll be bound, though I’d have thought——”
“Don’t be a goose, Susan,” Martin interrupted. “If I’d fought, the bump would have been in front. I was hit a foul blow, and I’ll tell you.”
Susan Gollop was more tender in action than in speech. She bathed the wounded head and bound it up with a strip of linen, while Martin recounted the events of the evening.
“Dear, dear! Well, I’m sure! Poor little boy! Oh, the wretch!” she exclaimed at points of the story.
“Well, I never did hear the like,” she said at the end. “That Slocum: it’s my belief he’s doing something he’s ashamed of, or ought to be, drat him! It’s a mercy you don’t work for him any more. And the other man; would you know him again? For you must tell Gollop all about it, and he’ll take the wretch up and see what the magistrates have to say to him.”
“Yes, I’d know him again,” Martin replied. “I couldn’t forget his big red nose and his beard as black as your saucepan.”
“That’s strange,” said the woman thoughtfully.
“What’s strange?”
“Why, if I didn’t see just such a one this very day! Ay, and in this very street. He passed me as I came back from shopping! ‘That’s a red coal in a black grate,’ thinks I, and indeed he was a fearsome-looking creature.”
“I wonder what he was doing about here?”
“Ah! Who knows? But don’t bother your head about him any more. Get you to your bed, and I hope the bump’ll be flatter by the morning.”
