Читать книгу Seibert of the Island - Gordon Young - Страница 17

In shape Pulotu had rather the appearance of a German sausage nibbled by rats, being long and narrow, with pieces pounded out of the shore-line. The town was known by the island's name. Traders came to sell to the agents of the big German firm, Godeffroys, then celebrate, loaf for a time, outfit, and go again. A wharf like a big centipede, all legs and backbone, straddled out into the bay. Among the frond shadows a thin semicircle of houses peeped, as if a little afraid of the big, squat, sheet-iron warehouses and centipede.

There was a tall flag-pole on the beach; but this pole was never used, because Pulotu, being "independent," had no flag; and each of the three or four consuls—present less for consular duties than to keep any one of their number from establishing a protectorate—would have regarded with avowed suspicion and distrust even the temporary presence of any flag but his own. It was not that Pulotu was important as a spot on the map; but it was important to each European Government that no rival should have successes anywhere on the map. Everybody knew that sooner or later some one of those Governments would establish a protectorate, or something of the sort, as a preliminary to ownership. That was the reason there were consuls, armed with unusual, vague, discretionary powers, at so inconspicuous an island as Pulotu; and the reason why warships called with impressive frequency; and why also, in a miniature fashion, off on this wayside spot of the earth the pawns played among themselves at the diplomats' chess game.

The Germans had wedged themselves in, as they were crowding through the islands wherever there were commercial chances. There were, of course, some English. There always are, no matter what the loneliness and distance. And a twinkling of French presence remained. Where the French have planted seed the lotus has the sweetest flavour, and deadliest.

Everybody in the town took an interest in the arrival of every craft, and any news that she brought was haggled to pieces for days. Whenever a ship swung around the treacherous, low-lying horn of the bay, deeply thrust into the channel like a dagger, all the town knew of its coming. On the cool twilight side of the club veranda men would stir faintly on long cane chairs, and mutter among themselves; the house boy would be sent off with a telescope, and from his description of her rig the eaters of the lotus and drinkers of the highball would dispute without energy and without anger, bet this or that, usually in champagne; then with the slow, stiff listlessness of corpses getting off their slabs, these idle shapes in ghostly duck would pass through their cool shadows, and come into the sun, where they mingled with other shapes from other shadows, on the way to the beach.