Читать книгу Golden Ballast - Henry De Vere Stacpoole - Страница 5

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Captain Salt was seated that evening after supper reading Jane Austen’s “Sense and Sensibility” when the servant brought in Mr. Sebright’s card.

The captain, a quick little grey-bearded man, was tired with his day’s work; he had been dealing all the afternoon with something more terrible than a tiger, a German mine washed ashore on the west-center sand spit, but he ordered the visitor to be shown in.

Taking to him after a few minutes’ conversation, he put Jane Austen definitely aside and produced whisky.

“Now where did Bone get that yarn from?” said he. “The government hasn’t put a price on the Baltrum; she’ll be sold all right, but most likely it will be by auction. If they’d let me handle her I’d have got rid of her by this, but not they. You see,” said Salt, getting up and taking a lot of forms and blue papers from a drawer in his bureau, “government departments, whether it’s admiralty or civil service, don’t act like reasonable beings. Here’s the Baltrum’s papers, sheaves and sheaves of them, asking all sorts of silly questions that no one bothers about when answered, and making all sorts of silly replies to straightforward letters.” He pushed the papers back in the drawer and lit a pipe. “I’ve had more trouble over that two-cent ketch than if she’d been a stranded battleship, all because the chaps on board of her were Germans.”

“Germans? Bone said they were French.”

“He’s a fool. Everything pointed to their being Germans.

“There wasn’t much about it in the papers, but this is the way it happened. She came in here one afternoon last October when I was away down at Mersea. I had my men with me, so there was no one to board her, but next morning Longshot, he’s my man, went off to her. She was lying there with her riding light still burning and no one on deck. He went down below and found two dead men in the cabin; one chap had shot the other evidently in some quarrel and then shot himself. He had the pistol still clutched in his hand; it was a German automatic, army pattern. They were black-bearded chaps; they weren’t French, I’d swear that—either Russians or Germans, and the pistol was German.

“So I reported them German. There were no papers, no contraband, nothing. Not a scrap of writing on either of them and only three days’ food in the lockers. We set the wires going, but Germany knew nothing of them. The name of the boat told nothing, for Baltrum—that’s the big German island over there by Juist—had no knowledge of such a boat. Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Holland and France knew nothing. You see, it became an international police matter, for the chaps were possibly criminals wanted abroad; of course I had to have them photographed and the boat and all, but there was no result. No port in any of those countries knew of such a boat or of having collected harbour dues on her.”

“That’s strange,” said Dicky.

“Of course, she may have come from some fishing village in the Baltic or somewhere like that,” said the captain. “All the same she could not have used any of the seaboard continental towns within a long time else she’d have been remembered. The customs have pretty sharp eyes and long memories. So there you have it, a thirty-ton ketch putting in from nowhere, as you may say; two fellows on board of her, one of whom shoots the other and then commits suicide; no papers, no money, not a brass farthing of money on them. What’s to be made out of it?”

“Might they have come from Russia?”

“I’ve thought of that,” said Salt. “Of course we couldn’t ask any questions there, but Petrograd or any Black Sea port is a long way from here for two chaps to work her. I’ve lain awake nights trying to think the business out, trying to imagine what they fought over. Whatever it was, they must have been on the rocks without any money and in a strange port. Then old Captain Dennis blew along and I let him live on her on condition he kept a riding light going. A ship goes to pieces worse than a house if it’s left empty and the boys were mucking her about, fishing off her and stealing gear.”

“Bone told me Miss Dennis was on her now,” said the other. “She and a man—”

“Larry—yes. When the old chap died they stuck there. I hadn’t the heart to turn them off and Larry keeps the riding light going and looks after the ship—but they’ll have to go if she’s sold.”

“Well, as I told you, I am looking out for a boat,” said Dicky. “She’s bigger than I want, but if she’s likely to go cheap I wouldn’t mind that.”

“What do you want buying a boat for at all?” asked the other. “You’d do much better by hiring one. A boat’s all trouble. First there’s the buying of her, then there’s the putting her away for the winter and getting her out in the spring, then she’s always wanting something—she’s worse than a wife to keep. Something is always giving out or wanting replacing; if it’s not new gaff jaws it’s new ground tackle, or a spar’s sprung—or maybe it’s a leak. Oh, Lord, no!—owning is a fool’s game. Besides you’d want two men to help you work a boat like that, and there’s six pounds a week gone clear.”

“There’s not one to be hired,” said Dicky. “Not here, anyhow.”

“No, but you might get one at Mersea or Brightlingsea—”

“And that’s what I don’t want. I was born here and know the waters, and besides, I don’t like those big small-yacht towns nor the crowd you get there. It’s like living in a regatta.”

“Well,” said Salt, “if you will, you will. Go over and see the Baltrum if you want to. You will find Miss Dennis quite a nice girl and if you are a prospective purchaser she can take you out to try the boat—it’s covered by government insurance. Then I’ll let you know when it’s to be auctioned, when they send me news of it.”