Читать книгу Golden Ballast - Henry De Vere Stacpoole - Страница 7

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At three o’clock that day Larry came on shore for parcels at the post office. Leaving the dinghy on the beach and coming up by the path that led to the village he saw a natty old Ford in front of the Anchor Inn and the figure of a tall man passing through the doorway.

It was Selway, the small-yacht dealer, of Bewick; carpenter, painter, tinker, tailor—as far as suits of sails went—breaker and broker both. Larry knew every one on the beach from Brightlingsea to Bewick Flats, the number of their children, of their wives, and how many times they had been bankrupt. He had the gift for acquiring this sort of knowledge.

He knew Selway. Selway had nearly crabbed the sale of the Sheila and Larry had sworn revenge. That was six months and more ago, but six months were nothing to Larry when he was on the warpath.

He knew Dicky Sebright was staying at the Anchor, and he had seen Selway go in. He stopped and scratched his head.

Selway had come all the way from Bewick, four miles off; he hadn’t wasted petrol coming all the way to Hildersditch to inquire as to Bone’s health. Well Larry knew that news of a greenhorn would go about the coast as news of a carcass goes about the desert collecting the vultures to the feast, and he guessed that Dicky was now the carcass.

He pottered about the car for a few minutes, looking at it from all sorts of angles as though it were a natural curiosity. Then he entered the inn and went into the bar on the left of the passage, where, seated behind the counter, Miss Bone, with her hair in curl papers, was reading last Sunday’s Sunday Herald, eating an apple and killing flies all at the same time. She paused in the midst of these industries to take Larry’s order for a bottle of stone ginger beer, then having slapped the glass down on the counter and tossed the threepence in the till, she resumed her pleasures and occupations as though the other had suddenly become extinct.

Larry was not bothering about her. The door of the sitting room faced the door of the bar across the passage. It was a bit open and he could hear voices from the sitting room, the voice of Sebright and the voice of Selway.

They seemed arguing about something. Then Dicky’s voice came quite clearly: “But I don’t want to buy a yacht. I’ve made other arrangements, nearly, and I don’t want to waste your time.”

Then Selway: “There ain’t no call for you to buy her, sir, but there ain’t no harm in your lookin’ at her, it’s all in the day’s bisness, and I’ll run you over in the car and back under half an hour.”

Then a back door opening caused a shift of wind that half drowned the voices, incidentally bringing a smell of fried onions from the kitchen, and Larry, swallowing the remains of his drink at one gulp, left the bar and came outside.

Now Larry was undecided about Dicky. In that mind of his that knew all the soundings from Carnsore Point to Dundrum Bay he had sized the young man up and without approving, had not disapproved of him; he was “clane and a bright young chap with money in his pocket, and a gintleman”—and when Larry dubbed a man a gentleman it was a title worth having—all the same he was a stranger and to be carefully dealt with. But if Sebright had been Beelzebub, horns, hoof, and tail complete, Larry would have taken him on board the Baltrum—and dealt with him afterward—rather than let Selway profit by him.

Waiting for the vulture and the victim to appear, he walked round the Ford anew, sure of what was coming, sure in his heart that if Selway got his intended once aboard the lugger, Dicky would be sold, or at least some old dud boat would be sold to Dicky, which would amount to the same thing.

Then they came out, Selway leading and talking, the young man half unwilling, yet led.

“Hullo,” said he, when he saw Larry, “here’s a man trying to sell me a boat.” Then he checked himself. He could say nothing yet about the proposed arrangement with Miss Dennis—besides, Larry had winked at him.

“Proposin’ to sell you a boat, is he?” said Larry, turning his regard upon the yacht shark. “And what’s the boat you’re proposin’ to shove off on the gintleman, may I ax?”

“The May Queen,” replied the man from Bewick. “You’ve seen her, Mr. Meehan”—Meehan was Larry’s other name. “She was berthed close to the Sheila last autumn, twenty-ton cutter and as good as new. No, I ain’t tryin’ to shove her off on no one. The buyers will be thick as mackerel when the season opens, but there she lays to be looked at, stripped to the keel. Maybe, Mr. Meehan, you’d come along with us and give your opinion of her.”

Selway winked at Larry as he spoke.

“If the gentleman doesn’t mind,” finished Selway.

“Oh, I don’t mind,” said the victim.

“Then crank her up,” said Larry. As the Ford started to hum he gave Dicky a nudge with his elbow, got in beside Selway and they started.

It was low tide at Bewick Flats, where the green fields come down and kiss the mud banks that are blacker even than the Mersea mud banks, and where the high tides kiss the fields; a place of great silences and weird sounds, the home of sea lavender and poppies, where birds from the great bird city of Sylt come visiting in summer and the wild duck fighting in the winter dawns.

By the anchorage and in front of an old barn converted into a workshop stood the May Queen, shored up and naked to the keel.

“Begob, she’s a beauty,” said Larry, as they got out of the car and dropped on to the hard mud. “And when was she built, may I ax?”

“Oh, she ain’t more than fifteen years old,” said the other, leading the way up the ladder to the deck. “Just long enough to be well tried out and show her faults, which she hasn’t any that I’ve found out, barring the standing rigging, which wants an overhaul.”

“Sticks all right?” asked Mr. Meehan, taking a knife from his pocket, opening it and prodding the mast.

“You try ’em,” replied Selway. “Go all over her and give the gentleman your opinion. You know what a boat is and I wants nothin’ better than your honest, candid opinion.”

Then he took his visitor down to inspect the cabin and Larry, like a spider, began to go “all over her.” He dropped on the mud and inspected the stem and stern posts, ran his hand over the copper sheathing, squinted at the keel, examined the chain plates and their attachments and lastly the bowsprit. Then he dropped into the little fo’c’s’le, emerging from it as the other two came on deck.

“Well,” said Selway, “have you been over her?”

“I have,” said Larry, “and I’ve got her character in me pocket, and faith it’s a beauty. How much might you be askin’ for her?”

“Four hundred.”

“Four hundred pounds?” said Larry.

“Four hundred pounds. It’ll be five when the season opens.”

“Well, I wouldn’t advise the gintleman to give five for her,” said Mr. Meehan, “but I’ll have a talk with him on the way back. We’ll walk it if it’s all the same to you. It’s only a matter of four miles. Are you willin’, sir?”

“Yes, I’d like the walk,” said Dicky.

“It’s no trouble to drive you,” said Selway, following down the ladder. “The car’s there and waiting.”

“The gintleman would sooner walk,” said Larry, “and here’s somethin’ for your trouble in showin’ us over her.”

He took a pound note from his pocket and placed it in the hand of Selway, who wilted as if it had been the black spot itself, pocketed it without a word and turned away toward the car.

Dicky, astonished and not knowing what to say, followed, while Larry led him up to the road by which they had come.

Mr. Meehan seemed suffering from great internal excitement; as he rolled along beside his companion he muttered and grumbled and then burst into speech, addressed apparently to the fields and gull-strewn flats.

“Oh, the blazin’ scoundrel!” said Mr. Meehan. “Oh, the blazin’ scoundrel—four hundred pounds for that dam’ sieve and he’d have took it. Oh, the blazin’ scoundrel!”

“Look here,” said Dicky, “what on earth did you give him that pound for?”

“Give him a pound? Why, it was the pound he slipped me in the car comin’ down without you seein’ him and without a word. I took it, m’anin’ to shove it down his throat after I’d seen what tricks he was up to, but faith, I’ve done better.”

“Gave you a pound!”

“Slipped me it to crack her up to you, and if I’d been as black as him it’s a commission I’d have got out of the dale. Lord save us from such as him. Four hundred pounds—do you know what’s wrong with her? Well, first and foremost she’s nail sick. It’d cost you a pocket full of money to renail her. Second, she’s rotten under her sheathin’, it’s all lines runnin’ fore and aft and if you took it off she’s cheese underneath. If you put out with her the keel might hold for a twelve-month or drop off in a minit—the bolts are half gone, c’roded. Masts sprung and rotten, she’s forty years old if an hour and bad built at that. That’s her character, and now you’ve got it—and his. He’s as bad as her.”

Selway had done more than expose his black nature and the rottenness of his goods to the eyes of Dicky Sebright. He had forged a bond between Larry and the young man.

Larry, besides being himself, was something that perhaps you have never met, an Irish fisherman. Captured by Captain Dennis as one might capture a walrus, he had consented to help in working the Port Patrick and the Sheila, but he was no yachtsman; he had a supreme contempt for the tribe, born maybe of arrogance, maybe of experience, maybe of both; a contempt extending to all surface sailors, for to Larry the depths of the sea were the real things that mattered. Born at Clifden on the west coast of Ireland, of a race of fishermen who had cast their nets when Brian Boru was king, he had learned to handle a boat before he was born, and he had learned to read the floor of the sea and the colors of the water before he was ten. He could smell weather and there was little about the ways of fish that he did not know.

He had done a bit of boat building, and the tricks of the trade had taught him something of the tricks of men; his instinct helped him in this direction.

As they took their way across the great flat lands in the direction of Hildersditch church steeple they talked, became companions and exchanged ideas.

Before parting at the Anchor they had come to an arrangement over the Baltrum by which Mr. Sebright as party of the first part was to give her a lick of paint, a new mast winch and some repairs to the standing rigging, buy her if possible if she were put up for sale, and, having bought her, was not to dispossess the present crew, who would help to work her for nothing on condition that they were permanent tenants at no rent during the ensuing winter. On the other hand, and if she were not elsewhere sold, the parties of the second part contracted to “larn” Mr. Sebright boat handling and sea craft and take him cruising and fishing all the summer from the first of May on for a consideration of two pounds a week, if Salt did not queer the pitch and turn them all adrift—that is to say ashore.

“There’s no use talkin’ to Miss Shaila of money, sir,” said Larry. “She’s one of the sort that’s robbin’ herself all the time. I’ll do the money business wid you and shove it into her pocket whether she likes it or no. And as for the captain, there won’t be any trouble with him; he’s not the sort to make trouble.”

“Well, that’s settled,” said Dicky. “I suppose Miss Dennis won’t object.”

“No, sir,” said Larry, “she won’t object.”

They parted at the inn door, where Miss Bone was standing in silk stockings, her hair out of curl papers and her face powdered. She blossomed like this every day at five o’clock.