Читать книгу Golden Ballast - Henry De Vere Stacpoole - Страница 8

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During the next couple of weeks, Mr. Sebright, lodging at the Anchor and putting off each day to see his new friends, potter about the deck and help in cleaning up and repairs, became conscious of a developing antagonism, vaguely expressed in the manner and attitude of the Bones; the way Miss Bone laid the table for dinner, the way she slapped down the dishes, the way Mrs. Bone neglected his room, and the attitude of Bone himself. It was as though between the Baltrum and the Anchor a great gulf were fixed, bridged by electricity and hung over by storm clouds. As a matter of fact, the Bones were getting impudent because the season was coming on when the inn would not be wanting for visitors. Hildersditch is that way. You can tell the time of the year by the attitude and faces of the shopkeepers, longshoremen, post-office people and innkeepers. Again, there was the feud between Larry and the Bones, and the fact that Larry had captured Mr. Sebright and queered Selway’s deal over the May Queen, out of which Bone would have got a commission.

The pig that had left its innards on the sand spit was nothing to this, nor the ducks that had vanished—for the commission would have been twenty pounds at least.

One bright morning toward the middle of April things came to a crisis and the visitor at the Anchor packed his luggage and paying his bill rowed off to the Baltrum, though he was not due to take up his quarters there till the beginning of May.

“I’ve come aboard, Larry, if you’ll take me,” said he. “I can’t stick the Anchor any longer. Is Miss Dennis on board?”

“She’s gone off in the dinghy, sir, beyond the sand spit,” said Larry, who was working on deck, “but sure you’re welcome. Now then, ‘Sunny Jim’”—to the longshoreman on the boat—“h’ist that portmantle up.” He handed the portmanteau on deck and, the owner following it, dismissed the boatman.

At last he was afloat for good and all, and as he looked at his portmanteau lying on the deck, at the deck, at the rails, and the water dividing him from the distant shore, a new sensation came to him; delightful in this world where most sensations are so worn out with use.

He had definitely cut his connections with the land, become a sea creature, and, more than that, a member of a new community.

The return of Miss Dennis some twenty minutes later did not break the spell, nor the events of the day that followed. Life had suddenly become new.

And the spell lasted. Sleeping in the fo’c’s’le with Larry did not break it, nor did helping to fry bacon for breakfast next morning, washing up dishes and washing down the deck. Larry had nearly completed the paint work, doing it without hired help, and the smell of paint did not matter. The weather held fine and the Baltrum was nearly ready for sea, and that prospect breathed life and joy even into the peeling of potatoes. Little did he know what was coming.

One morning after breakfast, the tide being favourable, he started out in the dinghy to fish for dabs. Sheila being engaged in household duties could not come, but she waved her hand to him and wished him luck.

“Good luck to you!” cried Sheila. She stood for a moment at the rail, the wind blowing her hair, then she dropped below, and the fisherman following the directions he had received rowed across the Pool, dropping anchor in six-fathom water and putting out his lines.

The anchor of the dinghy had been lost and Larry had supplied its place with a pig of the Baltrum’s ballast, a piece of brass to judge by the metal that showed through a scratch in the rust-red-colored paint that covered it. It was not an ideal anchor, but it served, and the luck which Miss Dennis had wished him came, for the flounders were biting and in an hour he had twenty.

Getting back, he found Larry on deck mending a trawl which was to serve them when cruising; he helped in the business, which took them till dinner time. All the late afternoon he spent hunting for clams on the mud banks, and that night when he turned in he was tired, too tired to drop asleep at once. He heard the incoming tide slapping the planking and the faint and far-away voice of the bell buoy. He lay thinking of all sorts of things till suddenly his subconscious mind, that stealthy worker in the dark, disclosed something which it had probably been turning over and over all day.

The anchor of the dinghy.

“That wasn’t brass,” thought he. “Too heavy—and not the right color, more like copper—it ought to have been lead from the weight. It looked more like gold, might be phosphor bronze—but phosphor bronze is light, isn’t it?” He was asking this of a silver flounder he had hauled up from the sea of sleep and next moment the waters of oblivion might have been over him had not Larry brought him to by turning over in his bunk with a snort.

Then his subconscious mind, taking another hand in the game, sent up for his inspection and consideration the two stiffs, the black-bearded men who had been found shot in the cabin. Then sleep fell on him like a dropped cloak and he awoke to find it two hours past sunrise and a bright morning.

When he came on deck the first thing that struck his eye was the dinghy. They had taken her on deck the night before and there she lay with the new-risen sun lighting her and the fish scales on her thwarts. The anchor was still in her, and remembering the problem as to its metal, he leaned over, and taking a knife from his pocket scraped the paint near the rope fastening. The paint came off easily in flakes, and the metal showed its rich bright yellow that yielded a tiny shaving to the testing edge of the knife.

It was almost as soft as lead—as soft as gold. Weight, color, softness—it must be gold!

He did not believe that it was gold, and yet the strange thing was that his heart suddenly began to knock against his ribs like a hammer.

It couldn’t be gold—and yet the knocking went on. He left the dinghy and walked aft. The Baltrum was swinging stern toward Hildersditch with the flooding tide, and he stood with his hands on the rail and his eyes fixed on the far-off Anchor Inn and the village beyond. He could hear Sheila singing as she dressed below, and the tonk-tonk of the bell buoy as it worked to the flood. And as he stood, the full realization of what was possibly the truth came on him, and he was saying in his own mind, “It’s gold—what other metal can it be? It was taken from the ballast. And that paint that looks like rust—no one ever painted ballast pigs before. Those two fellows that were found shot—Germans or Russians. It’s German or Russian gold, and there’s more of it—how much?”

He said all this to himself, yet still he did not believe.