Читать книгу The Tales of the Thames (Thriller & Action Adventure Books - Boxed Set) - Pemberton Max - Страница 58

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And we are Homeward Bound.

Mr. Bob Sawyer, I believe, expressed his opinion upon a famous occasion that there was no medicine in all the world half so efficacious or so infallible as rum punch—to which axiom he added the rider that if any man had ever failed to derive benefits from this nectar, it was because he had not taken enough of it. Such a doctrine, for my part, I find incontrovertible. There is no cure for an overdose of cold water so swift and certain as the remedy the excellent Robert has prescribed. There is assuredly none so rarely declined or so readily sampled by the patient.

I am an exceedingly strong man—and, despite the assertions of my dear sister Harriet, my constitution is of iron. No common exercise tires me; I can walk all day and be the better for my walk at bed-time. I have swum five miles in the sea on two occasions, and defied all the faculty after a wetting more times than I care to remember. If it be foolish to boast overmuch of such a catalogue of physical merits, I set them down here that I may speak of the hours following upon my rescue with that brevity they deserve, and spare the reader any pedantic account of them.

It had been Okyada’s hand which dragged me from the sea, and Larry himself who steered the boat which discovered me. Despite the fog, that lynx-eyed captain of mine had dogged every movement of the Diamond Ship, had stood so close to her throughout the adventure that he could sometimes have tossed a biscuit to her decks. When the rabble chased me to the bridge, his keen ear had detected the commotion. He heard me leap for my life, and guessed instantly the nature of the situation which drove me to this extremity. His express commands had kept the long boat in the sea from the beginning, and in the sea she swam when I had most need of her. They told me afterwards that a crew had manned her and was away before you could have counted twenty. It must have been so, as the outcome shows.

Now, these good fellows, dragging their prize by the head and the heels as seamen will in bursts of nautical ecstasy, bundled me into the boat and the blankets almost by one and the same movement; and rowing swiftly to the yacht, they fought their way through the little knot of anxious men, and had me rubbed down like a dog and safely in my own bed almost before I realised that they were my friends at all, or that their vigilance had saved me from the sea. For my own part, I suffered them as one suffers a man who insists upon an exhibition of his goodwill and is not to be repulsed. I had no pain, be it said, no sense of weakness, no symptom either of exhaustion or of extreme cold. Whatever emotion agitated me was chiefly the emotion of friendship, and of the sure knowledge that Joan Fordibras was on the ship, that she moved and breathed near by me, and, with God’s help, would remain my prisoner to the end of my days. For, be assured that, despite old Timothy, who roared for the hot water and the lemons in a voice that could have been heard in the truck, little Joan had taken as proud command of that cabin five minutes after I entered it as any commander of a ship who hoists his pennant at Portsmouth. Nor had anyone the right to drive her thence or to take that place she occupied so gracefully.

How gentle is a woman’s hand in the hour of our misfortunes; how unmatched her sympathy and unwearying her patience! These old truths we know as copybook maxims, and yet there are few who understand them truly until illness is their master and captivity their lot. I was not ill—bed was no proper place for me—and yet I lay there watching Joan, afraid almost to speak, wistful of her care, gratitude as surely in my heart as though this had been a house of sickness, and she had been its ministering angel! How silently, how deftly, she moved! There was grace in every movement I thought, grace and sweetness and light. And she was my Joan of Dieppe again. The shadow of the Valley House no longer dwelt upon her childish face.

I suppose it would have been early in the new day when Joan took charge of me, and old Timothy brewed the punch and Larry came and went from the cabin to the bridge as a man full of anxieties, and yet in some sense content that it should be so. These foolish nurses of mine had so far told me nothing, nor did they hear me talking with equanimity. An immersion in the sea is often regarded by a sailor, of all men, as a dreadful tragedy. Few of this trade can swim, nor does a sailor ever look upon the water as other than an enemy. So now Larry would have kept me to my bed, smothered in blankets, and dosed like an old salt with Timothy’s rum. It is little wonder that I became almost angry at their solicitude.

“Why do you do all this, Joan?” I asked her, when half an hour of it had passed. “Am I a child to be petted and spoiled because its pinafore is wet? Tell Captain Larry that I am coming up to the bridge. You cannot suppose that I shall be content to lie here now. Tell him I am coming up at once. It is nonsense to make such a fuss.”

Joan shook her head as though, thus early, she had come to despair of me.

“Only a man would talk like that,” she exclaimed, and then—“only a man would be so ungrateful.”

“I demur to the charge. You set a great crowd of bullies on me to hold me down by violence, and then talk of ingratitude! Do you not see, my dear girl, that I must know what is going on? How can I lie here when there is so much uncertainty—when so many things may happen? Please do as I tell you, and let Captain Larry know at once.”

She came and stood by my bedside, and touching my fingers for an instant with her own—a gesture which thrilled me as though some strange current of a new life burned in my veins—she said very quietly:—

“There is nothing happening, Dr. Ean. If you went up to the bridge, you would see nothing but the fog. That is what Mr. McShanus is looking at now—at the fog and the punch bowl. We cannot see the others—we shall never see them again, I hope.”

It was calmly said, and yet what a tale of woe it voiced: days of her own agony among the ruffians, intolerable hours of suffering and distress! I thought her then one of the bravest of women—I think so to this hour.

“Joan,” I said, “how did you come here? Where did Okyada find you? I have thought much about it, and I believe that I know. But you must tell me yourself. You hid in one of the boats, did you not—one of the three boats the men lowered when they wished me to go on board this yacht. I thought it must be so. There was no other way.”

She had seated herself by this time in a girlish attitude at the foot of my bunk, her feet swinging together as though to express a sense of her indifference; her hands clasped, her eyes avoiding mine as though she feared I would read the whole truth therein.

“You were a wizard always, Dr. Ean. My father, that is General Fordibras, said so—Mr. McShanus thinks it, and so does Captain Larry. Yes, it was in the last of the boats that I hid myself. I saw them lower it, and then when they all got into the first two I climbed down from the gangway and hid myself under the tarpaulin. Have you ever been really afraid, Dr. Ean—afraid for an instant of something which seems to be worse than your thoughts can imagine? Well, I have been afraid like that ever since Mr. Imroth took me on the ship—afraid in a way I cannot tell you—yes, so afraid that I would lie for hours, and shut all sights and sounds from my ears, and pray that the day would find me dead. I tell you now that you may not speak to me of it again—I could not bear it—God knows I could not.”

For an instant, and an instant only, her courage failed her, and, burying her face in her hands, she wept like a child. Herein I think she gave expression to that pent-up anguish she had so long supported silently and alone. I did not seek to comfort her, did not answer a word to her piteous entreaty. The circumstances of her rescue must, in the end, be their own answer to her fears, I thought.

“We will not speak of it, Joan,” I said gently. “It was a clever thought to hide yourself in the boat, and I wonder it occurred to you. Of course I should have been disappointed if I had been wrong. Directly they told me that you were not on the ship, I guessed that you had jumped down into one of the neglected boats, and that Okyada would find you there. That is a fellow who reads my mind more clearly than I can read it myself. He is the true wizard. We must keep Okyada always with us when we go back to the old home in England, Joan. I would not lose him for all the riches on your Diamond Ship and more. Yes, indeed, we must never part with Okyada.”

This was said with some meaning, and Joan Fordibras would have been unworthy of the cleverness with which I credited her had the intent of it failed. She understood me instantly—I knew that it would be so.

“I must go to Paris,” she rejoined with a dignity inseparable from such an answer. “General Fordibras will be waiting for me there. I must go to him, Dr. Ean. It was never his intention to send me on the ship—no, I will do him the justice to say that. They tricked me into going—Mr. Imroth and those with him. My father would have taken me back to America. He promised me that the day I went to Valley House. I believe that he was in earnest—he has never told me a lie.”

“A point in his favour and one of the best. Then it was the Jew who took you away that night my friends saved me! I should have thought of that. I should have guessed as much.”

Insensibly, you will see, I had been leading her to tell me the whole story of her life since we had been separated at Valley House. Her determination to go to Paris I found worthy of her attitude since the beginning; her loyalty to this arch-villain, Fordibras, remained amazing in its consistency. After all, I remembered, this man had shown her some kindness, and, in a sense, had acted a father’s part toward her. I did not believe that he had intended deliberately to brand her with the crimes his agents had committed. That had been the Jew’s work—the work of a man who was the very keystone of this stupendous conspiracy. I could not blame Joan because she had the wit to see it.

“You will remember that it was after dinner, Dr. Ean, and I had gone up to my room,” she said, replying to my question. “I had been there perhaps half an hour when the old servant, who used to wait on me, came up and said that my father was waiting for me in the gardens. I ran down at once, and followed her to the mountain gate, which the General alone made use of. There I met the negro, who said that I must accompany him to the observatory which is on the cliffs, as you know. I did not suspect anything; why should I? My father was often at the observatory with Mr. Imroth, and I imagined that they had some good news for me. That was a child’s thought, but I am not ashamed of it. No sooner had we passed the tunnel than two of the sailors ran up from the cliff road and told us that the General had gone on board the yacht, and that I must follow him. It was a trick, of course. The yacht was waiting for me, but the General was not on board her. I was helpless in their hands, and we sailed that night to join the Ellida⁠——”

“The Ellida! So that is the name of their ship. The Hebrew is a bit of a sage, it appears. Was not the Ellida the ship of Frithjof in the fable, and did not it understand every word he spoke? A clever hit. They would name him for a Norwegian and neglect to be suspicious. I see the point of it, and admit his sagacity. He took you with him, not meaning any harm to you, but principally to frighten me. Well, Joan, I should not have been frightened, but it would be untrue to tell you that I have so much sense. There are hours when most men lose their courage. I lost mine entirely upon the night when they signalled a message concerning you. If I had been somebody else, I should have seen at once that it was mere sound and fury, signifying nothing. You, I suppose, were comfortably in your cabin sleeping meanwhile. That is generally the story—one of two in a frenzy of anxiety, and the other quietly sleeping. Let us say no more about it. The circumstances will never recur, I trust, if we live for a thousand years—an unnecessary piece of emphasis, young as my Joan is.”

I had brought a smile to her face now, and she began to tell me many things about the Jew’s ship which, otherwise, I am convinced, would never have been told at all. There were thirty-two so-called passengers on board, she said, eleven of them women—and a crew, as she heard, of fifty hands. The smallness of this did not surprise me. Here was a ship which rarely went into port, a great hulk floating in the waste of the Atlantic—what need had she of men? The fellows idled about the deck all day, as Joan confessed, and at night there were scenes passing all words to describe.

“We lived as you live in the great hotels in London. Ships came to us frequently from England and America, and supplied us with all that was necessary. Mr. Imroth rarely saw anyone, but the others played cards all day, and when they did not play cards they quarrelled. Then at night all the cabins would be lighted up, and there would be dancing and singing and dreadful scenes until daybreak. While Mr. Imroth was on the ship I saw very little of it all. He made me keep my cabin, and he was right to do so. When he left us, it was very different. I remember that a young Russian fell in love with me the first day I went on deck—there were others of whom I cannot speak, and moments I shall never forget. Mr. Ross was very kind, but he had not Mr. Imroth’s influence with the men. When he came on board, Mr. Imroth sailed for the Brazils, and the mutiny began. Some of the men wished to go ashore; there were others who would have waited for their companions who were coming out from Europe on a relief ship. Then one night the alarm was given that your yacht had arrived and was watching us. Mr. Imroth had told the men all about you, and when you were sighted, I believe they thought that there were other ships with you, and that their end had come. From that night it was one long scene of terror and bloodshed. I lived—I cannot tell you of it, Dr. Ean; you would never believe what I have seen and heard.”

I told her that I could well understand what had happened. When rogues fall out and there are women among them, then, assuredly, do men lose the image of their humanity, and take upon them that of devils. The scenes upon the ship must have defied all measured description. I could imagine the shrieks of women, the oaths and fury of the beaten criminals, the terror of the seamen, the long nights of drunkenness and debauch, the fury of combat—above all the rage and madness against the man who had contrived all this. What would my life have been worth amongst these men if I had gone aboard them before the battle had been lost or won, or the hour of their extremity had arrived. That little Joan herself had escaped the more awful penalty remained a wonder of the night. I could but be sensible of a gratitude to the providence of Almighty God which had saved her—from what a fate!

“I must teach you to forget it, Joan,” I said; “the homelands of England will help you to blot out these memories. It is too early yet to say exactly what course we must take; we have so much to learn and the time is short. But we are homeward bound now, and never again will there be a home for me where little Joan is not. That is what I have to say to you to-night. There will be sunshine to-morrow, Joan, and we will see the new day together. The world could give me no greater happiness.”

She did not answer me. I knew that she was thinking of the sorrow of her own life, and telling herself that she could never be my wife until the mystery of her birth and infancy were mine to judge. And this was the malice of it—that the men who could solve that mystery were criminals both, fleeing from justice, and as likely to seek a meeting with me as to vaunt before the world the story of their crimes.