Читать книгу The Parachute Jumper - Percy Keese Fitzhugh - Страница 6

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The young man in the flat-bottomed boat had been watching the plane since first it soared into view over the fair grounds. The occasional tugs at his line were ignored, so intent was he on the stunting aircraft. He adjusted his smoked glasses and for a few moments the lines of perplexity across his forehead seemed to have smoothed themselves out.

Who was he?

Certainly Oakvale could not answer that question and since it was their local gossip, Ike Higgins, who first saw him rowing his boat up from the creek and thence through the cove to Two-by-Four Island they were satisfied to consider him as “just another one of them there summer campers making themselves right ter home on Bainbridge’s island.” Ike was inclined to think differently, however, for he was strongly romantic by nature and he liked to think that behind the young stranger’s smoked glasses, romance lurked.

“I wuz havin’ a nice quiet catch all by myself,” said he willingly, “when that there young man rows around from the creek and through the cove. Next thing I know he’s anchorin’ in at the island and I could see him a-carryin’ off supplies from his boat and all that time he paid no more attention ter me than ef I wuzn’t out on that lake. He’s a poet feller turned hermit, I bet,” he added sagaciously.

“Or some poor sap disappointed in love,” the Don Juan of the town said with a sigh.

“Wa’al, I guess Bainbridges won’t come back frum Europe ter disturb him any,” said the owner of the general store. “They’ve been there too many years ter come back now unless they want ter sell. Anyhow, I don’t care what this here stranger is, as long as he takes a notion ter come over an’ be my customer. Hermits with smoked glasses don’t bother me—a customer’s a customer!”

This very much discussed young man fulfilled none of these prophecies, however. He did not prove to be a poet become hermit, nor was he disappointed in love. Neither did he become a customer at Oakvale’s general store for the gods had something to say about that.

To be sure, the young stranger seemed not to have been forewarned as to what motive the gods had in placing him on Oakvale Lake when the biplane Goodfellow first put in her appearance. But that he was forearmed was evident in the opened pocket knife which he held in his hand. However, he was blissfully unaware that a fickle destiny would have any designs on this lowly implement for it had been used in the various tasks that camp life demanded. In point of fact, he had just finished cleaning some freshly caught fish when the crazily looping plane arrested his attention.

And then Donovan made his dramatic leap from the shimmering wing of the biplane.

The young man adjusted his smoked glasses on his nose and rubbed the handle of the knife between his palms nervously as he watched the daring jumper being blown earthward. He held his breath as Donovan’s parachute suspended him above the trees and a cry escaped his lips as the wind swept it out toward the lake.

Suddenly the dangling legs of the jumper were rushed along over the water and toward the cove. The young man stood up in his boat, conscious of a strange sense of foreboding. He grasped the blunt edge of his knife, clasping it shut and unclasping it time and again.

Presently the wind abated and Donovan was dropping as straight as an arrow. Then he screamed.

“Cut me loose, can you? Cut me....”

The young man did not wait to hear more. He gauged the distance from the boat to where the jumper seemed likely to sink and dived swiftly. His hands and arms swung out frantically leaving yards of foaming water behind. Then suddenly he was aware that the jumper’s feet touched the surface of the lake and in blind desperation he flung his whole body forward to the rescue.

A second later the brownish silken fabric of the parachute had spread itself over the spot and bobbed buoyantly in the sunlight looking not a little like some camper’s tent in a state of complete collapse.

A crow circled high above the pine trees on Two-by-Four Island, crying raucously.