Читать книгу The White Blackbird - Robert Aitken - Страница 4

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"I'd far rather beg in the gutter than marry you, Jasper!" flashed the girl, at last goaded past all patience. Her clouded, indignant eyes expressed both contempt and aversion for the young man leaning over the deck-rail beside her.

He was still a young man as years go and in spite of the grey streaks in his dark hair, the crow's-feet above his cheek-bones; more than passably good-looking, too, with his regular profile and straight, spare, athletic figure, though his sleepy eyes were a trifle close-set and more than a trifle untrustworthy, though the black moustache he was twirling with a long, thin, almost womanish hand hid a cruel, selfish mouth.

In his smart white yachting-suit and panama, lounging over the sun-dried teak taffrail with his knees crossed, he seemed to be neither oppressed by the tropical heat nor impressed at all by anything that his companion could say.

"I'd far rather beg in the gutter," she repeated, as if to settle the matter. And the emphasis with which she spoke showed that she meant what she said.

"But—that doesn't make any difference, my dear Sallie," he once more answered, displaying his white, even teeth in a slight, amused smile. "You're going to marry me just the same. And you may as well make up your mind right away—that it will pay you best to be pleasant about it.

"Captain Dove has come to the point at last," he went on to explain condescendingly, in the same cool, careless, conversational tone, a tone which, however, could not quite hide the ugly determination behind it. "You've upset him for good and all this time. He's aching to get rid of you now. In fact, he's cursing himself that he didn't—when he might have made more out of the deal. And, anyhow, he's promised you to me."

The girl's slim, shapely body had suddenly stiffened. She started up and away from him with a gesture of blind repulsion. Her pure, proud, sensitive face showed the struggle that was going on in her mind—between fear and hope; quick fear that what he had just said might be true, slow hope that he had been lying to her again.

He had turned on one elbow with a lazy air of inexhaustible tolerance, that he might the more conveniently follow her with his greedy glance. He was apparently quite sure of himself—and her. At any rate, he was openly gloating over her beauty in her distress while she stood gazing in dire dismay about the shabby, unkempt little steamer which was all the home she had in the world, all the home she had ever had except for a few forgotten years of her childhood.

Its name, on a life-buoy triced to the rusty netting between the rails, was the Olive Branch, but its port of registry had been painted out. It rode deep although it was decked after the old-fashioned switchback design and had no cargo on board. Its squat, inconspicuous smokestack helped to give it a somewhat nefarious air.

About its ill-kept, untidy decks there were very few signs of life and none at all of luxury. Under a tattered canvas sun-screen on the fo'c'sle-head a ragged deck hand was on the look-out, his scorched face expressive of anything but contentment with his circumstances. He shifted frequently from one bare, blistered foot to the other; it was impossible to stand still for long, with the deck-plates as hot as any frying-pan on a brisk fire.

On the bridge, the officer of the watch was pacing to and fro. Every time he turned on his beat beneath the dirty, weather-worn awning he paused to dart a suspicious, expectant glance at the double hatchway which led to the crew's quarters, forward. The open wheel-house behind him was occupied only by the quartermaster on duty. The remainder of the watch on deck were nowhere visible.

Through the heat-haze to starboard the blurred outline of the low-lying African coast was dimly discernible. Seaward, ahead, and astern, the long, oily swell that the North-east Trades never reach blazed like molten metal under the almost vertical afternoon sun. Except for the lonely little grey steamer wallowing sluggishly northward through it, the world of water was empty to the horizon.

A poignant sense of her own no less forlorn plight there stirred the girl to glance round at her companion, as if in helpless appeal.

"You don't really mean—what you said, do you, Jasper?" she asked, with a very pitiful inflection in her low, musical voice.

"Every word," he answered her promptly. "If you don't believe me, go down and ask Captain Dove."

She turned away from him again, to hide the effect of his curt reply. But her drooping shoulders no doubt betrayed that to him. He pulled out a cigar-case and, having lighted a rank cheroot with languid deliberation, puffed that contemplatively.

"I will go down and ask Captain Dove," she said to herself at length, with tremulous courage, and was moving toward the companion-hatch when she heard from the other end of the ship a sudden ominous discord, a sound such as might have come from a nest of hornets about to swarm. There seemed to be something wrong forward; and she faced about again, instantly.

Peering through the hurtful sunshine with anxious eyes, her scarlet lips compressed and resolute, she saw that the look-out had turned on his half-baked feet to stare from the fo'c'sle into the well-deck behind him. The officer of the watch had ceased his regular march and countermarch, and was also gazing downward in that direction. Even her self-confident companion had started up from his idle posture, in obvious alarm.

A figure darted up one of the two ladders which led to the bridge. The officer of the watch had left his post by the other at the same moment, as if to avoid the new-comer, and was making his way aft, unhurriedly, yet at speed. He did not look back, but she was aware of other figures which also had appeared in a moment from nowhere, and were following him on tiptoe, under cover where it could be had. Once, a flash, as of flame, amidships, almost forced from her lips a wild cry of warning, but that was only a glint of sun on a gun-barrel where the browning had worn away and left the steel bright. And he, seemingly unaware of the danger behind him, reached the poop unharmed, a big, fair, bluff-looking, broad-shouldered man in shabby blue sea-uniform.

At the foot of the narrow stairway by which alone access could be had to the poop, he called softly up to the girl at the rail above, "They'll be at our throats in a minute, Sallie. Get you away below, quick—and warn the Old Man."

At the top of the steps he stopped, and turned, and stayed there, blocking the stairway with his great body. And the armed ruffians swarming aft in his wake slackened their pace, then hung back about the hatch on the deck below. But each had a finger crooked on the trigger of a ready rifle. The simplest word or motion misplaced at that first moment of crisis must have precipitated the murder that was to be.

The girl had obeyed him promptly, if without appearance of haste and, once out of sight of the mutineers, there was no need to study her steps. She darted across the dim, daintily appointed saloon below and, having knocked imperatively at one of the two doors on that side of the ship entered, without waiting for any permission, the stateroom it opened into.

"The men have broken out, Captain Dove," she cried, breathless a little, her bosom heaving. "They're coming aft—there isn't a moment to spare. What are we to do?"

In the berth behind the curtains some one was moving. The room was practically in darkness, since the open port was also screened, to shut out the searching sun. But, in spite of all such precautions, the heat was almost unbearable.

The curtains parted slightly and from their opening a face peered out at her, the blandly benevolent face of a mild-looking, white-haired old man who, at a casual glance, might perhaps have passed for a clergyman or a missionary.

But in an instant a most disconcerting change came over his features. Some dormant devil seemed to have wakened within him and was glaring out at the girl from behind evil, red-rimmed eyes. His appearance then might have frightened a man away. But she stood her ground undismayed.

No less suddenly he broke into a torrent of fierce abuse, freely interspersed with blood-curdling, old-fashioned oaths. And that was only stemmed by a frantic paroxysm of coughing which left a crimson froth about the white stubble upon his chin. He fell back into the gloom behind the curtains, as if he would choke.

The girl hurriedly filled a glass with water from a carafe on a rack at one side of the room, pulled the curtains apart, and held it to the sick man's lips. He sipped at it and then struck it away so that most of its contents spilled on her skirts.

"Would you poison me now, you witch!" he gasped, and then, regaining his voice a little, "Ambrizette," he called weakly, with a quavering imprecation, "brandy. Bring me the bottle. Your mistress has poisoned me."

A coloured woman, stunted, misshapen, almost inconceivably ugly, came shambling in with a bottle, which he snatched eagerly from her and set to his lips, while she made off again, in very evident dread of him. The colour came back to his face, and at last he laid it aside, with a sigh of relief.

"The men have broken out, have they?" he muttered, half to himself. "And you come to me to ask what's to be done!" He glowered down at one of his arms which lay across his chest in a sling and tightly bandaged. His voice once more became venomous. "It's your fault that I'm lying here," he snarled. "You and your bully Yoxall have taken charge of my ship between you. Why don't the two of you tackle them? What the Seven Stars d'ye think I care now whether you sink or swim!"

She turned away from him with a little, tired, hopeless gesture.

"I don't care very much, either, now," she answered, dully, "what happens to me. But—it's you they're after, Captain Dove, and there isn't a moment to spare. They've got the guns up already."

The old man was plucking with feverish fingers at the fine lace counterpane which covered him. He made an effort to rise, but lay back again with a groan.

"They've got the guns up, have they!" he growled, deep down in his throat, with a most horrid effect. "Then one of the mates at least must be standing in with them—the mutinous dogs! And since it's come to settling old scores, I'm ready; I'll settle all with them before we go any farther." His eyes were sunken with sickness and he was so weak that he could scarcely move, but his spirit seemed to be altogether unquenchable.

"I'm going to settle with them now," he declared, "and—don't you interfere again, Sallie. I've stood all I'm going to stand from you, too. You've got to fancy yourself far too much, my girl! Listen here! Next time I have to talk to you, it'll be with that,"—he pointed to a heavy kourbash of hippopotamus-hide hanging from a hook on the panelling,—"and, by all that's holy! if I've to begin, I'll lace you from head to heel with it—as I should have done long ago."

The girl shrank as if he had actually struck her with it. She knew he was even capable of carrying out that threat.

"Where's Jasper Slyne?" he demanded, in a low whisper, almost exhausted.

"On deck, above, with Reuben Yoxall," she told him.

"Send him down here to me. I must get up out o' this. To-day's Sunday, isn't it? What was our position at noon?"

She told him exactly, at once, and he seemed content to rely on her nautical knowledge. He nodded, as if satisfied.

"That's all right. Off you go now. And don't forget what I've said to you. Tell Slyne to look sharp—and stand the men off somehow till I get on deck," he snapped, as she hurried away.

She did not know what might have happened overhead while she had been below, and heaved a heartfelt sigh of relief as, gaining the open air again, she saw that the two men she had left there were still at the rail, unharmed. Only one of them looked round as she approached, and it was to him she spoke.

"Captain Dove wants you in a hurry, Jasper," she said, and he went below in his turn, not altogether unwillingly.

As he disappeared behind her, she glanced down at the main-deck alive with armed men, as evil-looking a crowd as could be recruited from the purlieus of Hell's Kitchen or crimped from the Hole-in-the-Wall. The flush on her face died away.

"What are they waiting for, Rube?" she whispered to the big man at the top of the steps, whose steady glance seemed to have such a repressive effect on them.

"Sunset, I suppose," he answered in a low tone. "If no one crosses them, they'll maybe wait till it's dark before they begin. Better go below again, Sallie."

She shook her head and said "No," aloud, since he was not looking at her. And he did not urge that precaution. The sun was already nearing the steamy horizon.

The sullen, lowering looks of the ill-favoured assemblage about the hatch foretold the fate which threatened her and him.

"But they won't shoot you, Sallie," he said, giving voice to his only fear in a shaky whisper, his soul in his honest eyes as he glanced wretchedly round at her.

She laid a clenched hand on the rail and opened it slightly. "Don't worry about me, Rube," she whispered back, very matter of fact, while he gazed as if fascinated at the thin blue phial, with its red danger-label, resting in her rosy palm. "I always carry a key that will unlock the last gate of all. So there's no need to worry about me. I just wish you'd say you forgive me all the trouble I've brought on you."

"There's nothing to forgive, lass," he asserted stolidly, and, looking away again as though her appealing regard had hurt him, was taken with a gulping in the throat.

Two or three of the mutineers had begun to knock loose the wedges securing the tarpaulin cover of the after-hatch, through which alone access to the ship's magazine was to be had.

"There's no use in trying to stop them at that," he said, as if to himself. "It's only a matter of minutes now, I suppose. And—"

"Dutch courage is cheap enough," said a contemptuous, sneering voice in the background, and the sound of shuffling footsteps succeeded it. The men on the main-deck were gazing past him, handling their rifles, muttering hoarsely, moving to get more elbow-room. The girl beside him had turned at the words, but he kept his eyes steadfastly on the foremost of the fermenting, murderous rabble below.