Читать книгу Gordon of the Lost Lagoon - Robert Watson - Страница 9

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When I left the police sergeant and hurried along in the direction of Dunlevy Avenue—one of the numerous streets in this vicinity with high-sounding names and disreputable histories that dead-ended on the waterfront—the faithful and hungry Bones rushed up to me and did a sort of sand-dance round me, hopping gingerly on his feet and jerking his tail-stump in delight at finding me again.

He headed me to the shack and seemed quite happy at being able to know his way. As we had never been in our new abode before, I sensed that the dog must have met Sam and that the likelihood was Sam was now at home.

From the outside, it was a small, comfortless-looking woodshed that was misnamed home, unpainted and sloping precariously to one side on account of some of the supporting uprights having rotted through, so that an honest-to-goodness push would have changed it from a shack to a wood-pile.

I opened the door and went inside with the dog.

A coal-oil lamp was alight in the center of the kitchen table; the stove was set up and going. A cheery warmth pervaded the place. Sam Berry was sitting in a chair with his head between his arms on the kitchen table, evidently fast asleep. The remnants of a slap-up supper had been pushed on one side.

I looked over the kitchen curiously and, on the whole, I guess I must have been satisfied. I took up the lamp and went into the adjoining room. It was not really a second room, but simply a part of the first, divided off. It was bare, except for a chair, and two bunks, one built over the other, with some bedding on each. Something lay in the lower bunk. I went over to see what it was.

An ugly-looking man, big, unkempt and bearded, was asleep on his back with his mouth wide open, showing broken, yellow teeth. He was blowing with a quiet suction and exhaust that threatened every three or four strokes to break into a whistle. An empty whisky bottle lay on the floor, telling its own tale in dumb language.

When I finished my examination, I went timorously back to the kitchen, followed by the dog, who was keeping up a steady, subterranean growl which was about as much daring as he had been able, so far, to develop. We sat down, I on the remaining chair and Bones on his stump on the floor at my feet. Between us we cleaned up to the last crumb what had remained of the supper.

I rinsed out the dishes at the water-tap in an old metal sink in the kitchen, then I went over to Sam and pulled at his arms. But Sam didn't move. I shook him roughly, then I pushed his head backward and forward, pulling his hair in the process, but the only response I got was a drunken grunt.

I knew I would have to put Sam to bed and I knew also that to do so I would have to get the big man out of the lower bunk, for while I might be able to topple Sam into that one, I realized it was a physical impossibility for me to hoist him into the higher one.

So I took the lamp and went back into the room where the big fellow lay. Setting the light on the window-ledge, I went over and shook the sleeper as I had done Sam Berry, but in spite of my tugging and pulling, I did not elicit even the expected drunken grunt; so, feeling fairly safe, I scrambled over the man to the back of the bunk and wormed myself gradually between him and the wall, then, with my knees, feet and arms, I commenced a gentle pushing campaign which considerably widened the gap at the back of the bed.

The man rolled slightly on his side. I wriggled under him and levered him completely over, then, before he had time to sink back into complete limpness, I turned lengthwise, my feet against the wall and my head and arms against my living burden. I exerted all my strength, and this was not by any means inconsiderable, for I was growing into a sturdy youngster at this time. I slowly straightened out. The man kept turning over. At last he cockled uncertainly on the edge of the bunk, then, with a dead thud, he dropped two feet to the floor, where he lay, still in his fuddled stupor.

The dog went round the stranger from feet to head, growling quietly and sniffing in suspicion, but when he became too curious and caught a full blast of the drunken man's breath, his head dropped and he moved soberly over to a corner, sitting down in it with an offended air.

I returned to the kitchen, pulled Sam's boots off roughly, pushed him about and stripped him of his jacket and outside shirt, then with a struggle and much verbal encouragement and instruction, I succeeded in rousing him to a state of protesting semi-consciousness and action, finally staggering with him across the floor and top-ending him into the lower bunk.

In a few minutes more, the lamp was lowered to a peep, my clothes were discarded and I was fast asleep in the bunk above Sam.

How long I slept I do not know, but I was rudely awakened to a dazed consciousness by great hands groping for me among the bed-clothes. At last the hands grabbed me unceremoniously by the bare limbs. I struggled and let out a shout, but these great hands lifted me bodily and threw me with a crash on to the floor, where I lay startled and bruised.

A growl from the dog, a rush in the semi-darkness, then a curse from the dark shadow that loomed near the bunks, roused me thoroughly and told me that the big man had awakened and in anger at finding himself on the floor had at once decided to take possession of better sleeping quarters, much to my discomfort; and that the gallant Bones, for all his puppishness and inexperience, had flown to the rescue, like the fools who rush in where angels fear to tread.

I sat up. The big man bent over me before I could get to my feet. He kicked me savagely, making me scream in pain. He raised his foot to kick me again, and as I tried to scramble away he did not seem to care whether my head or my body received the blows. But my shouting aroused Sam.

Even his stupefied mind took in in a moment that the youngster he claimed to father was being hurt. It sobered him as nothing else could have done.

Good old Sam! I never yet had to appeal to him for help in vain, and the pity of it was that my youthfulness had not allowed me to reason that this very love Sam bore for me might have been used for his redemption.

He sprang to the floor and rushed at the big fellow with both fists, taking him completely by surprise and sending him staggering across the room. Recovering, the man came back at Sam with an oath, and then blows rained fast and furiously. Sam fought gamely, much to my astonishment and possibly much to Sam's own, for it is doubtful if he had ever fought with anyone in his life before, so accustomed did he seem to be to allowing himself to be bullied and to following the line of least resistance.

But deep inside of Sam was a love for me—the only love I think that had survived in him against the overwhelming tide of circumstances—so, for anyone to hurt me was a greater insult to him by far than for anyone to hurt him.

Round and round the little room, in semi-darkness, the two fought, grappled and staggered, but the big man's weight and Sam's half-naked condition were telling. Sam's breath began to come whistling in great gasps.

I could see that it was only the matter of moments when the big man should prove the victor. I ran to the kitchen and seized hold of a length of kindling wood, then, darting back, I scrambled up to the topmost bunk, where I clung watching the struggling pair in the dim light. The dog had by this time joined in the melee and was harassing the big man's legs and causing him to bellow and kick out from time to time as the sharp, puppy teeth penetrated the soft flesh.

Both men were at grips, and the big fellow was pounding at Sam's skull unmercifully. They worked round to where I was. They swung, and Sam's opponent's head came temptingly within my reach. Raising my improvised club, I crashed it viciously on that head, throwing all my might into the blow. The great arms that had been crushing Sam dropped limply. The man staggered backward, bringing Sam stumbling with him. With a crash, they struck against the wall at the window where the lamp was. The lamp dropped to the floor. There was a great creaking of rotten woodwork, a flash and a sudden flare of light, and the shack—our only home—crashed outward and tumbled to pieces, the roof falling in and leaving only the bunks—to which I still clung—and the back wall standing.

A cold wind was blowing off the Inlet, and the gray of morning was trembling away in the east. But, clad only in my shirt, I had little thought for either.

I jumped to the ground in apprehension. The dog, who had escaped the debris, joined me, barking loudly in excitement.

I looked about for Sam and the big man, but I could not see anything of them. I pushed among the fallen timber. Flames had already caught the rotten, dry wood and, in what seemed to me less than a minute, these began to shoot skyward. In the added light I caught sight of a protruding leg under a beam. It was Sam's leg, for it was encased in Sam's sock. I jumped in among the flying sparks and commenced struggling frantically to pull the wood away. I was still fruitlessly engaged, shouting madly for help the while, when I was joined by men and women coming in from every direction, springing seemingly from nowhere, giving the impression that in spite of the very early morning hour they were simply standing about waiting for some catastrophe like this to happen. I called their attention to Sam's dilemma, and willing hands lent rapid aid before the flames became too overpowering. They succeeded in dragging out the unconscious Sam Berry, whom they hurried away on top of an improvised stretcher of boards. Twenty minutes more sped before they discovered the whereabouts of Sam's unknown lodger. When they reached him he was horribly battered and quite dead.

With the waning of the excitement, I began to shiver with the cold, but no one seemed to heed me until Mammy Duff, black as night itself, but fat and big-bosomed, with a heart as big as her ample figure, spied me. Mammy was Cooney's mother.

"Fo' de land sakes, sonny!—yo' sure will catch de pleuricea, or de new-ammonia, or somethin', if yo' don' get some mo' clothes on. Yo' jest come right along me, right now, an' get warmed up in bed befo' you die."

She threw a shawl over my shoulders, grabbed me by the arm and went off with me in spite of my anxious protests that I wanted to be with Sam.

"Sam Berry ain't dead, sonny. He's jest subconscious. Lordy, boy! nobody couldn't kill dat Sam Berry with a stick of dynamite."

And in a short time I was fast asleep alongside Cooney, all unconcerned about the ethics of it and sleeping as soundly beside the little nigger as I could have slept beside any boy of my own color-scheme.