Читать книгу The Sailor - Snaith John Collis - Страница 2

Where was he? He didn't know. Half dead with fear he could hear her lashing at the wall, but she wouldn't be able to get at him.

With a great effort he rose from his hands and knees. He had hardly strength to stand up. He seemed to be in a sort of garden. There was mold under his feet. It was too dark to see it, but he knew by the smell; also it was damp and sticky. He moved a few yards and his feet became entangled among roots and bushes. And then suddenly a dog began to bark and his heart stood still.

For quite a minute he dared not move another step. The dog sounded very near, yet he could not return by the way he had come. No, in spite of the dog he must find another outlet from this garden. Very cautiously he moved a yard or two, and then stopped to listen. Shaking with terror he then moved on again.

Groping about in the fog and darkness, his teeth chattering with cold, his brain quite numb, it seemed that he would never be able to find a way out. Where was he? He had no idea of anything except the ground under his feet. Now it was a stretch of gravel, now a rubbish heap, now moist earth, now roots and bushes, and then finally, after the lapse of hours as it seemed, he came up against a wall.

It might be the wall through which he had crept. Of that he could not be sure, but yet he did not think it was. He began to follow the line of it, taking care to do so in the opposite direction to the dog whose barking was incessant. As he walked he rubbed his hands along the surface of the wall in the hope of finding a gate.

For a long time he groped through the darkness, but came upon nothing in the least resembling a gate. Again he grew desperate. He would have to wait there until daylight. But he simply dared not do that with the dog straining at his chain, seemingly, only a very few yards off.

Sick with cold and shaking in every limb he began to cry feebly. His knees were knocking, he was at the end of his wits. There was no way out of the garden, yet if he stayed in it the dog would kill him. Suddenly he decided upon the only possible course; he must climb the wall. Not knowing its height, or what there was beyond, or whether it was merely the wall of a house, he began to "shin" up it for all he was worth, grasping its rough surface as well as he could with his hands and his knees and his bare toes. There must be some kind of a top to it, and when the dog broke his chain, as every moment he threatened to do, he might not be able to reach him.

Wild and precarious struggling, in the course of which he was several times within an ace of toppling backwards into the garden, brought his numb fingers at last to a kind of coping. He had just strength enough to draw up his body on to the narrow ledge, only to find that he could not possibly remain on it. The top of the wall was sown thickly with broken glass.

He knew his hands and knees were cut, yet he could hardly feel anything. There was only one thing to do now; he must jump for it – one side or the other. He came to no deliberate decision; at that moment he was completely unbalanced in body and mind, but a voice inside him said suddenly:

"Chance it!"

Hands and knees instinctively gripping as hard as they could, he slipped over the other side. But it was impossible to keep a hold. He slipped and swayed and slipped again, and then he knew that he was falling … falling … falling through space into the unknown.