Читать книгу The Master - T. H. White - Страница 7
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When the Duke and Mr. Pierrepoint had searched and scrambled and hollered for half an hour, they were rowed back to the yacht for help. The yacht steamed round the islet, with her binoculars searching the stony faces and the sea below. A landing party was sent to examine every inch once more. But the eyes of adults and even the magnification of binoculars at a distance were not so sharp as the eyes of children, and human noses were not so delicate as Jokey’s. Nobody noticed the cracks in the rock. In the end they came back with Judy’s red straw hat, found floating in the water.
It would be kinder not to think of the scene on board—the Duchess rigid and motionless like a statue, but her fingers moving of their own accord, tearing up a handkerchief—the poor Duke with his grey head in his hands, huddled in the stateroom, staring at the floor. Mr. Pierrepoint, who was the Duchess’s brother, was as wretched as anybody.
He said, “Fanny, it was an accident. You were not to blame.”
The yacht stayed for two days scanning the sea. Then she steamed away. There was nothing else to do.
When Judy went backwards off the ledge, still clutching Jokey to her bosom, they both squealed on exactly the same note.
Nicky shouted, “Look out!”
Now this was odd. He shouted it to himself.
He saw the cliff face streaming past him like the road going under a fast car or—to go back to the pianola—like the slotted music whirling backwards on the drum, when you press the knob to re-wind. He also saw—for he was seeing in all directions at the same time—the green and twinkling sea shooting up towards him, with all the little wavelets crinkled on the bigger wave, and oval sunspots scattered on the highlights, and the smallness of distance growing and enlarging and expanding and engulfing as it rose to meet him. And then, with a smashing whoosh and an agonizing slash across his eyelids and up his nose, he was down, down, down, in the viridian, choking, smothering, salty, stunning water. He hung in it, struggling like a dog, half insensible, holding his breath, not sure which was up or down. He was too busy to think of death. In the deep silence he made a guess for upwards and wrestled towards it, paddling desperately, panting without breath, striving to do, to survive.
His lungs were bursting. The light was going reddish. He was going to have to take a breath of brine.
Then, with a gasp, still threshing his arms, shaking his head like a wet otter, he was out in the sunlight. His whole face was smarting as if someone had brutally slapped it, and his chest, bare except for the overalls, and the underside of his arms, were red and tingling. He could hardly see.
Next moment, Judy popped up beside him.
The moment after that, Jokey appeared.
Judy, looking cross, blew out a mouthful of sea and instinctively put up a hand to smooth her streaming hair. Jokey, looking oddly thin with a small, wet, skull-face like a drowned rat’s, decided that the safest and dryest place would be on top of Judy. She put her forepaws on the girl’s head, began to climb up, and both sank spluttering beneath the wave, fast by their native shore.
When they came up again, entangled, Judy was exasperated.
“How could you!”
She put down the whole affair to Jokey, as she needed somebody to blame. She slapped the dog clumsily and sank for the second time.
They got back to the surface in a better mood. Poor Jokey’s panic-stricken paddling had touched Judy’s heart. This time she took the frightened paws on her shoulders of her own accord, holding the little body close with one arm, and trod water. Jokey’s wet, wild face looked left and right and left again, hating what seemed to be a mad bath night.
Nicky was going to say, “Who did that?”, when more things began to happen.
There were plops in the sea beside them, which did not seem connected with three or four loud bangs above their heads. The noise could not be heard on the opposite side of the cliff.
Nicky looked up, peering through his swollen eyes, and there, fifty feet above his head, the door of rock was open. The Chinaman—for it was a Chinaman and in a saffron robe too, with blue dragons on it—was standing there and calmly shooting at them with an automatic pistol.
Shooting at them!
Nicky was indignant. First to push you off a cliff and then to shoot at you! It was dangerous. The funny thing was that he was not frightened. He thought, This is disgraceful! People can’t do this sort of thing to me!
And then, while the dragon man was still potting and Jokey was whimpering and Judy was wondering what was making the plops, a second door in the sheer precipice opened in front of them at sea level—this time a smaller door, more like a window—and there appeared in it a gigantic, coal-black negro.
Judy, who was facing in the opposite direction, remarked in a detached way: “Nicky, I think somebody is throwing things at us.”
The negro dived—a superb, professional dive with the curve of a salmon’s leap. In two strokes, he was behind her back and had seized her by the hair. Judy opened her mouth—so did Jokey—and both at once, with their mouths open, sank for the third time. As they went down, they rolled their eyes.
Two more strokes took the man back to the opening with his cargo in tow, where several pairs of willing hands hoisted the dripping bodies over the sill. The blackamoor swung round in the water, almost colliding with Nicky, who had been paddling doggedly behind. In less time than it takes to tell, the boy also had been heaved inside, the blackamoor had followed him in a shower of drops, and the heavy door or casement had swung silently behind them into place.
They stood, streaming with water, in a tiled corridor lit by electric light.
One of the straps of Nicky’s overalls was burst. Judy’s trousers had split right up the outside seams. Jokey shook herself vigorously over the nearest dry person, as wet dogs always do, and said, “So much for that.”
Nobody spoke.
There were six men in dungarees with grease-stains on them, who stood looking at the children in silence. The negro, wreathed in smiles, nodded and gurgled, making patting movements with his hands as if to show that they were safe and welcome. They were surprised to see that in spite of his superb body he was old—his grizzle of hair was nearly as white as wool. The electric light glared down unshaded and the water from their clothes dripped loudly in the stilly air which smelt of moisture.
An elevator sighed at the end of the corridor, its gates rang, and the Chinaman came softly down the passage, still carrying the automatic. Nicky noticed that he had taken the long nail from his right forefinger, so they must have been detachable.
He said to the negro in a quiet tone, “Why?”
Then he went to Judy, turned her round to face the other way and put the muzzle of the pistol against the base of her skull.
A voice on the loud-speaker system—for it seemed the place was wired for sound—said casually but slowly, “Waste not, want not.”
The amplifier went click.
The Chinaman put away the pistol in a pocket inside his sleeve.
Nicky was sick.
Judy said furiously to the Chinaman, “What did you do that for?”
