Читать книгу The Searchlights - Wilfrid Wilson Gibson - Страница 6

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The still soused body huddled on the strand

Suddenly shivers in the Summer dawn;

And the curious timid seals, who have withdrawn

To a safe distance, watch it from the sand

Lift up its head and slowly look around

With vaguely wondering eyes. And, even when

They see this stranger from the world of men

Sit upright, still they gaze without a sound,

As the lad stares across the creaming tide

And marvels how he ever came to be

Escaped from midnight’s all-devouring sea

Into whose depths he stumbled overside

When the mine struck. He wonders now if all

His mates beneath the curdling waters lie:

And, as the sunrise reddens in the sky,

He listens to the maddening rise and fall

Of mocking waves on that unfriendly shore

With boding heart and spirit desolate,

And almost wishes he had shared the fate

Of those drowned lads whom he will see no more—

Those lads whose names he mumbles in his mind—

Those lads who always jockeyed him and made

Such sport of all his blunders, and who played

Such tricks with all his gear, and yet were kind

Enough when things went badly ...

Enough when things went badly ...And he alone,

The youngest and the dumbest, seemingly,

Had been cast up by the rejecting sea

Upon a desert island of sand and stone

To die of slow starvation, likely as not,

Or, anyway, of loneliness, before

He could be rescued—stranded on a shore

Where there was naught to do but sit and rot

Among the rotting weed, cut off from life.

Then all at once he hears behind a stir

As the seals suddenly feeling friendlier

Shuffle towards him; and he draws his knife

In quick alarm. But, when he sees their eyes

Twinkling as though in mischief, he seems to see

His old mates jostling round him mockingly

And, grinning, turns to greet them with surprise.