Читать книгу In the Secret Sea - William Edward Cule - Страница 10

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The bungalow was a small one, built entirely of wood. As we discovered later, the Earl of Barmouth, on finding reasons for a prolonged stay upon the Honeycomb, had made a special voyage to Monte Video for timber and other materials, so that he might remain ashore with some comfort and convenience. Thus his little house would have shamed many a country cottage in Old England.

We had very curious sensations as we knocked at the door. It was so strange to find a civilised wooden door in such a place as this! But the first knock brought no answer; and the second, though much more decided, was equally fruitless. At last Oliver positively thumped the wood with his fist, ending up by seizing the latch and shaking it impatiently. Then we heard footsteps, the lock was turned, and once more we were face to face with the old man of the beach.

His glance was noticeably vacant, and without his cap, with his thin grey hair all awry, he looked older and feebler than when we had met him earlier. From the first Oliver was very gentle and considerate with him, as you shall see.

“Well, we’re back,” he said cheerfully. “And we’ve borrowed lots of things. We’ve seen your ship, too, and a very fine ship she is.”

The old man stood aside to let us pass, and closed the door behind us. Then, still without speaking, he led the way up a short passage which had one door on each side of it. He chose the door on the right, and we followed him into the room.

It was a room measuring about fourteen feet square, with its window looking out upon the sea and the ship. It contained a comfortable-looking bed, a small table, and several chairs, while warmth was furnished by a very neat, open-fronted coal stove, whose chimney found an outlet in the back wall of the room. At our coming the occupant had been about to light a lamp, and he completed this task before he paid any further attention to his guests. It was a good lamp, and as the light shot up he turned to look us over. Then we both noticed that he had been about to partake of a meal, for there was a dish of biscuits on the table and a plate of some kind of tinned meat; but it was very obvious that he had made preparations for only one person!

“I expect you had forgotten all about us, hadn’t you?” asked Oliver, as we threw our caps down upon the bed.

“No,” said the old man simply. “It wasn’t that. I wasn’t quite sure that you were real. I have so many visitors, but never real ones.”

“How would you tell if they were real or not?” asked Oliver, showing no surprise whatever; and the old man’s reply was of a pathetic and startling nature. For a long minute he looked at us, and then he drew slowly nearer. He laid his hands upon my sleeve, and gripped the arm beneath. He looked into my eyes and touched my cheeks. Then he turned to Oliver.

“Take my hand,” said my friend suddenly.

They clasped hands. I knew Oliver’s hand-clasp, how warm and vital it was, and now the old man realised it too. He was past the age of agitation or excitement, but he showed that he was satisfied. Going to a small cupboard, he produced a couple of plates, cups, saucers, and knives and forks, and laid them upon the table. Then, still in silence, but visibly shaken, he made coffee on the little stove.

Everything he needed was at hand, and though he moved slowly he worked with the sure touch of the sailor. Five minutes later we were seated at the queerest meal we had ever taken, and I was listening to the most remarkable conversation I had ever heard.

“What kind of people have your visitors been?” asked Oliver, in a friendly, sympathetic way. “Mostly folks you knew, I suppose?”

“Always,” said the old man, in the same simple, unemotional fashion. “Old friends and shipmates. All the men I have ever sailed with have come in from the sea, sometimes very friendly, but never real. And almost every day the Master comes along the beach from the way he went, with the Captain at his side and all the others marching behind. More than once they were so real that I have gone running out to meet them; and he has always said: ‘Well, Lewis, how are things going? Is all well?’ But when I got close enough to touch his hand, there was nobody there.”

There was something of vacant wonder in the faded grey eyes that gazed at us in the light of the lamp; and as I met that gaze I suddenly began to understand the terror and the pity of it—no, not to understand fully, but to get some glimpse of understanding. Before Oliver could speak, he went on:

“Once the Ocean Pearl came sailing in, just in the evening, when it was getting dark; but I knew her, for she was my first ship. I went to Australia with Captain Williams. Yes, the Ocean Pearl came sailing in, and dropped anchor right astern of the Plynlimmon; and there was Williams on the poop, as big and red as ever. ‘You there, Dick Lewis?’ he calls out. ‘We’ve come to fetch you. You’ll come on board first thing in the morning, and we’ll take you home.’ ‘No, Captain Williams,’ says I. ‘I’m in charge here, and I can’t go till the Master comes back. It wouldn’t be like you to want me to desert, and it wouldn’t be like me to do it.’ Then I heard Captain Williams laugh out till the sound went all over the island. ‘It’s the same old Dick Lewis,’ he said. ‘He won’t budge an inch!’ And when I looked out in the morning the Ocean Pearl was gone. But of course, sir, she hadn’t really been there.”

There was a long pause—all the more terrible to me for the calm way in which Oliver took his food while he brought out this amazing story. Then:

“Tell us about the Master,” he said kindly. “How long has he been away?”

Lewis seemed to consider, and I perceived now what Oliver had seen earlier—that his mind was no longer capable of thought without a great effort.

“Well, it may be a month,” he said slowly. “Or, perhaps, a few days more. You see, the Master went first, taking the first officer with him, and the chief engineer, and the steward, and ten men besides. He would be away a week at most, he said; but he didn’t come back in a week, and there was no word of him. So then Captain Powell gets anxious, and sends another lot on the track of the party, to see what had become of them; but they didn’t come back either. So then Captain Powell, in ten days or so, made up another party, leaving three of us in charge of the house and the ship. And the other two with me were Charles Roper and Albert Perkins.”

At this point I almost forgot my food, for I perceived that a tragedy was being unrolled before me. But Oliver saw my face and gently kicked my foot under the table; so I looked as unconcerned as I could and went on eating. But my attention now was a taut and trembling cord.

“And what happened to them?” asked Oliver. Whereupon the old man raised his head to show a sudden angry gleam in those faded eyes.

“What happened to them? Just what they deserved. In a little while they got tired of waiting and said they would go. I would not go with them, so they went without me. They took the biggest boat and plenty of provisions, and went to get out through the water-cave, where we had come in; but next day some pieces of the boat were brought back here by the tide, and Albert Perkins was brought back too. I took him out of the water and buried him back in the shingle. The rocks in the water-cave had battered his poor body to death.”

“And then you were left alone?”

“Yes, sir. But I had plenty of everything on the ship, and I managed. It was very quiet, but then I was busy keeping things clean and neat for the Master when he should come. I had no time to be idle or to get rusty.”

We had seen the ship, and could imagine how her care had kept this one man employed; but Oliver had not yet finished.

“You said you had been into the water-course down which we came,” he said. “Have you made any other explorations? Which way did the Earl go? Have you tried to trace his party?”

“Oh yes, sir,” said Richard Lewis. “The Earl went to cross the island, thinking he might find his way to the northern coast. It is terrible rough going, for there is no road, only a jumble of rocks and boulders. But I gave two days to it—yes, that was last week—and came at last to the foot of the cliffs of the northern coast. Then there was no way, seemingly, except through a great cave, and I hadn’t taken enough candles with me to try it. So I had to come back; but I’m going again later, to make sure—if the Earl doesn’t come back before, which I expect he will. But this island is a wild place for caves and such like.”

“So it is,” said Oliver briefly.

“Yes, sir, so it is. And for my own part I like the open air and the open sea.”

For a while a silence fell. Oliver and I doubtless thought of the great pit, while old Dick Lewis thought of the great cave in the northern face of the island. But there was still a little more to know.

“Why did the Earl come to the island first?” asked Oliver. “What was he specially interested in?”

“Rocks and things,” said Richard Lewis.

“Geology?”

“That’s it, sir. It was his hobby, and he went right round the world for it. We came here as a last call on the way home, but as soon as he’d looked round he said he must stay a while. So we stayed, and his lordship gathered many bits of rock together here. Just come and look in the next room.”

By this time we had finished our meal and had pushed our plates aside. Lewis rose, took up the lamp, and led the way out across the passage to the next room.

It was similar in size to the first, but it was furnished and fitted differently. True, there was a bed in the middle here also, and a table and a couple of chairs; but the chief difference lay in the racks of wooden drawers which had been built up against the walls on every side but one. Lewis went to one of these and drew it out, to show it half filled with chippings of rock.

“There’s hundreds of these,” he said. “And no doubt the Master will bring back hundreds more. His lordship was a great one for having things done in order and neatly, as you see, though it was only for a little while. He would never have things lying about.”

“It couldn’t have been more thoroughly done if he had settled here for a couple of years,” I suggested.

“No, sir. That was just his way. And I’ve had to keep things in just his way.”

He turned to go back, but paused on the threshold.

“That’s my bed, sir,” he said. “I sleep in this room to look after the specimens. His lordship asked me to, and had the bed put there for me. The bed in the other room was his own, and that’s the one you shall use. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind ... and I’ll take the risk.”

With slow, uncertain steps he led the way back, and put down the lamp. As he did so he looked up with just that touch of wistful pride which I had noticed more than once before.

“I’m a Barmouth man myself,” he said; “and I knew his lordship as a boy. My father was one of his shepherds. After he had bought the Plynlimmon he heard that I had been round the world, and asked me to join the crew. A good and easy place it was, too, and a kind and noble master he made. That’s why I wouldn’t join Albert Perkins and Charles Roper when they wanted to go. They were Bristol men, and of course it wasn’t the same to them.”

Oliver, I could see, was under strong emotion. But he did not glance at me. He looked around that cosy little room with its wooden walls, and for a moment he seemed to listen; but if he listened, it was only to the great silence without. The old man, however, concluded that the questions were finished.

“I always go to bed at dark, sir,” he said gently, “except sometimes when I read a while in the Book. I will now clear away the things, and after that, if you please, we will read together just one little passage.”

“Certainly,” said Oliver. “But we will help you to clear up. Come, Frank.”

Help him we certainly did, “washing up” in a little lean-to at the back of the bungalow, where the household utensils were stored. We did it by candle light, and when we came back Lewis carefully put out the candle. “Not that I’m mean, sir,” he explained. “But I cannot waste. And though there is plenty of everything on the ship, one cannot tell how long the Master may be.”

Oliver nodded, and then we drew round the table once more. The old man brought two books out of a cupboard.

“I am Welsh, sir,” he said. “And I like to read the Welsh. It seems better to me, being my native tongue. I will read the Welsh, if you please, and perhaps you will read the English of it after. It is the Twenty-third Psalm.”

So he read it in the strong, musical, and sonorous tongue of his homeland, very slowly, as if he liked the sound of it; and after he had finished, Oliver read the immortal passage in English. By that time the old man’s eyes were full of tears, and even I felt a tightness of the throat as I heard, on this bleak, forgotten, and inhospitable rock, of the green pastures and still waters of the Shepherd King.

Never shall I forget the passage as I heard it that night.

Then Richard Lewis, with a great composure, took up the books and lit the candle once more. “You have the lamp, sir,” he said. “Please put it out as soon as you have done with it. And I hope you will sleep well.”

“We shall sleep the better for that reading,” said Oliver earnestly; and then the old man, smiling, shook hands with both of us. For a few moments afterwards we heard him moving in the next room, but in a little while he became silent. Then Oliver turned to me:

“What do you think of it, Frank?” he asked, in a low tone.

“I think loads of things, but I can’t tell you them all at once. Anyway, that old chap is a gentleman.”

“Yes; and in a way God has been kind to him, too. He has let him forget. By this time, perhaps, he has forgotten that we are here.”

“Forgotten!” I cried, in hushed astonishment.

“Yes. Remember his story of Albert Perkins and Charles Roper. Do you think that they would have dared that voyage—the cavern passage and the South Atlantic beyond—in a small boat, after only a few weeks’ waiting here? They waited for months—perhaps years. They waited until they felt that they would lose their reason if they waited longer. Then they went—and died; but Lewis thinks it all happened a few days ago. He has lost all sense of the passage of time. He simply lives for the work of the moment, the day. He remembers things, but he can’t date them. For him they are all in the immediate past—the yesterday.”

I was bewildered and shocked, as much by Oliver’s expression as by his statements. He was in dead earnest plainly enough, but as I had not yet grasped his meaning, I could not understand his gravity. So he went on to explain:

“I did not tell you on the ship, because I wanted to make sure; but you may as well know the truth now. You noticed how old some of the books were, and the magazines; but I did not show you the date of the last entry in the Captain’s logbook. It was made in September, 1902. To-day is October the fifth, 1922. So I gather that Richard Lewis has been alone on this island, with the ship and the house and a crowd of ghosts, for twenty years!”