The Third R. Austin Freeman Megapack. R. Austin Freeman
Читать онлайн книгу.
hear it,” said Osmond. “But you aren’t getting on very fast with that splice. Have you been watching me?”
“Oh! bother the splices!” she exclaimed, impatiently. “I want you to tell me why you are throwing yourself away on this ridiculous factory.”
“It isn’t a bad sort of life,” he protested. “I don’t think I mind it.”
“Then you ought to,” she retorted. “You ought to have some ambition. Think of all the things that you might have done—that you still might do with, your abilities and initiative.”
She looked at him earnestly as she spoke; and some thing that she saw in his face as she uttered those last words gave her pause. Suddenly it was borne in on her that she had met other men who seemed to be out of their element; men who, report whispered, had been driven by social misadventure—by debt, entanglements, or drink—to seek sanctuary on the remote West Coast. Was it possible that he might be one of these refugees? He was obviously not a drinker and he did not look like a wastrel of any kind. Still, there might be a skeleton in his cupboard. At any rate, he was extraordinarily reticent about himself.
She changed the subject rather abruptly. “Is your factory in the British Protectorate?”
“Yes. At Adaffia, a little, out-of-the-way place about a dozen miles east of Quittah.”
“I know it—at least I have heard of it. Isn’t it the place where that poor fellow Osmond died?”
“Yes,” he replied, a little startled by the question.
“What was he like? I suppose you saw him?”
“Yes. A biggish man. Short moustache and Vandyke beard.”
“Quite a gentlemanly man, wasn’t he?”
“He seemed to be. But he didn’t have a great deal to say to anybody.”
“It was rather pathetic, his dying in that way, like a hunted ox that has run into a trap.”
“Well,” said Osmond, “there wasn’t much to choose. If the climate hadn’t had him, the police would.”
“I am not so sure,” she replied. “We all hoped he would get away, especially the officer who was detailed to arrest him. I think he meant to make a fussy search of all the wrong houses in the village by way of giving notice that he was there and scaring the fugitive away. Still, I think he was rather relieved when he found that trader man—what was his name?—Larkin or Larkom?—painting the poor fellow’s name on the cross above his grave. You heard about that, I suppose?”
“Yes. Queer coincidence, wasn’t it?”
“Don’t be so callous. I think it was a most pathetic incident.”
“I suppose it was,” Osmond agreed. “And now, don’t you think you had better have another try at that splice?”
With a little grimace she took up the piece of rope and began obediently to unlay its ends and the interrupted course of practical seamanship was resumed, with intervals of desultory conversation, until eight bells, when the teapot was brought forth from the galley and conveyed below to the cabin. After tea, through what was left of the first dog-watch, there was another spell of knots and splices; and then, when the sun set and darkness fell on the sea, more desultory talk, in which Osmond mostly played the role of listener, which—with an interval for dinner—lasted until it was time for the second mate to turn in.
So life went on aboard the Speedwell day after day.
The calm persisted as calms are apt to do in the Doldrums, with nothing to suggest any promise of a change. Now and again, at long intervals, the oily surface of the sea would be dimmed by a little draught of air—just enough to ‘put the sails asleep’ and give momentary life to the steering-wheel. But in a few minutes it would die away, leaving the sails to back and fill as the vessel rolled inertly on the glassy swell. The first observation had shown the ship’s position to be about four degrees north of the equator, with the coast of the Bight of Benin some eighty miles away to the north; and subsequent observations revealed a slow southerly drift. It was pretty certain that she had a more rapid easterly drift on the Guinea current, but as the chronometer was out of action, there was no means of ascertaining this or of determining her longitude. Sooner or later, if the calm continued, she would drift into the Bight of Biafra, where she might pick up the land and sea breezes or find an anchorage where she could bring up and get the chronometer rated.
To a seaman there is nothing more exasperating than a prolonged calm. The crew of the Speedwell were not sailors of a strenuous type, but the inaction and monotony that prevailed on the idly ship bored them—if not to tears, at least to bad language and chronic grumbling. They lounged about with sulky looks and yawned over the odd jobs that Osmond found for them, whistling vainly for a breeze and crawling up the rigging from time to time to see if anything—land or another ship—was in sight. As to the captain, he grew daily more sour and taciturn as he saw his stores of provisions dwindling with nothing to show for the expenditure.
But by two of the ship company the calm was accepted with something more than resignation. The two mates had no complaint whatever to make. They were, indeed, cut off from all the world; marooned on a stationary ship in an unfrequented sea. But they had one another and asked for nothing better; and the longer the calm lasted the more secure were they of the continuance of this happy condition. For the inevitable thing had happened. They had fallen in love.
It was very natural. Both were more than commonly attractive, and circumstances had thrown them together in the closest and most intimate companionship through every hour of the long days. They had worked together, though the work was more than half play; they had a common interest which kept them apart from the others. Together they had sat, talking endlessly, in little patches of shadow when the sun was high in the heavens, or leaned upon the bulwark rail and watched the porpoises playing round the idle ship or the Portuguese men-of-war gliding imperceptibly past on their rainbow-tinted floats. They had paced the heaving deck together when the daylight was gone and earnestly studied the constellations ‘that blazed in the velvet blue,’ or peered down into the dark water alongside where the Nautilus shone like submarine stars and shoals of fish darted away before the pursuing dolphin lurid flashes of phosphorescent light. No more perfect setting for a romance could be imagined.
And then the personality of each was such as to make a special appeal to the other. In the eyes of the girl, Osmond was a hero, a paladin. His commanding stature, his strength, his mastery of other men, and above all his indomitable courage, had captured her imagination from the first. And in his rugged way he was a handsome man; and if he could be a little brutal on occasion, he had always been, to her, the soul of courtesy and chivalry. As to the ‘past’ of which she had a strong suspicion, that was no concern of hers; perhaps it even invested him with an added interest.
As to Osmond, he had been captivated at once, and, to do him justice he had instantly perceived the danger that loomed ahead. But he could do nothing to avoid it. Flight was impossible from this little self-contained world, so pleasantly cut off from the unfriendly world without; nor could he, even if he had tried, help being thrown constantly into the society of this fascinating little lady. And if, during the long, solitary night-watches, or in his stifling berth, he gnashed his teeth over the perverseness of Fate and thought bitterly of what might have been, that did not prevent him from succumbing during the day to the charm of her frank, unconcealed friendliness.
It was in the forenoon of the eighth day of the calm that the two cronies were leaning on the rail, each holding a stout line. The previous day Osmond had discovered a quantity of fishing tackle among Redford’s effects, and a trial cast had provided not only excellent sport, but a very welcome addition to the ship’s meagre diet. Thereupon an epidemic of sea-angling had broken out on board, and Bill Foat, the cook, had been kept busy with the preparation of snappers, horse and other deep-sea fish.
“I wonder,” the girl mused as she peered over the side, “how much longer this calm is going to last.”
“It may last for weeks,” Osmond replied. “I hope it