Генри де Вэр Стэкпул – The Blue Lagoon / Голубая лагуна (страница 2)
Mr Lestrange after a while closed the book he was reading, looked around him and sighed.
The cabin of the
His thinness was terrible, and it was just perhaps at this moment that he first recognised the fact that he must not only die, but die soon.
He turned from the mirror and sat for a while with his chin resting upon his hand, and his eyes fixed on an ink spot[27]upon the table-cloth; then he arose, and crossing the cabin climbed up to the deck.
As he leaned against the rail to recover his breath, the beauty of the Southern night struck him to the heart with a pain. He took his seat on a deck chair and gazed up at the Milky Way, that great triumphal arch built of suns that the dawn would sweep away like a dream.
Then he became aware of a figure promenading the deck. It was the “Old Man.”
A sea captain is always the “old man,” be his age what it may[28]. Captain Le Farges’ age might have been forty-five. He was a sailor of French origin, but a naturalised American.
“I don’t know where the wind’s gone,” said the captain as he drew near the man in the deck chair. “I guess it’s blown a hole in the sky, and escaped somewhere to the back of beyond[29].”
“It’s been a long voyage,” said Lestrange; “and I’m thinking, Captain, it will be a very long voyage for me. My port’s not ’Frisco; I feel it.”
“Don’t you be thinking that sort of thing,” said the other, taking his seat in a chair close by. “Now we’re in warm latitoods[30], and you’ll be as right and spry[31] as any one of us, before we fetch the Golden Gates[32].”
“I’m thinking about the children,” said Lestrange, seeming not to hear the captain’s words. “Should anything happen to me before we reach port, I should like you to do something for me. It’s only this: dispose of my body without—without the children knowing. It has been in my mind to ask you this for some days. Captain, those children know nothing of death.”
Le Farge moved uneasily in his chair.
“Little Emmeline’s mother died when she was two. Her father—my brother—died before she was born. Dicky never knew a mother; she died giving him birth. My God, Captain, death has laid a heavy hand on my family; can you wonder that I have hid his very name from those two creatures that I love![33]”
“Ay, ay,” said Le Farge, “it’s sad! it’s sad!”
“When I was quite a child,” went on Lestrange, “a child no older than Dicky, my nurse used to terrify me with tales about dead people. I was told I’d go to hell when I died if I wasn’t a good child. I cannot tell you how much that has ruined my life, for the thoughts we think in childhood, Captain, are the fathers of the thoughts we think when we are grown up. And can a sick father—have healthy children?”
“I guess not.”
“So I just said, when these two tiny creatures came into my care, that I would do all in my power to protect them from the terrors of life—or rather, I should say, from the terror of death. I don’t know whether I have done right, but I have done it for the best. They had a cat, and one day Dicky came in to me and said: ‘Father, pussy’s in the garden asleep, and I can’t wake her.’ So I just took him out for a walk; there was a circus in the town, and I took him to it. It so filled his mind that he quite forgot the cat. Next day he asked for her. I did not tell him she was buried in the garden, I just said she must have run away. In a week he had forgotten all about her—children soon forget.”
“Ay, that’s true,” said the sea captain. “But I think they must learn some time they’ve got to die.”
“Should I die before we reach land, and be thrown into that great, vast sea: just tell them I’ve gone on board another ship. You will take them back to Boston; I have here, in a letter, the name of a lady who will care for them. Dicky will be well off[34], as far as property is concerned, and so will Emmeline. Just tell them I’ve gone on board another ship—children soon forget.”
“I’ll do what you ask,” said the seaman.
The moon was over the horizon now, and the
As the two men sat without speaking, thinking their own thoughts, a little white figure appeared from the saloon hatch. It was Emmeline. She was a sleepwalker.
She had dreamed that she had lost her precious box, and now she was hunting for it on the decks of the
Mr Lestrange put his finger to his lips, took off his shoes and silently followed her. She searched behind a coil of rope, she tried to open the caboose door; hither and thither she wandered, wide-eyed and troubled of face, till at last, in the shadow of the hencoop, she found her treasure. Then back she came, holding up her little nightdress with one hand, and vanished down the saloon companion[36]very hurriedly; her uncle close behind, with one hand outstretched so as to catch her in case she stumbled.
Chapter III
The Shadow and the Fire
It was the fourth day of the long calm. An awning had been made on the stern for the passengers, and under it sat Lestrange, trying to read, and the children trying to play.
“Daddy!” suddenly cried Dick, who was looking over the rail.
“What?”
“Fish!”
Lestrange rose to his feet, came up and looked over the rail.
Down in the green water something moved, something pale and long—an ugly form. It vanished; and yet another came, neared the surface, and displayed itself more fully. Lestrange saw its eyes, he saw the dark fin, and the whole huge length of the creature; a shudder ran through him as he clasped Dicky.
“Ain’t he fine?” said the child. “I guess, daddy, I’d pull him aboard if I had a hook. Why haven’t I a hook, daddy?—why haven’t I a hook, daddy?—Ow, you’re
Emmeline also wanted to look. He lifted her up in his arms; but there was nothing to see: the creature had vanished.
“What’s they called, daddy?” persisted Dick, as his father took him down from the rail, and led him back to the chair.
“Sharks,” said Lestrange, whose face was covered with sweat.
He picked up the book he had been reading and sat with it on his knees staring at the white sunlit main-deck.
He glanced at the book upon his knees, and contrasted the beautiful things in it with the terrible things he had just seen, the things that were waiting for their food under the ship.
It was three bells—half-past three in the afternoon—and the ship’s bell had just rung out. The stewardess appeared to take the children below; and as they vanished down the saloon companion-way[37], Captain Le Farge came up to the stern, and stood for a moment looking over the sea on the port side, where fog had suddenly appeared.
“The sun has dimmed a bit,” said he; “I can a’most look at it. There’s a fog coming up—ever seen a Pacific fog?”
“No, never.”
“Well, you won’t want to see another,” replied the mariner, shading his eyes and fixing them upon the sea-line. The sea-line had lost its distinctness.
The captain suddenly turned from his viewing the sea and sky, raised his head and sniffed.
“Something is burning somewhere—smell it? Seems to me like an old mat or somewhat. It’s that steward, maybe; if he isn’t breaking glass, he’s upsetting lamps and burning holes in the carpet. Bless
“Ay, ay, sir.”
“What are you burning?”
“I an’t burnin’ northen, sir.”
“Tell you, I smell it!”
“There’s northen burnin’ here, sir.”
“Neither is there, it’s all on deck. Something in the caboose, maybe—rags, most likely.”
“Captain!” said Lestrange.
“Ay, ay.”
“Come here, please.”
Le Farge climbed on to the stern.
“I don’t know whether it’s my weakness that’s affecting my eyes, but there seems to me something strange about the mainmast[39].”
The main-mast seemed in motion—a spiral movement most strange to watch.
This apparent movement was caused by a spiral smoke so vague that one could only see it from the slight tremor of the mast.
“My God!” cried Le Farge, as he sprang from the stern and rushed forward.
Lestrange followed him slowly, stopping every moment to clasp the rail and pant for breath. He heard the shrill bird-like notes of the bosun’s pipe[40]. He saw the hands rushing from the cockpit, like bees out of a hive; he watched them surrounding the main-hatch. He watched the tarpaulin and locking-bars removed. He saw the hatch opened, and a burst of black smoke rise to the sky.
Lestrange was a man of a highly nervous temperament, and it is just this sort of man who keeps his head in an emergency. His first thought was of the children, his second of the boats.
Going around Cape Horn the