The Pirate Story Megapack. R.M. Ballantyne

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СКАЧАТЬ lips, but he was too late to shout, and Jim was well inside his guard. A sudden, fiery pain shot through Jim’s knuckles. He had driven them back with the impact against Swenson’s adamantine jaw, but they had served their purpose. The big man’s head rocked; he half swung around then dropped like a chain. There was no one near but the man at the wheel. He turned his head at the thud. Jim heard the yell as he leaped to the rail, catching at the stays to steady himself for a split-second, then diving clean into the tide, kicking off his shoes and striking out, under water at first, in the direction of Penikese.

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      The swift race of the tide gripped him, carrying him along parallel to the course of the schooner before he began to make transverse headway. When he was forced to come to the surface he heard confused shouts aboard and chuckled at the success of the blow that had temporarily paralyzed the brains of the boss. The weight of his clothes handicapped him so that he found he had miscalculated the power of the tide-rip and he settled down to a steady single overhand, swimming on his side, almost submerged, urging progress with powerful scissors clips of his legs, looking backward toward the ship from which he had so unceremoniously departed.

      To his dismay a beam shot out from her deck. She was rigged with a searchlight that he in his limited survey had not noticed. The ray swept the waters in his direction, missed him as he promptly ducked, and when he again broke water it was swinging toward the New Bedford shore. But it came back, seeking him out. The churn of the screw had been plain to him across the water; now it stopped. A boat was being lowered. It came in his direction. Evidently they either guessed which way he had gone or they had seen him. Meanwhile the current was carrying down the schooner. As the tremulous finger of the searchlight pointed his way Jim dived for the third time. Swimming under water slowed his progress and there was the danger that when lack of air forced him up again the boat would be on him or the beam spot him. The last risk was realized. He bobbed up in a circle of dull radiance and there was a shout from the boat, a clutter of oars turning to a steady stroke, the flash and report of a gun and the watery spat of a bullet only too well aimed.

      On they came, shouting in triumph. He heard the bellow of Swenson. His right hand had swollen with the blow, and now besides paining intolerably, it began to interfere with the diving power of his arm that grew numb.

      “Turn on your back. Float, damn ye! Float, or I’ll sink ye for keeps!” Swenson was roaring like an infuriated bull. Jim might dodge for a while, might dive a time or two, but they would wear him down, If they got him alive he could imagine what would be in store for him aboard with the humiliated Hellfire; unless—

      The gods had taken pity on him at last. A bank of fog, vagrant before the uncertain breeze, bore down on him. For the fourth time he slipped under water and struck out to reach its cover, swimming until he thought his lungs must burst and his body felt like lead from lack of oxygen. Up he came to suck in moist air, to find himself enveloped in woolly vapor. He turned over on his back to float and rest. He could hear the clack of oars, muffled calls. The search ray had long since reached its limit in the mist. Swenson and his rowers were losing their bearings. And the tide was bearing Jim rapidly toward the ocean. He had no hope of making Penikese now. That lonesome rock would have been only a temporary halting place, but a necessary one. Now he must keep on to Cuttyhunk. Out of the fog panic swooped at him. Was he going in the right direction? He knew how easy it was in broad daylight to get turned about while floating. In the fog—

      His heart pounded for a few beats, then steadied. He could see a halo in the mist, a rainbow spot of dull, but—to him—glorious tints. The fixed white light of Cuttyhunk, well ahead on his left! Allowing for the tide, as the ferries do trying to make a slip, Jim bucked the rip diagonally, his angle of crossing deflected backward. The light came swiftly toward him and he saw that he must make almost superhuman effort if, when it came abeam, he was to be close enough to shore to make a landing. He strove not to get into a flurry. He turned on his right side now, his left, undamaged arm driving him, while the right gave flotation, depending mostly on his legs for power.

      He was almost opposite the light, and it seemed to him that he had made scant progress shorewards for all his exertions. There comes a moment to the stoutest swimmer when the call upon the blood is too much for the over-worked lungs and heart; the limbs grow leaden, buoyancy is deflated and the overcoming of the dead centre of effort between strokes is a Herculean task. To turn upon the back and float and rest is the temptation that assails irresistibly. But to float in such an ebbing tideway, even for a few seconds, meant being carried out to the ocean, or at best down Long Island Sound.

      The light grew suddenly clearer. He had battled through the thick belt of mist that had temporarily saved him. He could see surf breaking on the rocks of Cuttyhunk. Past them he went, ledge after spouting ledge where a landing threatened broken ribs if not worse. Now he was past the light, all hope gone. A wave slapped him in the face as if derisively; salt water lapped into his mouth, open and gasping for breath. It was all over. He had failed!

      Instinctively he tensed for one last tussle before he quit. As he lifted his head to glance despairingly at the fixed light that shone so inexorably as a mark that he had missed, he saw the ghostly loom of spray that marked a little promontory projecting like a finger to the south of a tiny inlet below the ledges of the lighthouse foundation.

      Burying his head, he spent his last atoms of energy in the crawl, flailing the surges with his arms, clipping the water with his legs, plowing through the backwash from the rocks at top speed, then failing—

      There was an eddy in the tiny inlet, a small space of slack water, then an opposing current that bore him, still feebly swimming, close to the ledges that were beginning to expose their beards of slippery weed. These he grasped and clung to, twining his fingers like hooks among the pods, his body aswing and horizontal. A great wave came rolling into the inlet, chafing against a hundred obstacles, its force breaking. The tail of it lifted Jim and flung him into a crevice of the rock, scraping his flesh against mussels and barnacles that tore his feet and cut through his thin clothing, taking toll of his blood. It sucked at him as it retreated, spent, part of the general retreat of the tidal waters, but Jim remained, holding with fingers, knees, elbows and his lacerated feet, too spent to move for the moment. A rising tide must inevitably have plucked him from his refuge, borne him off to make a sport of him, half stunned as he was. But now it ebbed steadily. Off shore, the whaleboat was seeking the schooner’s searchlight in the fog, Swenson himself bewildered for direction, giving up the chase; cursing and hoping that Jim had sunk; wondering whether he had been given the right position of the island; deciding that he had been tricked, and exhausting his repertory of oaths to meet the occasion. The schooner’s engine could not buck the full sweep of the ebb any more than could the rowers. Both craft dropped down below the light, below where Jim crawled to the pitted top of his saving promontory; the boat caught up to the mother vessel, was towed, after the crew got aboard, and the schooner swung out around Martha’s Vineyard, past Nantucket, out to the sea until the tide turned.

      Jim, with naked feet, stumbled over the dripping rocks, cut and bruised, yet gathering strength in the exultation of having won through. But Nature called a halt, insisting on recuperation, his engines clamoring for fuel. A soaking meant nothing to Jim who had slept curled up on hard planks in a small cockpit many a wet night. He found a patch of sand and dropped to it, shouldering out a shallow bed, scraping a hollow for his hips, dropping asleep in the middle of the work, dreamlessly lost to all the world with the fixed white light of Cuttyhunk streaming overhead.

      Gulls woke him, screaming discordantly at this intruder on their sanctuary. The mist had gone, and the morning was sharp and clear with the sun already striking at him over Nashawena Island. He sat up, smarting and aching, a sorry looking sight but refreshed, his hurts lost in his purpose—to get to Foxfield before evening. The prospects were not encouraging, but he clenched his jaws until the muscles bunched, tightened his fists and began to figure out how he could make it. The light was out.

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