The Pirate Story Megapack. R.M. Ballantyne

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СКАЧАТЬ he’s cooked aboard ship before this.”

      “You know him? Character all right? We’ve got ladies aboard.”

      “Know him ever since I’ve been here. They say Li Cheng was in the opium ring, but that was long ago before the U. S. took over the place and burned up all the pipes and dumped the confiscated opium into the bay.”

      “I’ve heard about that,” said Jim. “Some say they dumped molasses instead of opium.” The clerk grinned.

      “I guess Li Cheng’s character is good enough. You’re not going to tempt him, are you?” Both laughed. “I’ll have him in for you inside of half an hour,” said the clerk. “You can look him over.”

      “He’ll have to start in right away. We sail this afternoon. Any one else in view in case he doesn’t show?”

      “He’ll show. Needs a job badly, he said. ‘Too muchy bloke.’ He’ll go. And I haven’t got any one nearly as good.”

      Jim did some marketing and saw the stuff carried down to the boat landing by Hamsun and Vogt, brought ashore for that purpose. He needed a little gasoline but took enough to fill up his tank. The water tender was already alongside the Seamew.

      He returned to interview Li Cheng. The wisest of white men can tell but little about a yellow man until he tests him. Li Cheng was elderly. He was cueless and there were gray hairs among the black. He might have been fifty or seventy, with his comparatively unwrinkled skin and black eyes with their unfolding eyelids that seemed to open like the top of a roller desk.

      “Can do,” he said. “Me topside cook. Pastly, hot blead, hot biscuit. Good chow. Make up salad, number one salad, fine coffee. Suppose I catch up fifty dolla every month, fifty dolla gold, I go.”

      “That’s pretty high.”

      “Maskee,” answered Li Cheng indifferently. “I like go sea becos I no spend. Make um stake. Maskee. Suppose you no pay can catch plenty job soon. Topside cook I belong.”

      “Wages are up,” said the clerk, to Jim’s inquiring glance.

      “I’ll sign you,” said Jim. “Come in to the commissioner’s.”

      After signing on Li Cheng went uptown again for his kit, promising to be aboard within the hour and to have tiffin ready. Jim had one more errand. At the office of the Collector of the Port. That official’s records showed nothing of any vessel’s entry that remotely resembled a power schooner. Jim’s belief that Swenson had sailed by way of Panama to circumvent and follow them faded, to his relief.

      He found the ladies aboard the Seamew, their shopping done, anxious to start. Newton still slept off his potations. Li Cheng came off in a shore skiff, bringing his belongings and a pet monkey.

      “You no care?” he asked. “Velly fond of pets. No pilikia this kekko,” he said. “Keep him along galley. Make fun for sailor.” Kitty Whiting fell in love with the monkey and made friends with it immediately, Li Cheng looking on with a broad smile.

      “Plenty akamai, that kekko,” he said. “Heap smart monkey.”

      They made clearance, yanking the anchor from the stiff mud of the harbor bottom, out through the buoyed channel through the reef, getting a farewell wave from the old keeper of the reef-lighthouse, out past the bell-buoy and then, with the northeast trade blowing fresh and free as the Seamew out-swung her booms, they headed straight out into the blue, sparkling sea. There was nothing ahead of them until they reached the equator, save Johnson Island, a barren lift of coral rock and sand that they most likely would not even sight.

      The seas ran crisp, the wind blowing off their curling crests like powder. The water was a most intense blue. For all its action it held the apparent hardness of glass, or of a jewel with a myriad facets flinging back the brilliance of the sun. To the north sailed great billows of cloud out of which blew the breeze. In the southeast the other islands of the group swam in a luminous haze, darker blue than the sea, with a hint of green here and there, and on far off Hawaii shore the gleam of snow on Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa, their summits nearly fourteen thousand feet above sea level. Behind Lanari rose the high dome of Maui’s extinct crater. Sea gulls and bosun birds had escorted them out to sea. The air seemed charged with vigor; the day one of good omen. Kitty stood in the bows, cuddling Li Cheng’s monkey, gazing far ahead, a little anxious frown between her eyes. It seemed to Jim that she was striving to find some hope back of that luminous horizon, as if a little dread was beginning to dilute her confidence that she would find her father.

      Baker touched Jim on the arm, pointing south and east to where, on a course parallel with their own, a white fleck showed. Jim took the powerful glass and focused it on that stiffly upstanding speck, watching it for long minutes. It was undoubtedly a schooner, well down to leeward, bound on their own course, an unusual one for vessels. It might be a South Sea trader, though not many came to the Hawaiian Group, save on some rare trip to San Francisco. The nearest group ahead was the Phoenix Islands, just below the line, nearly five hundred marine leagues away. Jim handed back the binoculars to the mate with a face he tried to make untroubled.

      “Schooner. Going our way, it seems,” he said. “We’ll make a race of it.”

      “We’ve got a good start to wind’ard,” remarked Baker. “She’ll have come out of Hilo, I’m thinking, through the Alenuihana Channel, likely. Been back of Kahoolawe until just now. Current setting her down. Ah, she’s tacking.”

      “We’ll run off a bit and take a closer look at her,” said Jim. Baker said nothing. The maneuver would be a waste of time, but if the skipper wanted to get a nearer view of every stray sail, that was none of the mate’s business. The sheets came in as Jim gave the order and Hamsun spun the wheel. The Seamew came round like a teetotum, heeled to the breeze that sent her reaching, fast closing up the distance to the stranger, sailing now toward them on the same point, though on the opposite tack. Jim did not analyze the impulse that caused him to run out of his way, even for a few miles to leeward. He had set his mind to make all possible speed, yet he felt he could not be satisfied until he had come close enough to see the rig of the fast approaching schooner.

      It was still possible that she was merely an inter-island boat making the trip from Hilo to one of the other islands. If she was bound for Kauai, northernmost of the Hawaiian group, she would not, since she had tacked as she did, be much out of her course. Somehow he believed that this was not so. Without anything definite to go on he linked up the schooner with Swenson.

      Kitty came toward him, saying nothing, but sailor enough to know they had changed their course. She caught sight of the sail. The two schooners were slashing through the seas toward each other at about their best rate of speed; already on the Seamew they could see the lift of the other’s white hull as she breasted the seas, making easy work of it. Baker came up again, glass in hand.

      “There’s a big launch coming like a skipjack,” he said. “Either she’s after us or out to meet this other chap. Wouldn’t be so far off land on her own hook, not a launch.”

      Jim knew, without further confirmation, that Swenson was in the launch that was tearing along at a furious clip, shattering the seas she charged, half smothered in smoky spray. She was a double-ender, built for island work. As she came on she rolled like a porpoise, showing her bilge heels as she flung herself forward. He got the glass on the advancing schooner once more. She was of the same type as the Seamew, a Gloucester fisherman model, unmistakable as she was alien to those waters. There was no need to go closer, but Jim held on. He wanted to read her name, to see the СКАЧАТЬ