The Pirate Story Megapack. R.M. Ballantyne

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      Parrots screamed to welcome the sun, doves cooed; a little wind blew off the land, ruffling the lagoon where fish flashed; gulls started out to sea, wheeling uncertain, to gaze at the thing that had appeared within the reef overnight, proclaiming their displeasure with raucous cries. Day had come with a leap, bringing warmth and cheer, the renewal of vitality and hope.

      “Bleakfast all leady!” piped out Cheng from the galley.

      Wiltz served them a rapid meal. They took their rifles, the women armed with holstered automatics. Both had donned knickers and shirts of light flannel. Jim discovered to his surprise that Lynda Warner had another treasure beside her voice; her figure was almost as youthful, almost as gracious in the revelation of the boyish costume, as Kitty’s. The men had had their meal; guns and cartridges were served out, instructions given. Baker was to take charge of the covering boat, Jim steered the first. With him went Kitty and Lynda; he assigned Newton to Baker’s outfit, much to the latter’s protest, overruled by the statement that two passengers were enough.

      Kitty, Lynda, Jim, Moore, Sanders, Neilson, Walker and two kanakas.

      Baker, Newton Foster, Vogt and the four remaining Fijians.

      On board Cheng, Wiltz, Hamsun and Wood.

      The boat-keels struck the water; the falls were released, oars put out. Cheng stuck his yellow face over the rail, the monkey squatting on his head like the familiar spirit of an Oriental wizard.

      “Goo’-by an’ goo’ luck,” he called. Wiltz and Wood stood at the forestay, glum but waving farewell. Hamsun was invisible.

      They rowed softly along the quiet lagoon where the ripples were like opals in the dawn. Cautiously the leading boat edged in toward the white beach of powdered coral and shells where sea pinks patterned the sand. The sunrise wind had died. There was not a sound but the splash and drip of the oars. Baker kept distance, two men rowing, the rest ready with their guns. But not a leaf of the thick wall of bush back of the beach waved. No canoe shot out from the mangroves guarding the freshwater creek.

      “Why are there no islanders here?” asked Kitty. “It is a beautiful place and fertile.”

      “They may have all been killed off in an epidemic,” Jim answered. “The place may be tabu after some such disaster. There are islands like this that seem never to have been inhabited for many centuries. Out of the currents, you see. The big migration never reached them.”

      “An Eden of the Seas,” suggested Lynda.

      “Minus snakes,” said Jim. “Mighty few snakes in the South Seas proper.”

      The keel grated on the bottom; the kanakas sprang out and ran her up the slight slope with strong arms. Jim trusted to their sizing up of the situation more than to his own.

      “No kanaka walk along this island,” one of them pronounced. “Too much already they raise plenty hell an’ bobbery suppose they here this time.”

      They landed, and the covering boat came up.

      “Everything to ourselves,” said Newton. “Now then, Lyman, where’s the Golden Dolphin?”

      Jim took his bearings and led the way into the bush. It was much thicker than when he had last penetrated it. The almost level sunrays stabbed its green mantle with long lances. They climbed through, over and about dense masses of creepers and palmetto, saw-leaved pandanus, with tree trunks grown close together as the stakes of a palisade. Here the Fijians first proved themselves, hacking a way through the tangle. Soon there were no longer any shafts of sunlight, they walked in a green twilight, as they might at the bottom of a sea with weird water-growths twining all about them. The sight of the ship vaguely showing amid a mass of verdure heightened the resemblance. It was hard to see at first even when the grinning kanakas pointed it out, but then their eyes traced it and they hurried forward as fast as they could, with their hearts pounding with excitement. To Kitty Whiting it was the visible confirmation of her hopes, the sight of it reinforced her belief that, having found her father’s ship, she would find her father. Lynda Warner naturally shared her cousin’s feelings. To Newton the ship represented a fortune of which he had been somewhat skeptical, though not so much so as he was at heart concerning the fate of Captain Avery Whiting. Jim was not unthrilled by the thought of the pearls hidden in the hulk. He found some triumph in showing what he had promised, in proving up. He wished Stephen Foster were there beside his son. Kitty Whiting’s joy was his.

      There was an open space above the ship where its weight had crushed the growth and prohibited any revival. So thick was the jungle that the Golden Dolphin seemed to lie at the bottom of a green shaft. Away up the topmost branches of the trees had caught the rising sun but it was not high enough yet to send full light to the bottom of the well. It would not be long before it did so, Jim noticed. Looking at his watch he saw that they had been four hours struggling through the bush from the beach, four hours to make half a mile of progress. It had originally taken him a quarter of the time. Another year and this ship would be utterly lost, swallowed by the jungle.

      The native boys attacked the barricade with fresh vigor, their bodies, naked save for loincloths, glistening with sweat that ran off them in streams. Now they could make out the mast that lay over the side, festooned with green vines. Vines had climbed the mast-stumps and the tangle of ropes, smothering the vessel with a cloak that seemed to hide it from the shame of its disaster.

      Suddenly the sun peeped over the edge of the rift in the trees. A ray came down and touched the half-hidden figurehead. Kitty gasped. Jim saw her eyes fill with tears that she winked away.

      “The Golden Dolphin.” She flashed one look at Jim, a reward that amply satisfied him. Then her eyes closed for a moment and her lips moved. She was praying.

      They clambered aboard breathlessly, leaving the native boys below. They peered down through the broken skylight through the tarnished bars into the dim interior where more green things writhed. The sun, as if directed for their search, sent one beam, almost vertical, probing through the gloom, disclosing a mast, outlines of a table, chairs, a cushioned transom, a stateroom door.

      “I got down through there,” said Jim. “The companion doors were jammed. Maybe we can move them.”

      They were closed, but united effort shifted them more easily than they expected. The companion ladder was in place and unbroken.

      “I’ll test it,” said Jim. It was sound and he called up the news. The sun, almost directly overhead now, beginning to flood the shaft with golden light, illuminated the main cabin with beams in which golden motes danced, and rendered the darkness still blacker by contrast. They had brought along electric torches and Jim turned his on the stairs as Kitty descended. She held out her hand to him naturally for assistance though she did not need any, he knew. Lynda followed, then Newton. Baker tactfully kept the rest back, telling them this was “the lady’s party.”

      The quartet did not notice that they were not followed. Kitty stood in a ray of sunlight, her hand over her heart, leaning forward, looking, listening; listening, it seemed to Jim, as if her love was conjuring from this stranded ocean habitation of her father’s some clew to his whereabouts. She spoke in a whisper that fitted the occasion. There seemed something uncanny about the place. Jim fancied he heard movements back of the passage that led from the cabin forward. He sent an exploring pencil of light down its dark tunnel, showing stateroom doors on either side, half open, a door closed at the far end.

      “There may be some message,” said Kitty. “We must look.” They moved forward through the vines that caught СКАЧАТЬ