The Pirate Story Megapack. R.M. Ballantyne

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ afterward that they had them at Tahiti every so often. That would account for the ship riding unbroken over barrier and fringing reef, to be left high and dry inland. I have heard of such ships before.

      “I went up by the mast. The deck was a mess, and the glass of the skylights broken. The slide of the main companionway was jammed, so I swung down through the skylight. Vines had worked their way in and the rains had mouldered things, but there was no sign of looting, no disorder outside of that natural to the jolt of such a landing. Now that, Miss, was proof positive to me there were no natives on the island. They would have dismantled the ship, gutted it, and probably burned it. I’d seen some lettering on the bows, raised letters with some of ’em dropped off, and I’d seen the full name on the stern. They tied up with the figurehead and name of that model in the window; they were the same as that sign you’ve got hanging up outside:

      THE GOLDEN DOLPHIN

       BOSTON

      That was the name of her.

      “The cabin was much the same as other cabins—a mast running through, transom cushions between the doors leading off to the staterooms, fixed table and chairs in the middle, swinging lamp with the chimney busted, but oil in the container. She was well fitted up. It was getting dark outside and I could hear the wind rising, tossing about the treetops. I had to hurry. There was an empty birdcage, I remember, and books on shelves behind doors with the glass broken. The books were mouldy and had mostly come apart with the damp. I took along one of them that was small enough to get into my pocket. Gulliver’s Travels. That’s how I happened to read it.”

      “Oh!” The girl gave the exclamation with shining eyes. “Father thinks that Swift is the most wonderful of satirists. He always had Gulliver with him. I gave him that copy that was in the little library. And the canary. Poor Dick! Go on.”

      “Well, Miss, that’s about all, so far as the island goes. I told you it was getting dark. There was a recall from the ship, three shots from the saluting gun. My men were shouting for me and there was the schooner with a flag streaming from the main spreader. It was about mid-afternoon, but by the time we got aboard it was black as midnight. It was as if that big hurricane had been blowing in a circle and we had come from one edge of it through comparative calm only to go smack into it again. We clawed off that island by some miracle and away we went again, south and east. Our rudder went for the third and last time, we were blown along the top of the waste with no more control than a chip in a millrace.

      “There are leagues of open water down where we were, to look at the chart, but there are deeps in the South Pacific, troughs, they call ’em, where the depth is five thousand fathoms—thirty thousand feet—and more, and right close to those troughs you’ll find great reefs built up. I suppose they are built to sea level by the coral insects working on top of big peaks. They make big patches of shallows where, if it is calm, you see the sea breaking for miles at low tide. We saw nothing. There was as much water in the air as the ocean, it seemed. The spume blew level and stung like hail from the force of the wind back of it. There was no sky, no horizon, only a white welter, and the ship leaking, staggering along till she went smashing and dragging over coral that ripped her almost to splinters. There was no bottom left to the old hooker.

      “And, then, just as if it had done what it set out to do, though you can’t imagine such a hullabaloo to sink one schooner, or a dozen, for that matter, the wind vanished, blew out, the snarling sea worried over us for a bit and went down, though where it was deep the waves ran high enough, as we soon found out. The sky had cleared by sunset. It was the most gorgeous sight I’ve ever seen. The stars were out and the moon up before midnight, shining down on our two boats running before a sweet southeaster.

      “We parted company that night. The skipper and the first mate were in the other boat. Far as I know they’ve never been heard of. Insurance has been collected on the Whitewing, I know that. We’d broken up on the Maria Theresa Reef, I imagine, or maybe the Legouve Reef. The last reckoning taken and set down was the one made by the skipper when the sun broke through at noon off the island; Dolphin Island, I’ve always called it, for want of a better name. There’s nothing down on the charts.

      “That’s as far as you’re interested, Miss, and farther. We had a pretty mean time. Ran out of grub and water, the usual open boat luck. Two poor devils died and another went mad with drinking salt water, but we were picked up at last and brought back to Panama. There was a chap who was half purser, half steward along with me, and I came up north with him looking for a job. There was nothing doing on the coast so I worked inland after I’d stayed with his folks till I was ashamed of myself.

      “That’s all.”

      He had dodged the skeleton successfully and the fallen jaw with the golden bridge. He could ask the spinster if Captain Whiting had bridge work in his teeth. It might establish his death and, if so, a relative could better break it to the girl. It seemed convincing that there were no survivors. For one thing—he had avoided mention of it—the ship’s boats were gone. They might have been carried away in the storm that had flung her on the island; they might have been launched during that storm; they might have been launched from the island after the final catastrophe. If the crew had not been swept overboard, if they had not escaped in boats, they would surely have stayed with the ship and used it as headquarters, if not for a permanent habitation. Supposing the ship had been there a year even—in the hurry of departure Lyman had not thought to look for ship’s papers—that meant that the boats had been lost, like the skipper of the Whitewing, long ago.

      The island was uninhabited. Natives or white survivors of the Golden Dolphin would always have been looking for a ship. They would have seen the Whitewing, come down to the beach or signaled. Yet proof that one, at least, of the Golden Dolphin’s crew had come ashore, lay in the skeleton of the man who had been murdered. Such dentistry would hardly be that of a common sailor. It was an enigma probably insoluble this side of the grave. But Jim Lyman had not begun to gauge the intricacies of the riddle.

      The girl turned questioner and her inquisition showed that her knowledge of sea-craft was not merely inherent, but acquired, and that she knew how to apply it.

      “You said that the captain of the Whitewing took an observation that would give the position of the island?”

      “Yes, Miss.”

      “And set it down in the ship’s log?” Jim nodded. He saw what she was driving at.

      “I suppose he had the ship’s papers with him when you took to the boats?”

      “Yes. I saw the entry in the log and copied it. I have a master’s certificate and I have always kept a log of my own, as a matter of habit, whether acting as first or second. Just a pocket diary that trip. I told the skipper about the ship in the jungle and he noted it. He didn’t seem to attach much importance to it. We had troubles of our own. And all of us in my boat were in pretty bad shape when we were picked up. The Portugee that rescued us wasn’t over well found, though we were grateful enough to them. But they didn’t have much of a medicine chest and Spigotty grub needs lifelong training. We had boat sores and scurvy on top of being famished, and we just about crawled ashore at Panama. I didn’t know then but what our skipper might have been picked up or made a landing. It was his duty to report such a find and he would have turned in his log. But there’s no question but what he’s perished at sea, I’m afraid. I was in hospital on the Isthmus for awhile with Stallings, the steward—the rest, too, for that matter. I got a quick chance with Stallings to work north on a fruit freighter when I got out, and—though it may seem strange to you, being personally interested—I forgot about the Golden Dolphin until I saw your sign. It all came back in a flash when I saw the model in the window.”

      “Naturally. But you’ve got the position?”

      “Yes. СКАЧАТЬ