Micah Clarke. Артур Конан Дойл

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СКАЧАТЬ very thin, with a craggy hard face, clean-shaven and sunburned, with a thousand little wrinkles intersecting it in every direction. He had lost his hat, and his short wiry hair, slightly flecked with grey, stood up in a bristle all over his head. It was hard to guess at his age, but he could scarce have been under his fiftieth year, though the ease with which he had boarded our boat proved that his strength and energy were unimpaired. Of all his characteristics, however, nothing attracted my attention so much as his eyes, which were almost covered by their drooping lids, and yet looked out through the thin slits which remained with marvellous brightness and keenness. A passing glance might give the idea that he was languid and half asleep, but a closer one would reveal those glittering, shifting lines of light, and warn the prudent man not to trust too much to his first impressions.

      ‘I could swim to Portsmouth,’ he remarked, rummaging in the pockets of his sodden jacket; ‘I could swim well-nigh anywhere. I once swam from Gran on the Danube to Buda, while a hundred thousand Janissaries danced with rage on the nether bank. I did, by the keys of St. Peter! Wessenburg’s Pandours would tell you whether Decimus Saxon could swim. Take my advice, young men, and always carry your tobacco in a water-tight metal box.’

      As he spoke he drew a flat box from his pocket, and several wooden tubes, which he screwed together to form a long pipe. This he stuffed with tobacco, and having lit it by means of a flint and steel with a piece of touch-paper from the inside of his box, he curled his legs under him in Eastern fashion, and settled down to enjoy a smoke. There was something so peculiar about the whole incident, and so preposterous about the man’s appearance and actions, that we both broke into a roar of laughter, which lasted until for very exhaustion we were compelled to stop. He neither joined in our merriment nor expressed offence at it, but continued to suck away at his long wooden tube with a perfectly stolid and impassive face, save that the half-covered eyes glinted rapidly backwards and forwards from one to the other of us.

      ‘You will excuse our laughter, sir,’ I said at last; ‘my friend and I are unused to such adventures, and are merry at the happy ending of it. May we ask whom it is that we have picked up?’

      ‘Decimus Saxon is my name,’ the stranger answered; ‘I am the tenth child of a worthy father, as the Latin implies. There are but nine betwixt me and an inheritance. Who knows? Small-pox might do it, or the plague!’

      ‘We heard a shot aboard of the brig,’ said Reuben.

      ‘That was my brother Nonus shooting at me,’ the stranger observed, shaking his head sadly.

      ‘But there was a second shot.’

      ‘Ah, that was me shooting at my brother Nonus.’

      ‘Good lack!’ I cried. ‘I trust that thou hast done him no hurt.’

      ‘But a flesh wound, at the most,’ he answered. ‘I thought it best to come away, however, lest the affair grow into a quarrel. I am sure that it was he who trained the nine-pounder on me when I was in the water. It came near enough to part my hair. He was always a good shot with a falconet or a mortar-piece. He could not have been hurt, however, to get down from the poop to the main-deck in the time.’

      There was a pause after this, while the stranger drew a long knife from his belt, and cleaned out his pipe with it. Reuben and I took up our oars, and having pulled up our tangled fishing-lines, which had been streaming behind the boat, we proceeded to pull in towards the land.

      ‘The question now is,’ said the stranger, ‘where we are to go to?’

      ‘We are going down Langston Bay,’ I answered.

      ‘Oh, we are, are we?’ he cried, in a mocking voice; ‘you are sure of it eh? You are certain we are not going to France? We have a mast and sail there, I see, and water in the beaker. All we want are a few fish, which I hear are plentiful in these waters, and we might make a push for Barfleur.’

      ‘We are going down Langston Bay,’ I repeated coldly.

      ‘You see might is right upon the waters,’ he explained, with a smile which broke his whole face up into crinkles. ‘I am an old soldier, a tough fighting man, and you are two raw lads. I have a knife, and you are unarmed. D’ye see the line of argument? The question now is, Where are we to go?’

      I faced round upon him with the oar in my hand. ‘You boasted that you could swim to Portsmouth,’ said I, ‘and so you shall. Into the water with you, you sea-viper, or I’ll push you in as sure as my name is Micah Clarke.’

      ‘Throw your knife down, or I’ll drive the boat hook through you,’ cried Reuben, pushing it forward to within a few inches of the man’s throat.

      ‘Sink me, but this is most commendable!’ he said, sheathing his weapon, and laughing softly to himself. ‘I love to draw spirit out of the young fellows. I am the steel, d’ye see, which knocks the valour out of your flint. A notable simile, and one in every way worthy of that most witty of mankind, Samuel Butler. This,’ he continued, tapping a protuberance which I had remarked over his chest, ‘is not a natural deformity, but is a copy of that inestimable “Hudibras,” which combines the light touch of Horace with the broader mirth of Catullus. Heh! what think you of the criticism?’

      ‘Give up that knife,’ said I sternly.

      ‘Certainly,’ he replied, handing it over to me with a polite bow. ‘Is there any other reasonable matter in which I can oblige ye? I will give up anything to do ye pleasure-save only my good name and soldierly repute, or this same copy of “Hudibras,” which, together with a Latin treatise upon the usages of war, written by a Fleming and printed in Liege in the Lowlands, I do ever bear in my bosom.’

      I sat down beside him with the knife in my hand. ‘You pull both oars,’ I said to Reuben; ‘I’ll keep guard over the fellow and see that he plays us no trick. I believe that you are right, and that he is nothing better than a pirate. He shall be given over to the justices when we get to Havant.’

      I thought that our passenger’s coolness deserted him for a moment, and that a look of annoyance passed over his face.

      ‘Wait a bit!’ he said; ‘your name, I gather is Clarke, and your home is Havant. Are you a kinsman of Joseph Clarke, the old Roundhead of that town?’

      ‘He is my father,’ I answered.

      ‘Hark to that, now!’ he cried, with a throb of laughter; ‘I have a trick of falling on my feet. Look at this, lad! Look at this!’ He drew a packet of letters from his inside pocket, wrapped in a bit of tarred cloth, and opening it he picked one out and placed it upon my knee. ‘Read!’ said he, pointing at it with his long thin finger.

      It was inscribed in large plain characters, ‘To Joseph Clarke, leather merchant of Havant, by the hand of Master Decimus Saxon, part-owner of the ship Providence, from Amsterdam to Portsmouth.’ At each side it was sealed with a massive red seal, and was additionally secured with a broad band of silk.

      ‘I have three-and-twenty of them to deliver in the neighbourhood,’ he remarked. ‘That shows what folk think of Decimus Saxon. Three-and-twenty lives and liberties are in my hands. Ah, lad, invoices and bills of lading are not done up in that fashion. It is not a cargo of Flemish skins that is coming for the old man. The skins have good English hearts in them; ay, and English swords in their fists to strike out for freedom and for conscience. I risk my life in carrying this letter to your father; and you, his son, threaten to hand me over to the justices! For shame! For shame! I blush for you!’

      ‘I don’t know what you are hinting at,’ I answered. ‘You must speak plainer if I am to understand you.’

      ‘Can СКАЧАТЬ