A Son Of The Sun. Джек Лондон

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СКАЧАТЬ mate of the Flirt was killed. Only he wasn’t killed. The Banks Islanders held him prisoner, and he was dying of necrosis of the jawbone, caused by an arrow wound in the fight on the beach. Before he died he told the yarn to Johnny Black. Johnny Black wrote my father from Levuka. He was at the end of his rope – cancer. My father, ten years afterward, when captain of the Perry, got the spikes from German Oscar. And from my father, last will and testament, you know, came the spikes and the data. I have the island, the latitude and longitude of the beach where the three spikes were nailed in the trees. The spikes are up at Lavina’s now. The latitude and longitude are in my head. Now what do you think?”

      “Fishy,” was Grief’s instant judgment. “Why didn’t your father go and get it himself?”

      “Didn’t need it. An uncle died and left him a fortune. He retired from the navy, ran foul of an epidemic of trained nurses in Boston, and my mother got a divorce. Also, she fell heir to an income of something like thirty thousand dollars, and went to live in New Zealand. I was divided between them, half-time New Zealand, half-time United States, until my father’s death last year. Now my mother has me altogether. He left me his money – oh, a couple of millions – but my mother has had guardians appointed on account of the drink. I’m worth all kinds of money, but I can’t touch a penny save what is doled out to me. But the old man, who had got the tip on my drinking, left me the three spikes and the data thereunto pertaining. Did it through his lawyers, unknown to my mother; said it beat life insurance, and that if I had the backbone to go and get it I could drink my back teeth awash until I died. Millions in the hands of my guardians, slathers of shekels of my mother’s that’ll be mine if she beats me to the crematory, another million waiting to be dug up, and in the meantime I’m cadging on Lavina for two drinks a day. It’s hell, isn’t it? – when you consider my thirst.”

      “Where’s the island?”

      “It’s a long way from here.”

      “Name it.”

      “Not on your life, Captain Grief. You’re making an easy half-million out of this. You will sail under my directions, and when we’re well to sea and on our way I’ll tell you and not before.”

      Grief shrugged his shoulders, dismissing the subject.

      “When I’ve given you another drink I’ll send the boat ashore with you,” he said.

      Pankburn was taken aback. For at least five minutes he debated with himself, then licked his lips and surrendered.

      “If you promise to go, I’ll tell you now.”

      “Of course I’m willing to go. That’s why I asked you. Name the island.”

      Pankburn looked at the bottle.

      “I’ll take that drink now, Captain.”

      “No you won’t. That drink was for you if you went ashore. If you are going to tell me the island, you must do it in your sober senses.”

      “Francis Island, if you will have it. Bougainville named it Barbour Island.”

      “Off there all by its lonely in the Little Coral Sea,” Grief said. “I know it. Lies between New Ireland and New Guinea. A rotten hole now, though it was all right when the Flirt drove in the spikes and the Chink pearler traded for them. The steamship Castor, recruiting labour for the Upolu plantations, was cut off there with all hands two years ago. I knew her captain well. The Germans sent a cruiser, shelled the bush, burned half a dozen villages, killed a couple of niggers and a lot of pigs, and – and that was all. The niggers always were bad there, but they turned really bad forty years ago. That was when they cut off a whaler. Let me see? What was her name?”

      He stepped to the bookshelf, drew out the bulky “South Pacific Directory,” and ran through its pages.

      “Yes. Here it is. Francis, or Barbour,” he skimmed. “Natives warlike and treacherous – Melanesian – cannibals. Whaleship Western cut off – that was her name. Shoals – points – anchorages – ah, Redscar, Owen Bay, Likikili Bay, that’s more like it; deep indentation, mangrove swamps, good holding in nine fathoms when white scar in bluff bears west-southwest.” Grief looked up. “That’s your beach, Pankburn, I’ll swear.”

      “Will you go?” the other demanded eagerly.

      Grief nodded.

      “It sounds good to me. Now if the story had been of a hundred millions, or some such crazy sum, I wouldn’t look at it for a moment. We’ll sail to-morrow, but under one consideration. You are to be absolutely under my orders.”

      His visitor nodded emphatically and joyously.

      “And that means no drink.”

      “That’s pretty hard,” Pankburn whined.

      “It’s my terms. I’m enough of a doctor to see you don’t come to harm. And you are to work – hard work, sailor’s work. You’ll stand regular watches and everything, though you eat and sleep aft with us.”

      “It’s a go.” Pankburn put out his hand to ratify the agreement. “If it doesn’t kill me,” he added.

      David Grief poured a generous three-fingers into the tumbler and extended it.

      “Then here’s your last drink. Take it.”

      Pankburn’s hand went halfway out. With a sudden spasm of resolution, he hesitated, threw back his shoulders, and straightened up his head.

      “I guess I won’t,” he began, then, feebly surrendering to the gnaw of desire, he reached hastily for the glass, as if in fear that it would be withdrawn.

IV

      It is a long traverse from Papeete in the Societies to the Little Coral Sea – from 100 west longitude to 150 east longitude – as the crow flies the equivalent to a voyage across the Atlantic. But the Kittiwake did not go as the crow flies. David Grief’s numerous interests diverted her course many times. He stopped to take a look-in at uninhabited Rose Island with an eye to colonizing and planting cocoa-nuts. Next, he paid his respects to Tui Manua, of Eastern Samoa, and opened an intrigue for a share of the trade monopoly of that dying king’s three islands. From Apia he carried several relief agents and a load of trade goods to the Gilberts. He peeped in at Ontong-Java Atoll, inspected his plantations on Ysabel, and purchased lands from the salt-water chiefs of northwestern Malaita. And all along this devious way he made a man of Aloysius Pankburn.

      That thirster, though he lived aft, was compelled to do the work of a common sailor. And not only did he take his wheel and lookout, and heave on sheets and tackles, but the dirtiest and most arduous tasks were appointed him. Swung aloft in a bosun’s chair, he scraped the masts and slushed down. Holystoning the deck or scrubbing it with fresh limes made his back ache and developed the wasted, flabby muscles. When the Kittiwake lay at anchor and her copper bottom was scrubbed with cocoa-nut husks by the native crew, who dived and did it under water, Pankburn was sent down on his shift and as many times as any on the shift.

      “Look at yourself,” Grief said. “You are twice the man you were when you came on board. You haven’t had one drink, you didn’t die, and the poison is pretty well worked out of you. It’s the work. It beats trained nurses and business managers. Here, if you’re thirsty. Clap your lips to this.”

      With several deft strokes of his heavy-backed sheath-knife, Grief clipped a triangular piece of shell from the end of a husked drinking-cocoa-nut. The thin, cool liquid, slightly milky and effervescent, СКАЧАТЬ