A Son Of The Sun. Джек Лондон

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СКАЧАТЬ boy sixty years of age, and his assistant, a Lark Islander of eleven, saw to it that he was continually supplied.

      Pankburn did not object to the hard work. He devoured work, never shirking and always beating the native sailors in jumping to obey a command. But his sufferings during the period of driving the alcohol out of his system were truly heroic. Even when the last shred of the poison was exuded, the desire, as an obsession, remained in his head. So it was, when, on his honour, he went ashore at Apia, that he attempted to put the public houses out of business by drinking up their stocks in trade. And so it was, at two in the morning, that David Grief found him in front of the Tivoli, out of which he had been disorderly thrown by Charley Roberts. Aloysius, as of old, was chanting his sorrows to the stars. Also, and more concretely, he was punctuating the rhythm with cobbles of coral stone, which he flung with amazing accuracy through Charley Roberts’s windows.

      David Grief took him away, but not till next morning did he take him in hand. It was on the deck of the Kittiwake, and there was nothing kindergarten about it. Grief struck him, with bare knuckles, punched him and punished him – gave him the worst thrashing he had ever received.

      “For the good of your soul, Pankburn,” was the way he emphasized his blows. “For the good of your mother. For the progeny that will come after. For the good of the world, and the universe, and the whole race of man yet to be. And now, to hammer the lesson home, we’ll do it all over again. That, for the good of your soul; and that, for your mother’s sake; and that, for the little children, undreamed of and unborn, whose mother you’ll love for their sakes, and for love’s sake, in the lease of manhood that will be yours when I am done with you. Come on and take your medicine. I’m not done with you yet. I’ve only begun. There are many other reasons which I shall now proceed to expound.” The brown sailors and the black stewards and cook looked on and grinned. Far from them was the questioning of any of the mysterious and incomprehensible ways of white men. As for Carlsen, the mate, he was grimly in accord with the treatment his employer was administering; while Albright, the supercargo, merely played with his mustache and smiled. They were men of the sea. They lived life in the rough. And alcohol, in themselves as well as in other men, was a problem they had learned to handle in ways not taught in doctors’ schools.

      “Boy! A bucket of fresh water and a towel,” Grief ordered, when he had finished. “Two buckets and two towels,” he added, as he surveyed his own hands.

      “You’re a pretty one,” he said to Pankburn. “You’ve spoiled everything. I had the poison completely out of you. And now you are fairly reeking with it. We’ve got to begin all over again. Mr. Albright! You know that pile of old chain on the beach at the boat-landing. Find the owner, buy it, and fetch it on board. There must be a hundred and fifty fathoms of it. Pankburn! To-morrow morning you start in pounding the rust off of it. When you’ve done that, you’ll sandpaper it. Then you’ll paint it. And nothing else will you do till that chain is as smooth as new.”

      Aloysius Pankburn shook his head.

      “I quit. Francis Island can go to hell for all of me. I’m done with your slave-driving. Kindly put me ashore at once. I’m a white man. You can’t treat me this way.”

      “Mr. Carlsen, you will see that Mr. Pankburn remains on board.”

      “I’ll have you broken for this!” Aloysius screamed. “You can’t stop me.”

      “I can give you another licking,” Grief answered. “And let me tell you one thing, you besotted whelp, I’ll keep on licking you as long as my knuckles hold out or until you yearn to hammer chain rust. I’ve taken you in hand, and I’m going to make a man out of you if I have to kill you to do it. Now go below and change your clothes. Be ready to turn to with a hammer this afternoon. Mr. Albright, get that chain aboard pronto. Mr. Carlsen, send the boats ashore after it. Also, keep your eye on Pankburn. If he shows signs of keeling over or going into the shakes, give him a nip – a small one. He may need it after last night.”

V

      For the rest of the time the Kittiwake lay in Apia Aloysius Pankburn pounded chain rust. Ten hours a day he pounded. And on the long stretch across to the Gilberts he still pounded.

      Then came the sandpapering. One hundred and fifty fathoms is nine hundred feet, and every link of all that length was smoothed and polished as no link ever was before. And when the last link had received its second coat of black paint, he declared himself.

      “Come on with more dirty work,” he told Grief. “I’ll overhaul the other chains if you say so. And you needn’t worry about me any more. I’m not going to take another drop. I’m going to train up. You got my proud goat when you beat me, but let me tell you, you only got it temporarily. Train! I’m going to train till I’m as hard all the way through, and clean all the way through, as that chain is. And some day, Mister David Grief, somewhere, somehow, I’m going to be in such shape that I’ll lick you as you licked me. I’m going to pulp your face till your own niggers won’t know you.”

      Grief was jubilant.

      “Now you’re talking like a man,” he cried. “The only way you’ll ever lick me is to become a man. And then, maybe – ”

      He paused in the hope that the other would catch the suggestion. Aloysius groped for it, and, abruptly, something akin to illumination shone in his eyes.

      “And then I won’t want to, you mean?”

      Grief nodded.

      “And that’s the curse of it,” Aloysius lamented. “I really believe I won’t want to. I see the point. But I’m going to go right on and shape myself up just the same.”

      The warm, sunburn glow in Grief’s face seemed to grow warmer. His hand went out.

      “Pankburn, I love you right now for that.”

      Aloysius grasped the hand, and shook his head in sad sincerity.

      “Grief,” he mourned, “you’ve got my goat, you’ve got my proud goat, and you’ve got it permanently, I’m afraid.”

VI

      On a sultry tropic day, when the last flicker of the far southeast trade was fading out and the seasonal change for the northwest monsoon was coming on, the Kittiwake lifted above the sea-rim the jungle-clad coast of Francis Island.

      Grief, with compass bearings and binoculars, identified the volcano that marked Redscar, ran past Owen Bay, and lost the last of the breeze at the entrance to Likikili Bay. With the two whaleboats out and towing, and with Carl-sen heaving the lead, the Kittiwake sluggishly entered a deep and narrow indentation. There were no beaches. The mangroves began at the water’s edge, and behind them rose steep jungle, broken here and there by jagged peaks of rock. At the end of a mile, when the white scar on the bluff bore west-southwest, the lead vindicated the “Directory,” and the anchor rumbled down in nine fathoms.

      For the rest of that day and until the afternoon of the day following they remained on the Kittiwake and waited. No canoes appeared. There were no signs of human life. Save for the occasional splash of a fish or the screaming of cockatoos, there seemed no other life. Once, however, a huge butterfly, twelve inches from tip to tip, fluttered high over their mastheads and drifted across to the opposing jungle.

      “There’s no use in sending a boat in to be cut up,” Grief said.

      Pankburn was incredulous, and volunteered to go in alone, to swim it if he couldn’t borrow the dingey.

      “They haven’t forgotten the German cruiser,” Grief explained. “And I’ll wager that bush is alive with men right now. What do you think, СКАЧАТЬ