The Golden Age of Pulp Fiction MEGAPACK ™, Vol. 1: George Allan England. George Allan England

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СКАЧАТЬ kiss, ’Polyte, an’ then—”

      “Va chez l’ diab’! We’re goin’ now!”

      Despite his rage, he could not shake her loose. She clung to him—not at all in fear, but in a kind of wondrous exaltation. Her breast was warm against him. Her white face burned with inward fire; and, though she made no sound, her lips were moving as the flat boat plunged.

      And now he fought her off; he beat her down, away from him.

      “Eh, quoi? You want to drown me?” he spat at her. “Va! Drown, you, if you lak’! I—I goin’ for live, me!”

      A moment the outlaw thought perhaps the clumsy scow might breast the fury of the rapids and sluice down to safety in the whirlpool below. A moment, though it slung, reeling, over the steps and ledges of the roaring steep, it lived. Across it cold and creaming purges of water burst.

      It staggered, half capsized, righted again as it leaped swiftly down.

      Through the gloom shrilled the convict’s snarling cry:

      “Drown, you, if you want! I goin’ for live!”

      “’Polyte! For God’s sake, look—”

      Transfixed on a fang of granite, the old hulk burst to fragments. Over it a sudden wall of water stormed—loud, icy, black. Only a second the shattered planks still swayed upon that rocky tooth. Then, all dissolving in a mad, wild flux, they slued away and vanished in the inky cataract.

      Tumbled, tossed, battered, now submerged and strangling, now flung up to air again, now battling with foam that mocked him, with splintered planks that whirled, eluding him; now once more plunged among chill, swift deeps, ’Polyte lashed out against the flood.

      Down, down he weltered—deaf, dumb, furious.

      “I live! I live!” he realized; and that alone. “I live!”

      A sudden spew of waters flung him round, behind a cragged spur of rock. And all at once, as he lurched onto the stone that tore his palms, up from the tumbling foam a white hand rose beside him—rose and clutched him—clutched and held.

      “Her? Again?” he panted. “Bon Dieu! I cannot get away?”

      Savagely he struck. But the hand-grip would not break.

      “Let go! You drown me!” he howled, while over him a chilling tumble of wild waters broke to spray.

      He struck again—struck a white, dumb face that for an instant yearned beside him. By the last gleam of light that wanly pierced a cloud-rift at the sky-line he saw the eyelids flutter.

      One second the girl’s eyes looked at him. Then the bruised lips moved faintly, as though they would have smiled. The eyes closed. Back fell the head. The hand released its hold.

      And the great rapids, clamoring with delight, swept the rock bare; while over it the chill, exultant torrent burst in thunderous jubilation.

      CHAPTER V

      At flaming break of day—day that blazed red across the mottled evergreen, the October chrome and crimson of the great North Woods—a man, naked and bruised, yet whole, sat on a gray, moss-bearded boulder in a sheltered cove by Kamouraska Whirlpool.

      To right of him, a fern-spattered cliff. To left, a point densely shagged with spruce and tamarack. Gazing about him, the man smiled.

      “Safe, moé!” he muttered. “Dey ain’t nevair find me here. I rest up one day. Hedgehog I catch easy, an’ eat. To-night, away for Saddleback! One day, two day t’rough Temiscouata woods—den let dem look! I laugh, me! I give dem all ha! ha!”

      Beside him on the rock, where the first rays of the rising sun struck them, lay sodden clothes—faded blue overalls and a rough mackinaw.

      “Dey dry soon,” said the man. “Now I swim. It will mak’ me strong again. If I only had tabac, one good smoke should fix me. But I have none. Bah! What matter? I live, I live!

      “I said she was no good to me no more; but I was mistake, moé. Zut! Never can tell. She was some use, after all, hein? Her overall an’ mackinaw will help. Best of all, she is gone. Ah! It is all right. Bon Dieu, w’at fortune!”

      He spoke in a bastard mixture of bad English and worse French, murmuring to himself as he sat there naked in the comforting sunshine on the big rock by the backwater of the mighty whirlpool that circled endlessly beyond the point.

      “Some cut, some bruise; it is not’ing,” said he, feeling of his body, looking himself over for damage. “My heel cut, my shoulder black an’ blue; one finger broke, I guess maybe. Eh, not’ing? Quelle chance! W’at luck!”

      Suddenly he got to his feet, poised there on the rock a moment—a lithe, splendid figure of a man, fine drawn with fasting and labor so that every steel-band muscle ridged the smooth brown skin—and dived head first into the clear, green water.

      Up in a burst of foam he rose. He struck out strongly and easily, his body sliding through the cove with supple grace. Into the air he blew spray, rolled over, dived again, lay on his back and floated; then wallowed lazily along, drawing life and strength again from the cold waters that had all his life been home to him.

      Now resting, now snatching at a chance scarlet leaf that floated on the surface, he gradually worked down along the wooded point toward the billowing current of the great whirlpool itself. Refreshed, soothed by the invigorating exercise, he laughed aloud in very wantonness.

      “Safe me!” he cried, and laughed again, and splashed the waters in an abandon of joy. No more the cell, the silence, the dark, the long torment of confinement, bitterer than death to his free spirit. No more that living hell—no more the terror of captivity!

      Life now, and the green woods—the camp-fire and the trail; the big, cold stars, unwinking in the frost-black sky; the blazing sunrise and the purple night; the waters and the wilderness; the blessed haven of the north!

      “Quelle chance! Quelle chance!”

      And so he neared the point. Then, of a sudden, he stopped swimming. A moment he stared at something, drifting there in the big vortex. A moment, wide-eyed and fearful, he peered. And his lax limbs, refusing their office, lay inert in the translucent flood.

      Toward him the drifting object eddied, steadily, surely, with a kind of calm assurance. Fascinated, he could not retreat; but stared with terror-stricken eyes.

      And so the thing won close to him; and now he saw it clearly—saw gray stripes and black, wide-floating hair that spread upon the waters—saw a white face, unseeing, calm, dead—

      Inexorably the body floated toward him. He could not move, nor could he cry his terror. Then all at once, as it came close, his lips parted in a bubbling gasp of fear.

      Choking, he thrust it from him, out into the current again. And with swift strokes, frantic and lashing, daring never look behind, he swam for the big rock again.

      “Ah! Ah, mother of God! Have mercy!”

      Just as the outlaw turned to flee this weltering terror something stirred in the thick and close-knit undergrowth of tamarack and moosewood. Off from the СКАЧАТЬ