Abaft the Funnel. Rudyard Kipling
Чтение книги онлайн.

Читать онлайн книгу Abaft the Funnel - Rudyard Kipling страница 3

Название: Abaft the Funnel

Автор: Rudyard Kipling

Издательство: Bookwire

Жанр: Языкознание

Серия:

isbn: 4057664647771

isbn:

СКАЧАТЬ friend the bobbies would do it. A Spanish policeman carries in the day-time nothing more than a six-shooter and machete, a dirk. At night he adorns himself with a repeating rifle, which he fires on the slightest provocation. Well, when the policemen arrived, they poked my friend out of his hiding-place with their dirks, hauled him out by the hair, and kicked him round the godown once or twice, just to let him know that he had been discovered. They then began to question him, and under gentle pressure—I thought he would be pulped into a jelly, but a Spanish policeman always knows when to leave off—he made a clean breast of the whole business. He was part of a gang, and was to lie in the godown all that night. At twelve o'clock a boat manned by his confederates was to drop down the creek and halt under the godown windows, while he was to hand out our bales. That was their little plan. He had lain there about three hours, and then he began to smoke. I don't think he noticed what he was doing: smoking is just like breathing to a Spaniard. He could not understand how he had betrayed himself and wanted to know whether he had left a leg sticking out under the saddles. Then the Guarda Civile lambasted him all over again for trifling with the majesty of the law, and removed him after full confession.

      "I put one of my own men under a saddle with instructions to hand out print bales to anybody who might ask for them in the course of the night. Meantime the police made their own arrangements, which were very comprehensive.

      "At midnight a lumbering old barge, big enough to hold about a hundred bales, came down the creek and pulled up under the godown windows, exactly as if she had been one of my own barges. The eight ruffians in her whistled all the national airs of Manila as a signal to the confederate, then cooling his heels in the lock-up. But my man was ready. He opened the window and held quite a long confab with these second-hand pirates. They were all half-breeds and Roman Catholics, and the way they called upon all the blessed saints to assist them in their work was edifying. My man began tilting out the bales quite as quickly as the confederate would have done. Only he stopped to giggle now and again, and they spat and swore at him like cats. That made him worse, and at last he dropped yelling with laughter over the half door of the godown goods window. Then one boat came up stream and another down stream, and caught the barge stem and stern. Four Guarda Civiles were in each boat; consequently, eight repeating rifles were pointed at the barge, which was very nicely loaded with our bales. The pirates called on the saints more fluently than ever, threw up their hands, and threw themselves on their stomachs. That was the safest attitude, and it gave them the chance of cursing their luck, the barge, the godown, the Guarda Civile, and every saint in the calendar. They cursed the saints most, for the Guarda Civile thumped 'em when their remarks became too personal. We made them put all the bales back again. Then they were handed over to justice and got five years apiece. If they had any dollars they would get out the next day. If they hadn't, they would serve their full time and no ticket-of-leave allowed. That's the whole story."

      "And the only case on record," said the Young Gentleman travelling for Pleasure, "where a Manila cigar was of any use to any one." The man from Manila lit a fresh Cuspidore and went down to his bath.

      FOOTNOTES:

      [4] "Turnovers," Vol. VII.

      THE RED LAMP[5]

      "A strong situation—very strong, sir—quite the strongest one in the play, in fact."

      "What play?" said a voice from the bottom of the long chair under the bulwarks.

      "The Red Lamp."

      "Oh!"

      Conversation ceased, and there was an industrious sucking of cheroots for the space of half an hour before the company adjourned to the card-room. It was decidedly a night for sleeping on deck—warm as the Red Sea and more moist than Bengal. Unfortunately, every square foot of the deck seemed to be occupied by earlier comers, and in despair I removed myself to the extreme fo'c'sle, where the anchor-chains churn rust-dyed water from the hawseholes and the lascars walk about with slushpots.

      The throb of the engines reached this part of the world as a muffled breathing which might be easily mistaken for the snoring of the ship's cow. Occasionally one of the fowls in the coops waked and cheeped dismally as she thought of to-morrow's entrées in the saloon, but otherwise all was very, very still, for the hour was two in the morning, when the crew of a ship are not disposed to be lively. None came to bear me company save the bo'sun's pet kittens, and they were impolite. From where I lay I could look over the whole length of awning, ghostly white in the dark, and by their constant fluttering judged that the ship was pitching considerably. The fo'c'sle swung up and down like an uneasy hydraulic lift, and a few showers of spray found their passage through the hawseholes from time to time.

      Have you ever felt that maddening sense of incompetence which follows on watching the work of another man's office? The civilian is at home among his despatch-boxes and files of pending cases. "How in the world does he do it?" asks the military man. The budding officer can arrange for the movements of two hundred men across country. "Incomprehensible!" says the civilian. And so it is with all alien employs from our own. So it was with me. I knew that I was lying among all the materials out of which Clark Russell builds his books of the sea—the rush through the night, the gouts of foam, the singing of the wind in the rigging overhead, and the black mystery of the water—but for the life of me I could make nothing of them all.

      "A topsail royal flying free

       A bit of canvas was to me,

       And it was nothing more."

      "Oh, that a man should have but one poor little life and one incomplete set of experiences to crowd into it!" I sighed as the bells of the ship lulled me to sleep and the lookout man crooned a dreary song.

      I slept far into the night, for the clouds gathered over the sky, the stars died out, and all grew as black as pitch. But we never slackened speed; we beat the foam to left and right with clanking of chains, rattling of bow-ports, and savage noises of ripping and rending from the cut-water ploughing up to the luminous sea-beasts. I was roused by the words of the man in the smoking-room: "A strong situation, sir, very strong—quite the strongest in the play, in fact—The Red Lamp, y' know."

      I thought over the sentence lazily for a time, and then—surely there was a red lamp in the air somewhere—an intolerable glare that singed the shut eyelids. I opened my eyes and looked forward. The lascar was asleep, his face bowed on his knees, though he ought to have been roused by the hum of a rapidly approaching city, by the noises of men and women talking and laughing and drinking. I could hear it not half a mile away: it was strange that his ears should be closed.

      The night was so black that one could hardly breathe; and yet where did the glare from the red lamp come from? Not from our ship: she was silent and asleep—the officers on the bridge were asleep; there was no one of four hundred souls awake but myself. And the glare of the red lamp went up to the zenith. Small wonder. A quarter of a mile in front of us rolled a big steamer under full steam, and she was heading down on us without a word of warning. Would the lookout man never look out? Would their crew be as fast asleep as ours? It was impossible, for the other ship hummed with populous noises, and there was the defiant tinkle of a piano rising above all. She should have altered her course, or blown a fog-horn.

      I held my breath while an eternity went by, counted out by the throbbing of my heart and the engines. I knew that it was my duty to call, but I knew also that no one could hear me. Moreover, I was intensely interested in the approaching catastrophe; interested, you will understand, as one whom it did in no wise concern. By the light of the luminous sea thrown forward in sheets under the forefoot of the advancing steamer I could discern the minutest details of her structure СКАЧАТЬ