The Greatest Adventures Boxed Set: Jack London Edition. Jack London

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СКАЧАТЬ was a cold flame of a man, small as Koho, and as dried up, with a mahogany complexion and small, expressionless blue eyes that were more like gimlet-points than the eyes of a Scotchman. Without fear, without enthusiasm, impervious to disease and climate and sentiment, he was lean and bitter and deadly as a snake. That his present sour look boded ill news, Grief was well aware.

      “Spit it out!” he said. “What’s happened?”

      “‘Tis a thing severely to be condemned, a damned shame, this joking with heathen niggers,” was the reply. “Also, ‘tis very expensive. Come below, Mr. Grief. You’ll be better for the information with a long glass in your hand. After you.”

      “How did you settle things?” his employer demanded as soon as they were seated in the cabin.

      The little Scotchman shook his head. “There was nothing to settle. It all depends how you look at it. The other way would be to say it was settled, entirely settled, mind you, before I got there.”

      “But the plantation, man? The plantation?”

      “No plantation. All the years of our work have gone for naught. ‘Tis back where we started, where the missionaries started, where the Germans started—and where they finished. Not a stone stands on another at the landing pier. The houses are black ashes. Every tree is hacked down, and the wild pigs are rooting out the yams and sweet potatoes. Those boys from New Georgia, a fine bunch they were, five score of them, and they cost you a pretty penny. Not one is left to tell the tale.”

      He paused and began fumbling in a large locker under the companion-steps.

      “But Worth? And Denby? And Wallenstein?”

      “That’s what I’m telling you. Take a look.”

      McTavish dragged out a sack made of rice matting and emptied its contents on the floor. David Grief pulled himself together with a jerk, for he found himself gazing fascinated at the heads of the three men he had left at New Gibbon. The yellow mustache of Wallenstein had lost its fierce curl and drooped and wilted on the upper lip.

      “I don’t know how it happened,” the Scotchman’s voice went on drearily. “But I surmise they went into the bush after the old devil.”

      “And where is Koho?” Grief asked.

      “Back in the bush and drunk as a lord. That’s how I was able to recover the heads. He was too drunk to stand. They lugged him on their backs out of the village when I rushed it. And if you’ll relieve me of the heads, I’ll be well obliged.” He paused and sighed. “I suppose they’ll have regular funerals over them and put them in the ground. But in my way of thinking they’d make excellent curios. Any respectable museum would pay a hundred quid apiece. Better have another drink. You’re looking a bit pale—— There, put that down you, and if you’ll take my advice, Mr. Grief, I would say, set your face sternly against any joking with the niggers. It always makes trouble, and it is a very expensive divertisement.”

      A Little Account With Swithin Hall

       Table of Contents

       I

       II

       III

       IV

       V

       VI

       VII

       VIII

      I

       Table of Contents

      With a last long scrutiny at the unbroken circle of the sea, David Grief swung out of the cross-trees and slowly and dejectedly descended the ratlines to the deck.

      “Leu-Leu Atoll is sunk, Mr. Snow,” he said to the anxious-faced young mate. “If there is anything in navigation, the atoll is surely under the sea, for we’ve sailed clear over it twice—or the spot where it ought to be. It’s either that or the chronometer’s gone wrong, or I’ve forgotten my navigation.”

      “It must be the chronometer, sir,” the mate reassured his owner. “You know I made separate sights and worked them up, and that they agreed with yours.”

      “Yes,” Grief muttered, nodding glumly, “and where your Summer lines crossed, and mine, too, was the dead centre of Leu-Leu Atoll. It must be the chronometer—slipped a cog or something.”

      He made a short pace to the rail and back, and cast a troubled eye at the Uncle Toby’s wake. The schooner, with a fairly strong breeze on her quarter, was logging nine or ten knots.

      “Better bring her up on the wind, Mr. Snow. Put her under easy sail and let her work to windward on two-hour legs. It’s thickening up, and I don’t imagine we can get a star observation to-night; so we’ll just hold our weather position, get a latitude sight to-morrow, and run Leu-Leu down on her own latitude. That’s the way all the old navigators did.”

      Broad of beam, heavily sparred, with high freeboard and bluff, Dutchy bow, the Uncle Toby was the slowest, tubbiest, safest, and most fool-proof schooner David Grief possessed. Her run was in the Banks and Santa Cruz groups and to the northwest among the several isolated atolls where his native traders collected copra, hawksbill turtle, and an occasional ton of pearl shell. Finding the skipper down with a particularly bad stroke of fever, Grief had relieved him and taken the Uncle Toby on her semiannual run to the atolls. He had elected to make his first call at Leu-Leu, which lay farthest, and now found himself lost at sea with a chronometer that played tricks.

      II

       Table of Contents

      No stars showed that night, nor was the sun visible next day. A stuffy, sticky calm obtained, broken by big wind-squalls and heavy downpours. From fear of working too far to windward, the Uncle Toby was hove to, and four days and nights of cloud-hidden sky followed. Never did the sun appear, and on the several occasions that stars broke through they were too dim and fleeting for identification. By this time it was patent to the veriest tyro that the elements were preparing to break loose. Grief, coming on deck from consulting the barometer, which steadfastly remained at 29.90, encountered Jackie-Jackie, whose face was as brooding and troublous as the sky and air. Jackie-Jackie, a Tongan sailor of experience, served as a sort of bosun and semi-second mate over the mixed Kanaka crew.

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