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

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СКАЧАТЬ separate room for a shower, and a sitz-bath!” he exclaimed. “Fitted up for a king! And I reckon some of my money went to pay for it. The place must be occupied. I found fresh-opened butter and milk tins in the pantry, and fresh turtle-meat hanging up. I’m going to see what else I can find.”

      Grief, too, departed, through a door that led out of the opposite end of the living-room. He found himself in a self-evident woman’s bedroom. Across it, he peered through a wire-mesh door into a screened and darkened sleeping porch. On a couch lay a woman asleep. In the soft light she seemed remarkably beautiful in a dark Spanish way. By her side, opened and face downward, a novel lay on a chair. From the colour in her cheeks, Grief concluded that she had not been long in the tropics. After the one glimpse he stole softly back, in time to see Snow entering the living-room through the other door. By the naked arm he was clutching an age-wrinkled black who grinned in fear and made signs of dumbness.

      “I found him snoozing in a little kennel out back,” the mate said. “He’s the cook, I suppose. Can’t get a word out of him. What did you find?”

      “A sleeping princess. S-sh! There’s somebody now.”

      “If it’s Hall,” Snow muttered, clenching his fist.

      Grief shook his head. “No rough-house. There’s a woman here. And if it is Hall, before we go I’ll maneuver a chance for you to get action.”

      The door opened, and a large, heavily built man entered. In his belt was a heavy, long-barrelled Colt’s. One quick, anxious look he gave them, then his face wreathed in a genial smile and his hand was extended.

      “Welcome, strangers. But if you don’t mind my asking, how, by all that’s sacred, did you ever manage to find my island?”

      “Because we were out of our course,” Grief answered, shaking hands.

      “My name’s Hall, Swithin Hall,” the other said, turning to shake Snow’s hand. “And I don’t mind telling you that you’re the first visitors I’ve ever had.”

      “And this is your secret island that’s had all the beaches talking for years?” Grief answered. “Well, I know the formula now for finding it.”

      “How’s that?” Hall asked quickly.

      “Smash your chronometer, get mixed up with a hurricane, and then keep your eyes open for cocoanuts rising out of the sea.”

      “And what is your name?” Hall asked, after he had laughed perfunctorily.

      “Anstey—Phil Anstey,” Grief answered promptly. “Bound on the Uncle Toby from the Gilberts to New Guinea, and trying to find my longitude. This is my mate, Mr. Gray, a better navigator than I, but who has lost his goat just the same to the chronometer.”

      Grief did not know his reason for lying, but he had felt the prompting and succumbed to it. He vaguely divined that something was wrong, but could not place his finger on it. Swithin Hall was a fat, round-faced man, with a laughing lip and laughter-wrinkles in the corners of his eyes. But Grief, in his early youth, had learned how deceptive this type could prove, as well as the deceptiveness of blue eyes that screened the surface with fun and hid what went on behind.

      “What are you doing with my cook?—lost yours and trying to shanghai him?” Hall was saying. “You’d better let him go, if you’re going to have any supper. My wife’s here, and she’ll be glad to meet you—dinner, she calls it, and calls me down for misnaming it, but I’m old fashioned. My folks always ate dinner in the middle of the day. Can’t get over early training. Don’t you want to wash up? I do. Look at me. I’ve been working like a dog—out with the diving crew—shell, you know. But of course you smelt it.”

      V

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      Snow pleaded charge of the schooner, and went on board. In addition to his repugnance at breaking salt with the man who had robbed him, it was necessary for him to impress the in-violableness of Grief’s lies on the Kanaka crew. By eleven o’clock Grief came on board, to find his mate waiting up for him.

      “There’s something doing on Swithin Hall’s island,” Grief said, shaking his head. “I can’t make out what it is, but I get the feel of it. What does Swithin Hall look like?”

      Snow shook his head.

      “That man ashore there never bought the books on the shelves,” Grief declared with conviction. “Nor did he ever go in for concealed lighting. He’s got a surface flow of suavity, but he’s rough as a hoof-rasp underneath. He’s an oily bluff. And the bunch he’s got with him—Watson and Gorman their names are; they came in after you left—real sea-dogs, middle-aged, marred and battered, tough as rusty wrought-iron nails and twice as dangerous; real ugly customers, with guns in their belts, who don’t strike me as just the right sort to be on such comradely terms with Swithin Hall. And the woman! She’s a lady. I mean it. She knows a whole lot of South America, and of China, too. I’m sure she’s Spanish, though her English is natural. She’s travelled. We talked bull-fights. She’s seen them in Guayaquil, in Mexico, in Seville. She knows a lot about sealskins.

      “Now here’s what bothers me. She knows music. I asked her if she played. And he’s fixed that place up like a palace. That being so, why hasn’t he a piano for her? Another thing: she’s quick and lively and he watches her whenever she talks. He’s on pins and needles, and continually breaking in and leading the conversation. Say, did you ever hear that Swithin Hall was married?”

      “Bless me, I don’t know,” the mate replied. “Never entered my head to think about it.”

      “He introduced her as Mrs. Hall. And Watson and Gorman call him Hall. They’re a precious pair, those two men. I don’t understand it at all.”

      “What are you going to do about it?” Snow asked.

      “Oh, hang around a while. There are some books ashore there I want to read. Suppose you send that topmast down in the morning and generally overhaul. We’ve been through a hurricane, you know. Set up the rigging while you’re about it. Get things pretty well adrift, and take your time.”

      VI

       Table of Contents

      The next day Grief’s suspicions found further food. Ashore early, he strolled across the little island to the barracks occupied by the divers.

      They were just boarding the boats when he arrived, and it struck him that for Kanakas they behaved more like chain-gang prisoners. The three white men were there, and Grief noted that each carried a rifle. Hall greeted him jovially enough, but Gorman and Watson scowled as they grunted curt good mornings.

      A moment afterward one of the Kanakas, as he bent to place his oar, favoured Grief with a slow, deliberate wink. The man’s face was familiar, one of the thousands of native sailors and divers he had encountered drifting about in the island trade.

      “Don’t tell them who I am,” Grief said, in Tahitian. “Did you ever sail for me?”

      The man’s head nodded and his mouth СКАЧАТЬ