The Beach of Dreams. H. De Vere Stacpoole

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СКАЧАТЬ RAFT

       CHAPTER XXIV

       A DREAM

       CHAPTER XXV

       STORIES ON THE BEACH

       CHAPTER XXVI

       THE GREAT WIND

       PART V

       CHAPTER XXVII

       THE CORRIDOR

       CHAPTER XXVIII

       NIGHT

       CHAPTER XXIX

       THE SUMMIT

       CHAPTER XXX

       THE BAY

       CHAPTER XXXI

       THE SHIP

       CHAPTER XXXII

       THE OPIUM SMOKERS

       CHAPTER XXXIII

       MAINSAIL HAUL

       CHAPTER XXXIV

       THE CARCASSONNE

       PART VI

       CHAPTER XXXV

       MARSEILLES

       CHAPTER XXXVI

       THE LEPER

       CHAPTER XXXVII

       A NEW HOME

THE BEACH OF DREAMS

       Table of Contents

CHAPTER I

       Table of Contents

THE ALBATROSS

       Table of Contents

      The fo’c’sle, lit by a teapot lamp, shewed the port watch in their bunks, snoring, all but Harbutt and Raft seated on a chest, Harbutt patching a pair of trousers, Raft smoking.

      Raft was a big red-headed man with eyes that seemed always roving over great distances as though in search of something. He was thirty-two years of age and he had used the sea since twelve—twenty years. His past was a long succession of fo’c’sles, bar-rooms, blazing suns, storms and sea happenings so run together that all sequence was lost. Beyond them lay a dismal blotch, his childhood. He had entered the world and literally and figuratively had been laid at the door of a workhouse; of his childhood he remembered little, of his parentage he knew nothing. In drink he was quiet, but most dangerous under certain provocations.

      It was as though deep in his being lay a blazing hatred born of injustice through ages and only coming to light when upborne by balloon-juice. On these occasions a saloon bar with its glitter and phantom show of mirth and prosperity sometimes called on him to dispense and destroy it, the passion to fight the crowd seized him, a passion that has its origin, perhaps, in sources other than alcohol.

      He was talking now to Harbutt, scarcely lowering his voice on account of the fellows in the bunks. Snoring and drugged with ozone a kick would only have made them curse and turn on the other side, and as he talked his voice made part of that procession of noises inseparable from the fo’c’sle of a ship under sail against a head sea. He had been holding forth on the food and general conditions of this ship compared with the food and conditions of his last, when Harbutt cut in.

      “There’s not a pin to choose between owners, and ships is owners as far as a sailorman’s concerned.—Blast them.”

      “I was in a hooker once,” said Raft, “and the Old Man came across a lot of cheap sugar, served it out to save the m’lasses. It was lead, most of it, and the chaps that swallowed it their teeth came out.”

      “What happened to them then?”

      “They croaked. I joined at Bombay, after the business, or I’d have croaked too.”

      “What ship was that?” asked Harbutt.

      “I’ve forgot her name, it was a good bit back—but it’s the truth.”

      “Of course it’s the truth,” replied the other, “who’s doubtin’ you, any dog’s trick played on a sailorman’s the truth, you can lay to that. СКАЧАТЬ