Satan. H. De Vere Stacpoole

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      “No, she’s not Spanish,” said Ratcliffe. “I saw her come in and I heard them shouting the soundings in English—look! there’s a chap fishing from her.”

       The flash of a fish being hauled on board had caught his eye and fired his passion for sport. They had done no fishing from the Dryad.

      He borrowed the dinghy from Simmons and, just as he was, put off.

      “Ask them to sell some of their fish, if they’ve any to spare,” cried Simmons as the dinghy got away.

      “Ay, ay!” replied Ratcliffe.

      The sea blaze almost blinded him as he rowed with the gulls flying round and shouting at him. As he drew up to the yawl the fisherman lugged another fish on board. The fisherman was a boy, a dirty-faced boy, in a guernsey, and as the dinghy came alongside he stared at the pajama-clad one as at an apparition.

      “Hullo, there!” cried Ratcliffe, clawing on with the boathook.

      “Hullo, yourself!” replied the other.

      “Any fish for sale?”

      “Any what?”

      “Fish.”

      The boy disappeared. Then came his voice, evidently shouting down a hatch.

      “Satan, below there!”

      “Hullo!”

      “Here’s the funniest guy come alongside wants to know if we’ve got fish to sell him. Show a leg!”

      “One minute,” replied the second voice.

      The boy reappeared at the rail in the burning sunlight. “The cap will be up in a minute,” said he. “What in the nation are you got up like that for?”

       “What?”

      “Them things.”

      Ratcliffe laughed.

      “I forgot I was in my pajamas. I must apologize.”

      “What’s pajamas?”

      “My sleeping suit.”

      “You sleep in them things?”

      “Of course.”

      “Well, I’m damned!” said the boy. Then he gave a sudden yell of laughter and vanished, sitting down on the deck evidently, while another form appeared at the rail, a lantern-jawed, long-haired, youthful figure, rubbing the sleep out of its eyes. It stared at the occupant of the dinghy, then it opened its mouth and uttered one word:

      “Moses!”

      “He sleeps in them things!” came a half-strangled voice from the deck. “Satan, hold me up, I’m dyin’!”

      “Shut your beastly head!” said Satan. Then to Ratcliffe, “Don’t be minding Jude—Jude’s cracked—but you sure are gotten up—Say, you from that hooker over there?”

      “Yes.”

      “What are you?”

      “Nothing.”

      Another explosion from the deck, stifled by a kick from Satan.

      “But what are you doing here, anyway?”

      Ratcliffe explained, Satan leaning comfortably on the rail and listening.

       “A yacht—well, we’re the Sarah Tyler. Pap and me and Jude used to run the boat. He died last fall. Tyler was his name, and Satan Tyler’s mine. He said I yelled like Satan when a pup and he put the name on me—Say, that’s a dandy boat. I’m wanting a boat like that. Will you trade?”

      “She’s not mine.”

      “That don’t matter,” said Tyler with a laugh. “But I forgot: you aren’t in our way of business.”

      “What’s your way of business?”

      “Lord! Shut up, Satan!” came the voice from the deck.

      “Well, Pap was one thing or another; but we’re respectable, ain’t we, Jude?”

      “Passons to what Pap was,” agreed the voice in a quieter tone, and it came to Ratcliffe that the figure of Jude remained invisible, being ashamed to show itself after having guyed him.

      “We’re out of Havana, and we scratch round and make a living,” went on Tyler, “and the boat being ours we make out. There’s lots to be had on these seas for the looking.”

      “Do you work the boat alone?”

      “Well, we had a nigger to help since Pap died. He skipped at Pine Island a fortnight ago. Since then we’ve made out. Jude’s worth a man and don’t drink—”

      “Who says I don’t drink?” Two grimy hands seized the rail and the body and face of Jude raised themselves. Then the whole apparition hung, resting midriff high across the rail, just balanced, so that a tip from behind would have sent it over.

      “Who says I don’t drink? How about Havana Harbor last trip?”

      “They gave her rum,” said Satan gloomily, “gave her rum in a doggery down by the waterside—curse the swabs! I laid two of them flat and then got her aboard.”

      “Her!” said Ratcliffe.

      “Blind, wasn’t I?” cut in Jude hurriedly.

      “Blind you were,” said Tyler.

      Jude grinned. Ratcliffe thought he had never met with a stranger couple than these two, especially Jude. Hanging on with the boathook, he contemplated the dirty, daring face whose fine, gray, long-lashed eyes were the best features.

      “How old are you?” asked he, addressing it.

      “Hundred an’ one,” said Jude. “Ask me another.”

      “She’s fifteen and a bit,” said Tyler, “and as strong as a grown man.”

      “I thought she was a boy,” said Ratcliffe.

      “So I am,” said Jude. “Girls is trash. I’m not never goin’ to be a girl. Girls is snots!”

      As if to prove her boyhood, she hung over the rail so that he feared any moment she might tumble.

      “She’s a girl, right enough,” said Tyler as if they were discussing an animal, “but God help the skirts she ever gets into!”

      “I’d pull them over me head and run down the street if anyone ever stuck skirts on me,” said Jude. “I’d as soon go about in them pajamas of yours.”

      Ratcliffe was silent for a moment. СКАЧАТЬ