Dead Men Tell No Tales by E. W. Hornung (ebook reader for comics TXT) ๐
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- Author: E. W. Hornung
Read book online ยซDead Men Tell No Tales by E. W. Hornung (ebook reader for comics TXT) ๐ยป. Author - E. W. Hornung
Was it her vanity that was wounded after all? โYou forget,โ said I, โthat you would not answer when he addressed you at dinner.โ
โI should think I wouldn't, after the way he spoke to Mr. Ready; and he too agitated to come to table, poor fellow!โ
โStill, the captain felt the open slight.โ
โThen he shouldn't have used such language in front of me.โ
โYour father felt it, too, Miss Denison.โ
I hear nothing plainer than her low but quick reply:
โMr. Cole, my father has been dead many; many years; he died before I can remember. That man only married my poor mother. He sympathizes with Captain Harrisโagainst me; no father would do that. Look at them together now! And you take his side, too; oh! I have no patience with any of youโexcept poor Mr. Ready in his berth.โ
โBut you are not going.โ
โIndeed I am. I am tired of you all.โ
And she was gone with angry tears for which I blamed myself as I fell to pacing the weather side of the poopโand so often afterwards! So often, and with such unavailing bitterness!
Senhor Santos and the captain were in conversation by the weather rail. I fancied poor old Harris eyed me with suspicion, and I wished he had better cause. The Portuguese, however, saluted me with his customary courtesy, and I thought there was a grave twinkle in his steady eye.
โAre you in deesgrace also, friend Cole?โ he inquired in his all but perfect English.
โMore or less,โ said I ruefully.
He gave the shrug of his countryโthat delicate gesture which is done almost entirely with the backโa subtlety beyond the power of British shoulders.
โThe senhora is both weelful and pivish,โ said he, mixing the two vowels which (with the aspirate) were his only trouble with our tongue. โIt is great grif to me to see her growing so unlike her sainted mother!โ
He sighed, and I saw his delicate fingers forsake the cigarette they were rolling to make the sacred sign upon his breast. He was always smoking one cigarette and making another; as he lit the new one the glow fell upon a strange pin that he wore, a pin with a tiny crucifix inlaid in mosaic. So the religious cast of Senhor Santos was brought twice home to me in the same moment, though, to be sure, I had often been struck by it before. And it depressed me to think that so sweet a child as Eva Denison should have spoken harshly of so good a man as her step-father, simply because he had breadth enough to sympathize with a coarse old salt like Captain Harris.
I turned in, however, and I cannot say the matter kept me awake in the separate state-room which was one luxury of our empty saloon. Alas? I was a heavy sleeper then.
CHAPTER II. THE MYSTERIOUS CARGO
โWake up, Cole! The ship's on fire!โ
It was young Ready's hollow voice, as cool, however, as though he were telling me I was late for breakfast. I started up and sought him wildly in the darkness.
โYou're joking,โ was my first thought and utterance; for now he was lighting my candle, and blowing out the match with a care that seemed in itself a contradiction.
โI wish I were,โ he answered. โListen to that!โ
He pointed to my cabin ceiling; it quivered and creaked; and all at once I was as a deaf man healed.
One gets inured to noise at sea, but to this day it passes me how even I could have slept an instant in the abnormal din which I now heard raging above my head. Sea-boots stamped; bare feet pattered; men bawled; women shrieked; shouts of terror drowned the roar of command.
โHave we long to last?โ I asked, as I leaped for my clothes.
โLong enough for you to dress comfortably. Steady, old man! It's only just been discovered; they may get it under. The panic's the worst part at present, and we're out of that.โ
But was Eva Denison? Breathlessly I put the question; his answer was reassuring. Miss Denison was with her step-father on the poop. โAnd both of 'em as cool as cucumbers,โ added Ready.
They could not have been cooler than this young man, with death at the bottom of his bright and sunken eyes. He was of the type which is all muscle and no constitution; athletes one year, dead men the next; but until this moment the athlete had been to me a mere and incredible tradition. In the afternoon I had seen his lean knees totter under the captain's fire. Now, at midnightโthe exact time by my watchโit was as if his shrunken limbs had expanded in his clothes; he seemed hardly to know his own flushed face, as he caught sight of it in my mirror.
โBy Jove!โ said he, โthis has put me in a fine old fever; but I don't know when I felt in better fettle. If only they get it under! I've not looked like this all the voyage.โ
And he admired himself while I dressed in hot haste: a fine young fellow; not at all the natural egotist, but cast for death by the doctors, and keenly incredulous in his bag of skin. It revived one's confidence to hear him talk. But he forgot himself in an instant, and gave me a lead through the saloon with a boyish eagerness that made me actually suspicious as I ran. We were nearing the Line. I recalled the excesses of my last crossing, and I prepared for some vast hoax at the last moment. It was only when we plunged upon the crowded quarter-deck, and my own eyes read lust of life and dread of death in the starting eyes of others, that such lust and such dread consumed me in my turn, so that my veins seemed filled with fire and ice.
To be fair to those others, I think that the first wild panic was subsiding even then; at least there was a lull, and even a reaction in the right direction on the part of the males in the second class and steerage. A huge Irishman at their head, they were passing buckets towards the after-hold; the press of people hid the hatchway from us until we gained the poop; but we heard the buckets spitting and a hose-pipe hissing into the flames below; and we saw the column of white vapor rising steadily from their midst.
At the break of the poop stood Captain Harris, his legs planted wide apart, very vigorous, very decisive, very profane. And I must confess that
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