Doctor Syn on the High Seas - Thorndike Russell (чтение книг .txt) 📗
went on plundering and outwitting all her enemies. All those years he
had counted upon the good faith of his crew. Believing in each man, who,
to his profit, had sailed so long with him, he had only once been
troubled with mutiny. On that occasion, off , he ran the ringleader
through the neck in a fair fight. He heard no more of it after that. The
only other case of treachery was the Negro who stole his Virgil,
thinking it a book of magic, and deserted. Against this, he had twelve
years of faithful service, until a mysterious discontent arose, and he
demanded explanation.
“This ship is haunted by a devil,” faltered a spokesman. “He speaks
to us in the night watches, warning us against you for our safety. He
says you once blew up your own ship, sacrificing all to steal their
treasure. He says you will do it again to us.”
Mipps answere d this: “Clegg never blew up his own ship in this life.
You might as well accuse me of such a thing. Who is this funny croaker?”
“He comes at night from the hold, like a stowaway, and we fear him,”
replied the man nervously. “He says we must maroon the c aptain or die.”
- 106 -
‘I’ll have neither ghost, devil nor stowaway aboard my ship unless he
signs our articles,” cried Syn. “Down to the hold, you dog, and rout him
out. I have a wish to see this devil face to face.”
“Here, and you remeber me. I speak now.”
Syn turned at the dreadful voice behind him, and face the mulatto. He
recognized him at once as the sole survivor of the Sulphur Pit.
Immediately the rascal began to prophesy dreadful things against the
ship and crew unless they disposed of their captain by making him walk
the plank or by marooning.
“Seize him and lash him to the mast,” cried Syn.
Shuhshuhgah and Mipps were on him in a second, and Syn helped them
bind him to the mast.
“Give me your scalping-knife, and I’ll cut the mulatto’s mouth open.”
“I’ll do my own dirty work,” said Syn.
“I am so skilled at it,” answered the Redskin.
To the astonished and terrified crew, there seemed to be three quick
movements of the Indian’s ar ms, and three things fell behind him on the
deck. A tongue was cut out at the root, and two severed ears. “No talk.
No hear,” said the Indian grimly.
Mipps picked up the grisly objects and threw them overboard.
“Make for that coral reef. We’ll put him ashore there,” said Syn.
He cut the man’s bonds, and ordered a boat to be lowered. It was
Mipps and the Indian who went with him, while Syn kept the ship, facing
his coward crew.
“That’s the uncharted reef where the tide rises fathoms deep,” said
one of them.
“It will be the more merciful,” said Syn. “Water and sharks.”
They watched the marooning in silence, every man aboard. when the
boat was once more hoisted, and Mipps and Shuhshuhgah were aboard, the
crew pushed forward Pete, the Chinese cook, to be their spokesman. He
stammered out that they wished to put the ship back, so that they could
rescue the marooned man. In a blind rage, Clegg snatched a marine-spike
from Mipps, and broke the yellow dog’s back with it. Pete fell dead upon
the deck , and as Mipps and Shuhshuhgah tossed him overboard, the mad
captain, with drawn sword, drove the men to the rigging as he roared:
“Get up aloft, you dogs. Cram on the canvas. Every stitch. I’ll have no
muiny aboard my ship. NO, nor devils neither, other than myself.”
The ship leapt on through the lashing foam, while the sinister
wailing of the marooned man’s tongueless voice echoed the rigging, and
long after he had disappeared below the skyline, they all seemed to see
his tall, weird figure rising up into the sky and following the ship.
But Syn saw more. Whenever he looked into the waters, he had to shut his
eyes against the grinning face of yellow Pete.
Chapter 19
The Mulatto
From the South Seas and the coral reef, they sailed for weeks on end
towards their harbourage. Not only the crew, but Clegg kept to himself,
thought of nothing but the horror of that marooning. Safe on duty, clegg
kept to his cabin. He seemed dazed. On one occasion, he called Mipps and
whispered: “Look at my forearm, here above the writst. I was never
tattooed in all my life, and yet, there is the picture of a man walking
the plank with a shark beneath. How cam this symbol here?”
- 107 -
“I done it for you,” said Mipps—”that night at Santiago, after we’d
sacked the town. You and me was drinking, and I never see you drunk
before. You ordered me to do it with the help of Yellow Pete, the cook.”
“I can see Pete’s face looking up at me dead from the sea, always,”
whispered Syn. “It was a fault, this tattooing. A man can be identified
so easily by that, and I have suddenly no wish to be known as Clegg.
Nicholas is tattooed from head to foot. I have driven him round and
round the world, and he has fled because he could be so easily
identified. Now I am in like case, for I am followed by the dead hulk
of that mulatto. So long as I sail ships, so long will he be following
in the wake. If I give up my chase for Nicholas, perhaps that haunting
will give up chasing me. I always feel him f ollowing the ship, just as I
alwys see Yellow Pete’s face in the waters. ‘Tis bad enough to be
shadowed by a living man, as Nicholas has been; but to be followed by a
corpse is too much to endure. Where can I hide from it?”
“Dymchurch-under-the-Wall,” w hispered Mipps. “Go back there as parson
and thank God for a whole skin. Maybe I will go there one day too, but
now for your sake, sir, it’s beter if we separate. Shuhshuhgah and
myself have spoke of it. We can hide up your tracks. I take your sea chest an d stow it safe in Boston, where you can book passage for
England. You must get to Boston by way of the Redkins’ country. You and
the long -missing Shuhshuhgah, returning like the prodigals, after years
of preaching the ‘Oly Gospel to the savages.”
“And give up my vengeance?” asked Syn.
“You may as easily catch Black Nick there as on the high seas of the
world,” said Mipps. “Besides, he may be dead, same as he said his wife
was when he wrote and pleaded with you for mercy.”
“I’ll not believe she’s dead,” said Syn. “He is a proved liar. When
he sent me that leter some years ago, I knew it in my heart that he
lied. I think even yet, I’ll reckon with them both. Aye, perhaps at
Dymchurch.”
Many months later, Doctor Syn, with the Redskins’ help, rejoined
Mipps in Boston. By this time he had begun to think that Nicholas must
be dead.
“So, all that is left to me,” he said, “is Romney Marsh and quiet
years. But will the past rise up against me even there?”
“Not so far as the pirates is concerned,” rep lied Mipps. “And let me
tell you, sir, the Imogene ain’t the first ship to have gone to Davy
Jones’ Locker through of piece of carelessness in the powder magazine.”
“Have you done that again?” demanded Syn.
Mipps looked offended, “I’m a one -man servant, I am, sir, and dead
pirates tell no tales.”
“All of them?” asked Syn.
Mipps nodded. “Every man aboard. And no deaf mute this time swimming
about neither. A thorough job I made of it, believe me, sir.”
“God rest their souls!” said the parson piously.
“Amen,” replied Mipps with equal piety.
Doctor Syn sadly shook his head.
Mipps winked.
Chapter 20
The Return
