Shout at the Devil - Smith Wilbur (лучшие книги .TXT) 📗

When Charles laughed it sent shivers of delight through every woman within a hundred yards. It was a merry sound with underlying tones of sensuality. His teeth were very white against the sea-tan of his face, and the muscles of his chest and upper arms tensed into bold relief beneath the silk shirt he wore.

Helen was the only witness of this particular perform and she was helpless as a sparrow in a hurricane.

once, Eagerly she leaned across the space between their horses and touched his arm. "You would like it, Charles. Wouldn't you? She did not know that Charles Little had a private income of twenty thousand pounds a year, that when his father died he would inherit the title Viscount Sutherton and the estates that went with it.

She did not know that one of those estates would swallow her father's own three times over; nor did she know that Charles had passed by willing young ladies with twice her looks, ten times her fortune, and a hundred times her breeding.

"You would, Charles. I know you would!" So young, so vulnerable,

that he stopped the flippant reply before it reached his lips.

"Helen," he took her hand. "I am a sea creature. We move with the wind and the waves," and he lifted her hand to his lips.

A while she sat, feeling the warm pressure of his lips upon her flesh, and the burn of tears behind her eyes. Then she snatched her hand away, and wheeled her horse. She lifted the leather riding-crop and slashed the glossy black shoulder between her knees. Startled, the stallion jumped forward into a dead run back along the road towards the

Constantia valley.

Charles shook his head and grimaced with regret. He had not meant to hurt her. It had been an escapade, something to fill the waiting days while Bloodhound went through the final stages of her refit. But Charles had learned to harden himself to the ending of his adventures to the tears and tragedy.

"Shame on you, you heartless cad, he said aloud, and touching his mount with his heels ambled in pursuit of the galloping stallion.

He caught up with the stallion in the stable yards. A groom was walking it, and there were darker sweat patches on its coat, and the barrel of its chest still heaved with laboured breathing.

Helen was nowhere in sight, but her father stood at the stable gates, - a big man, with a square-cut black beard picked out with grey.

"Enjoy your ride?"

"Thank you, Mr. Uys." Charles was noncommittal,

and the older man glanced significantly at the blown stallion before going on.

"There's one of your sailors been waiting for you for an hour."

"Where is he?" Charles's manner altered abruptly, became instantly businesslike.

"Here, Mr." From the deep shade of the stable doorway, a young seaman stepped out into the bright sunlight.

"What is it, man?" Impatiently Charles acknowledged his salute.

"Captain Manderson's compliments, sir, and you're to report aboard

HMS. Orion with all possible speed. There's a motor car waiting to take you to the base, sir."

"An untimely summons, Commander." Uys gave his "opinion lounging against the worked stone gateway.

we will see no more of you for a long time." But Charles was not listening. His body seemed to quiver with suppressed excitement, the way a good gun dog reacts to the scent of the bird. "Sailing orders,"

he whispered, at last. At last!" There was a heavy south-east swell battering Cape Point, so the sea spray reached the beam of the lighthouse on the cliffs above. A flight of mal gas came in so high towards the land that they caught the last of the sun, and glowed pink above the dark water.

Bloodhound cleared Cape Hangklip and took the press of the South

Atlantic on her shoulder, staggered from it with a welter of white water running waist-deep past her foredeck gun-turrets. Then in retaliation she hurled herself at the next swell, and Charles Little on her bridge exulted at the vital movement of the deck beneath his feet.

"Bring her round to oh five, oh

"Oh-five, oh sir, "repeated his navigating lieutenant.

"Revolution s for seventeen knots, pilot." Almost immediately the beat of the engines changed, and her action through the water became more abandoned.

Charles crossed to the angle of the flimsy little bridge and looked back into the dark, mountain-lined maw of False Bay. Two miles astern the shape of HMS. Orion melted into the dying light.

"Come along, old girl. Do try and keep up," murmured Charles

Little with the scorn that a destroyer man feels for any vessel that cannot cruise at twenty knots. Then he looked beyond Orion at the land. Below the massif of Table Mountain, near the head of the

Constantia valley a single pin prick of light showed.

"There'll be fog tonight, sir," the pilot spoke at Charles's elbow, and Charles turned without regret to peer over the bows into the gathering night.

"Yes, a good night for pirates. "The fog condensed on the grey metal of the bridge, so the foot plates were slippery underfoot. It soaked into the overcoats of the men huddled against the rail, and it de wed in minute pearls on the eyebrows and the beard of Kapitan zur See