Array Коллектив авторов - 30 лучших рассказов американских писателей

‘Yes, Swartz always was too pig-headed. You see, he took four of his boat’s crew to TulagI to be flogged – officially, you know – then started back with them in the whaleboat. It was pretty squally, and the boat capsized just outside. Swartz was the only one drowned. Of course, it was an accident.’

‘Was it? Really?’ Bertie asked, only half-interested, staring hard at the black man at the wheel.

UgI had dropped astern, and the Arla was sliding along through a summer sea toward the wooded ranges of Malaita. The helmsman who so attracted Bertie’s eyes sported a ten penny nail, stuck skewerwise through his nose. About his neck was a string of pants buttons. Thrust through holes in his ears were a can opener, the broken handle of a toothbrush, a clay pipe, the brass wheel of an alarm clock, and several Winchester rifle [109] Winchester rifle – a famous rifle developed by Oliver Winchester (1810–1880), an American manufacturer of guns. cartridges.

On his chest, suspended from around his neck hung the half of a china plate. Some forty similarly appareled blacks lay about the deck, fifteen of which were boat’s crew, the remainder being fresh labor recruits.

‘Of course it was an accident,’ spoke up the Arla ’s mate, Jacobs, a slender, dark-eyed man who looked more a professor than a sailor. ‘Johnny Bedip nearly had the same kind of accident. He was bringing back several from a flogging, when they capsized him. But he knew how to swim as well as they, and two of them were drowned. He used a boat stretcher and a revolver. Of course it was an accident.’

‘Quite common, them accidents,’ remarked the skipper. ‘You see that man at the wheel, Mr. Arkwright? He’s a man eater. Six months ago, he and the rest of the boat’s crew drowned the then captain of the Arla . They did it on deck, sir, right aft there by the mizzen-traveler.’

‘The deck was in a shocking state,’ said the mate.

‘Do I understand – ?’ Bertie began.

‘Yes, just that,’ said Captain Hansen. ‘It was an accidental drowning.’

‘But on deck – ?’

‘Just so. I don’t mind telling you, in confidence, of course, that they used an axe.’

‘This present crew of yours?’

Captain Hansen nodded.

‘The other skipper always was too careless,’ explained the mate. He but just turned his back, when they let him have it.’

‘We haven’t any show down here,’ was the skipper’s complaint. ‘The government protects a nigger against a white every time. You can’t shoot first. You’ve got to give the nigger first shot, or else the government calls it murder and you go to Fiji. That’s why there’s so many drowning accidents.’

Dinner was called, and Bertie and the skipper went below, leaving the mate to watch on deck.

‘Keep an eye out for that black devil, Auiki,’ was the skipper’s parting caution. ‘I haven’t liked his looks for several days.’

‘Right O,’ said the mate.

Dinner was part way along, and the skipper was in the middle of his story of the cutting out of the Scottish Chiefs.

‘Yes,’ he was saying, ‘she was the finest vessel on the coast. But when she missed stays, and before ever she hit the reef, the canoes started for her. There were five white men, a crew of twenty Santa Cruz [110] Santa Cruz – a group of volcanic islands in the Solomon Islands boys and Samoans [111] Samoans – residents of Samoa, an island in the Pacific northwest of New Zealand. , and only the supercargo escaped. Besides, there were sixty recruits. They were all kai-kai’d. Kai-kai? – oh, I beg your pardon. I mean they were eaten. Then there was the James Edwards , a dandy-rigged – ’

But at that moment there was a sharp oath from the mate on deck and a chorus of savage cries. A revolver went off three times, and then was heard a loud splash. Captain Hansen had sprung up the companionway on the instant, and Bertie’s eyes had been fascinated by a glimpse of him drawing his revolver as he sprang.

Bertie went up more circumspectly, hesitating before he put his head above the companionway slide. But nothing happened. The mate was shaking with excitement, his revolver in his hand. Once he startled, and half-jumped around, as if danger threatened his back.

‘One of the natives fell overboard,’ he was saying, in a queer tense voice. ‘He couldn’t swim.’

‘Who was it?’ the skipper demanded.

‘Auiki,’ was the answer.

‘But I say, you know, I heard shots,’ Bertie said, in trembling eagerness, for he scented adventure, and adventure that was happily over with.

The mate whirled upon him, snarling:

‘It’s a damned lie. There ain’t been a shot fired. The nigger fell overboard.’

Captain Hansen regarded Bertie with unblinking, lack-luster eyes.

‘I – I thought – ’ Bertie was beginning.

‘Shots?’ said Captain Hansen, dreamily. ‘Shots? Did you hear any shots, Mr. Jacobs?’

‘Not a shot,’ replied Mr. Jacobs.

The skipper looked at his guest triumphantly, and said:

‘Evidently an accident. Let us go down, Mr. Arkwright, and finish dinner.’

Bertie slept that night in the captain’s cabin, a tiny stateroom off the main cabin. The for’ard bulkhead was decorated with a stand of rifles. Over the bunk were three more rifles. Under the bunk was a big drawer, which, when he pulled it out, he found filled with ammunition, dynamite, and several boxes of detonators. He elected to take the settee on the opposite side. Lying conspicuously on the small table, was the Arla ’s log. Bertie did not know that it had been especially prepared for the occasion by Captain Malu, and he read therein how on September 21, two boat’s crew had fallen overboard and been drowned. Bertie read between the lines and knew better. He read how the Arla ’s whale boat had been bushwhacked at Su’u and had lost three men; of how the skipper discovered the cook stewing human flesh on the galley fire – flesh purchased by the boat’s crew ashore in Fui; of how an accidental discharge of dynamite, while signaling, had killed another boat’s crew; of night attacks; ports fled from between the dawns; attacks by bushmen in mangrove swamps and by fleets of salt-water men in the larger passages. One item that occurred with monotonous frequency was death by dysentery. He noticed with alarm that two white men had so died – guests, like himself, on the Arla .

‘I say, you know,’ Bertie said next day to Captain Hansen. ‘I’ve been glancing through your log.’

The skipper displayed quick vexation that the log had been left lying about.

‘And all that dysentery, you know, that’s all rot, just like the accidental drownings,’ Bertie continued. ‘What does dysentery really stand for?’

The skipper openly admired his guest’s acumen, stiffened himself to make indignant denial, then gracefully surrendered.

‘You see, it’s like this, Mr. Arkwright. These islands have got a bad enough name as it is. It’s getting harder every day to sign on white men. Suppose a man is killed. The company has to pay through the nose for another man to take the job. But if the man merely dies of sickness, it’s all right. The new chums don’t mind disease. What they draw the line at is being murdered. I thought the skipper of the Arla had died of dysentery when I took his billet. Then it was too late. I’d signed the contract.’

‘Besides,’ said Mr. Jacobs, ‘there’s altogether too many accidental drownings anyway. It don’t look right. It’s the fault of the government. A white man hasn’t a chance to defend himself from the niggers.’