Джозеф Киплинг - The Day's Work - Volume 1

"'Ye can see,' I said, knockin' the top off another beer–bottle. 'I did not sign to be starved, McRimmon.'

"'Nor to swum, either,' said he, for Bell had tauld him how I carried the line aboard. 'Well, I'm thinkin' you'll be no loser. What freight could we ha' put into the Lammergeyer would equal salvage on four hunder thousand pounds—hull an' cargo? Eh, McPhee? This cuts the liver out o' Holdock, Steiner, Chase & Company, Limited. Eh, McPhee? An' I'm sufferin' from senile dementia now? Eh, MCPhee? An' I'm not daft, am I, till I begin to paint the Lammergeyer? Eh, McPhee? Ye may weel lift your leg, Dandie! I ha' the laugh o' them all. Ye found watter in the engine–room?'

"'To speak wi'oot prejudice,' I said, 'there was some watter.'

"'They thought she was sinkin' after the propeller went. She filled wi' extraordinary rapeedity. Calder said it grieved him an' Bannister to abandon her.'

"I thought o' the dinner at Radley's, an' what like o' food I'd eaten for eight days.

"'It would grieve them sore,' I said.

"'But the crew would not hear o' stayin' and workin' her back under canvas. They're gaun up an' down sayin' they'd ha' starved first.'

"'They'd ha' starved if they'd stayed,' said I.

"'I tak' it, fra Calder's account, there was a mutiny a'most.'

"'Ye know more than I, McRimmon' I said. 'Speakin' wi'oot prejudice, for we're all in the same boat, who opened the bilgecock?'

"'Oh, that's it—is it?' said the auld man, an' I could see he was surprised. 'A bilge–cock, ye say?'

"'I believe it was a bilge–cock. They were all shut when I came aboard, but some one had flooded the engine–room eight feet over all, and shut it off with the worm–an'–wheel gear from the second gratin' afterwards.'

"'Losh!' said McRimmon. 'The ineequity o' man's beyond belief. But it's awfu' discreditable to Holdock, Steiner & Chase, if that came oot in court.'

"'It's just my own curiosity,' I said.

"'Aweel, Dandie's afflicted wi' the same disease. Dandie, strive against curiosity, for it brings a little dog into traps an' suchlike. Whaur was the Kite when yon painted liner took off the Grotkau's people?'

"'Just there or thereabouts,' I said.

"'An' which o' you twa thought to cover your lights?' said he, winkin'.

"'Dandle,' I said to the dog, 'we must both strive against curiosity. It's an unremunerative business. What's our chance o' salvage, Dandie?'

"He laughed till he choked. 'Tak' what I gie you, McPhee, an' be content,' he said. 'Lord, how a man wastes time when he gets old. Get aboard the Kite, mon, as soon as ye can. I've clean forgot there's a Baltic charter yammerin' for you at London. That'll be your last voyage, I'm thinkin', excep' by way o' pleasure.'

"Steiner's men were comin' aboard to take charge an' tow her round, an' I passed young Steiner in a boat as I went to the Kite. He looked down his nose; but McRimmon pipes up: 'Here's the man ye owe the Grotkau to—at a price, Steiner—at a price! Let me introduce Mr. McPhee to you. Maybe ye've met before; but ye've vara little luck in keepin' your men—ashore or afloat!'

"Young Steiner looked angry enough to eat him as he chuckled an' whustled in his dry old throat.

"'Ye've not got your award yet,' Steiner says.

"'Na, na,' says the auld man, in a screech ye could hear to the Hoe, 'but I've twa million sterlin', an' no bairns, ye Judeeas Apella, if ye mean to fight; an' I'll match ye p'und for p'und till the last p'und's oot. Ye ken me, Steiner! I'm McRimmon o' McNaughten & McRimmon!'

"'Dod,' he said betwix' his teeth, sittin' back in the boat, 'I've waited fourteen year to break that Jewfirm, an' God be thankit I'll do it now.'

"The Kite was in the Baltic while the auld man was warkin' his warks, but I know the assessors valued the Grotkau, all told, at over three hunder and sixty thousand—her manifest was a treat o' richness—an' McRimmon got a third for salvin' an abandoned ship. Ye see, there's vast deeference between towin' a ship wi' men on her an' pickin' up a derelict—a vast deeference—in pounds sterlin'. Moreover, twa three o' the Grotkau's crew were burnin' to testify about food, an' there was a note o' Calder to the Board, in regard to the tail–shaft, that would ha' been vara damagin' if it had come into court. They knew better than to fight.

"Syne the Kite came back, an' McRimmon paid off me an' Bell personally, an' the rest of the crew pro rata, I believe it's ca'ed. My share—oor share, I should say—was just twenty–five thousand pound sterlin'."

At this point Janet jumped up and kissed him.

"Five–and–twenty thousand pound sterlin'. Noo, I'm fra the North, and I'm not the like to fling money awa' rashly, but I'd gie six months' pay—one hunder an' twenty pounds—to know who flooded the engine–room of the Grotkau. I'm fairly well acquaint wi' McRimmon's eediosyncrasies, and he'd no hand in it. It was not Calder, for I've asked him, an' he wanted to fight me. It would be in the highest degree unprofessional o' Calder—not fightin', but openin' bilge–cocks—but for a while I thought it was him. Ay, I judged it might be him—under temptation."

"What's your theory?" I demanded.

"Weel, I'm inclined to think it was one o' those singular providences that remind us we're in the hands o' Higher Powers.".

"It couldn't open and shut itself?"

"I did not mean that; but some half–starvin' oiler or, maybe, trimmer must ha' opened it awhile to mak' sure o' leavin' the Grotkau. It's a demoralisin' thing to see an engine–room flood up after any accident to the gear—demoralisin' and deceptive both. Aweel, the man got what he wanted, for they went aboard the liner cryin' that the Grotkau was sinkin'. But it's curious to think o' the consequences. In a' human probability, he's bein' damned in heaps at the present moment aboard another tramp freighter; an' here am I, wi' five–an'–twenty thousand pound invested, resolute to go to sea no more—providential's the preceese word—except as a passenger, ye'll understand, Janet."

McPhee kept his word. He and Janet went for a voyage as passengers in the first–class saloon. They paid seventy pounds for their berths; and Janet found a very sick woman in the second–class saloon, so that for sixteen days she lived below, and chatted with the stewardesses at the foot of the second–saloon stairs while her patient slept. McPhee was a passenger for exactly twenty–four hours. Then the engineers' mess—where the oilcloth tables are—joyfully took him to its bosom, and for the rest of the voyage that company was richer by the unpaid services of a highly certificated engineer.

Before he was thirty, he discovered that there was no one to play with him. Though the wealth of three toilsome generations stood to his account, though his tastes in the matter of books, bindings, rugs, swords, bronzes, lacquer, pictures, plate, statuary, horses, conservatories, and agriculture were educated and catholic, the public opinion of his country wanted to know why he did not go to office daily, as his father had before him.

So he fled, and they howled behind him that he was an unpatriotic Anglomaniac, born to consume fruits, one totally lacking in public spirit. He wore an eyeglass; he had built a wall round his country house, with a high gate that shut, instead of inviting America to sit on his flower–beds; he ordered his clothes from England; and the press of his abiding city cursed him, from his eye–glass to his trousers, for two consecutive days.

When he rose to light again, it was where nothing less than the tents of an invading army in Piccadilly would make any difference to anybody. If he had money and leisure, England stood ready to give him all that money and leisure could buy. That price paid, she would ask no questions. He took his cheque–book and accumulated things—warily at first, for he remembered that in America things own the man. To his delight, he discovered that in England he could put his belongings under his feet; for classes, ranks, and denominations of people rose, as it were, from the earth, and silently and discreetly took charge of his possessions. They had been born and bred for that sole purpose—servants of the cheque–book. When that was at an end they would depart as mysteriously as they had come.