Jerry of the Islands / Джерри-островитянин. Книга для чтения на английском языке

“Glory be!” said Clancey, who lived in the next block from him. He could see him saying it and wiping the sweat from his grimy face. “Glory be, ’tis a small matter at most[88], an’ right in our neigh-bourhood – not a dozen blocks away. Soon as it’s done we can beat it for home an’ let the down-town boys take the car back to the shop.”

“We’ve only to jack her up for a moment,” he had answered.

“What is it?” Billy Jaffers, another of the crew, asked.

“Somebody run over – can’t get them out,” he said, as they swung on board the wrecking-car and started.

He saw again all the incidents of the long run, not omitting the delay caused by hose-carts and a hook-and-ladder running to a cross-town fire, during which time he and Clancey had joked Jaffers over the dates with various fictitious damsels out of which he had been cheated by the night’s extra work.

Came the long line of stalled street-cars, the crowd, the police holding it back, the two ambulances drawn up and waiting their freight, and the young policeman, whose beat it was, white and shaken, greeting him with: “It’s horrible, man. It’s fair sickening. Two of them. We can’t get them out. I tried. One was still living, I think.”

But he, strong man and hearty, used to such work, weary with the hard day and with a pleasant picture of the bright little flat waiting him a dozen blocks away when the job was done, spoke cheerfully, confidently, saying that he’d have them out in a jiffy[89], as he stooped and crawled under the car on hands and knees.

Again he saw himself as he pressed the switch of his electric torch and looked. Again he saw the twin braids of heavy golden hair ere his thumb relaxed from the switch, leaving him in darkness.

“Is the one alive yet?[90]” the shaken policeman asked.

And the question was repeated, while he struggled for will power sufficient to press on the light.

He heard himself reply, “I’ll tell you in a minute.”

Again he saw himself look. For a long minute he looked.

“Both dead,” he answered quietly. “Clancey, pass in a number three jack, and get under yourself with another at the other end of the truck.”

He lay on his back, staring straight up at one single star that rocked mistily through a thinning of cloud-stuff overhead. The old ache was in his throat, the old harsh dryness in mouth and eyes. And he knew – what no other man knew – why he was in the Solomons, skipper of the teak-built yacht Arangi, running niggers, risking his head, and drinking more Scotch whiskey than was good for any man.

Not since that night had he looked with warm eyes on any woman. And he had been noted by other whites as notoriously cold toward pickanninnies white or black.

But, having visioned the ultimate horror of memory, Van Horn was soon able to fall asleep again, delightfully aware, as he drowsed off, of Jerry’s head on his shoulder. Once, when Jerry, dreaming of the beach at Meringe and of Mister Haggin, Biddy, Terrence, and Michael, set up a low whimpering, Van Horn roused sufficiently to soothe him closer to him, and to mutter ominously: “Any nigger that’d hurt that pup[91]…”

At midnight when the mate touched him on the shoulder, in the moment of awakening and before he was awake Van Horn did two things automatically and swiftly. He darted his right hand down to the pistol at his hip, and muttered: “Any nigger that’d hurt that pup…”

“That’ll be Kopo Point abreast,” Borckman explained, as both men stared to windward at the high loom of the land. “She hasn’t made more than ten miles, and no promise of anything steady.”

“There’s plenty of stuff making up there, if it’ll ever come down,” Van Horn said, as both men transferred their gaze to the clouds drifting with many breaks across the dim stars.

Scarcely had the mate fetched a blanket from below and turned in on deck, than a brisk steady breeze sprang up from off the land, sending the Arangi through the smooth water at a nine-knot clip[92]. For a time Jerry tried to stand the watch with Skipper, but he soon curled up and dozed off, partly on the deck and partly on Skipper’s bare feet.

When Skipper carried him to the blanket and rolled him in, he was quickly asleep again; and he was quickly awake, out of the blanket, and padding after along the deck as Skipper paced up and down. Here began another lesson, and in five minutes Jerry learned it was the will of Skipper that he should remain in the blanket, that everything was all right, and that Skipper would be up and down and near him all the time.

At four the mate took charge of the deck.

“Reeled off thirty miles,” Van Horn told him. “But now it is baffling again. Keep an eye for squalls under the land. Better throw the halyards down on deck[93] and make the watch stand by. Of course they’ll sleep, but make them sleep on the halyards and sheets.”