Читать «Cup of Gold (Золотая чаша)» онлайн - страница 30

" 'Twas when I was a boy like this one here, and I sailing in a free ship that tucked about the ocean picking up here and there-sometimes a few black slaves and now and then a gold ring from a Spanish craft that couldn't help itself-whatever we could get. We had a master by election and no papers at all, but there were different kinds of flags, and they on the bridge. If we did be picking out a man o' war in the glass, then we ran for it.

"Well, anyway, as I'm telling you, one morning there was a little barque to the, starboard, and we wetting sail to run her down; and so we did, too. Spanish, she was, and little enough in her but salt and green hides. But when we turned out the cabin there was a tall, straight woman with black hair to her, and a long white forehead, and the slenderest fingers I ever looked on with my eyes. So we took her aboard of us and didn't take the rest. The captain was for leading the woman to the quarter deck alongside of him, when the bo's'n stepped up.

"We're a free crew,' he says, 'and you the master by election. We want the woman, too,' he says, and if we don't be getting her there'll be a bit of mutiny in a minute.' The captain scowled around, but there was the crew scowling back at him; so he pulled up his shoulders and laughed-a nasty kind of laugh.

" 'How will you be deciding?' he asks, thinking there would be a grand fight over the woman. But the bo's'n slipped some dice out of his pocket and threw them on the deck.

" 'We'll use these!' he says, and in a minute every man of the crew was on his knees and reaching for the dice. But 1 was taking a long sight of the woman there alone. I says to myself, 'That do be a hard kind of woman, and one that might be doing cruel things to hurt the man she hated. No, my boy,' I says, 'you'd best not be coming in on the game.'

"But just then the dark woman ran to the rail and picked a round shot out of the racks and jumped overside, hugging it in her arms. That was all! We ran to the rail and looked-but only a few bubbles there were to show.

"Well, it was two nights later, the afterwatch was for running into the fo'c'sle and the hair bristling up on his head. 'There's a white thing, and it swimming after us,' he says, 'and the looks on it like the woman that went overboard.'

"Of course we ran and looked over the taffrail, and I could see nothing at all; but the others said there was a thing with long white hands reaching out for our stern post, not swimming but just dragging after us like the ship was lodestone and it a bit of iron, You can know there was little enough sleeping that night.

Those that did dust off cried and moaned in their sleep; and I need not tell you what that same thing signifies.

"The next night, up comes the bo's'n out of the hole screaming like a mad one, and the hair all turned gray on his head. We did be holding him and petting him awhile and finally he managed to whisper, " 'I seen it! Oh, my God, I seen it! There was two long, white, soft-looking bands with slender fingers-and they came through the side and started to ripping the planks off like they were paper. Oh, my God! Save me!'