Читать «Cup of Gold (Золотая чаша)» онлайн - страница 5

"I'll tell you. We took the tall plate ship they call a galleon, and we with only pistols and the long knives they have for cutting trails in the jungle. Twenty-four of us there was-only twenty-four and ragged-but, Robert, we did horrid things with those same long knives. It's no good for a man that was a farm lad to be doing such things and then thinking about them. There was a fine captain-and we hung him up by his thumbs before we killed him. I don't know why we did it; I helped and I don't know why. Some said he was a damned Papist, but then, so was Pierre le Grand, I think.

"Some we pushed into the sea with their breast plates shining and shimmering as they went down-grand Spanish soldiers and bubbles coming out of their mouths. You can see deep into the water there." Dafydd ceased and looked at the floor.

"You see, I don't want to be hurting you with these things, Robert, but it's like something alive hidden in my chest under my ribs, and it's biting and scratching to get out of me. I'm rich of the venturing sure, but most times that doesn't seem enough, I'm richer, maybe, than your own brother, Sir Edward."

Robert was smiling with tightened lips. Now and then his eyes wandered to the boy where he knelt on the hearth.. Henry was taut with attention, gluttonously feeding on the words. When Robert spoke, he avoided Dafydd's eyes.

"Your soul's burdening you," he said. "You'd best have a talk with the Curate the morning-but about what I don't know."

"No, no; It's not my soul at all," Dafydd went on quickly. "That soul leaks out of a man the very first thing in the Indies, and leaves him with a dry, shrunken feeling where it was. It's not my soul at all; it's the poison that's in me, in my blood and in my brain. Robert, it's shriveling me like an old orange. The crawling things there and the litt1e flying beasts that come to your fire of nights, and the great pale flowers, all poisonous. They do horrible things to a man. My blood is like cold needles sliding in my veins the moment, and the fine fire before me. All this-all-is because of the dank breathing of the jungle.

You cannot sleep in it nor lie in it, nor live in it at all but it breathes on you and withers you.

"And the brown Indians-why, look!" He rolled back his sleeve, and Robert in disgust motioned him to cover the sick white horror which festered on his arm.

"It was only a little scratch of an arrow-you could hardly see it; but it'll be killing me before years, I guess. There's other things in me, Robert. Even the humans are poisonous, and a song the sailors sing about that."

Now young Henry started up excitedly.

"But the Indians," he cried; "those Indians and their arrows. Tell me about them! Do they fight much?

How do they look?"

"Fight?" said Dafydd. "Yes, they fight always; fight for a love that's in it. When they do not be fighting the men of Spain, they're at killing amongst themselves. Lithe as snakes they are, and quick and quiet and brown as ferrets; the very devil for getting out of sight before a man might get a shot at them.