Kidnapped / Похищенный. Книга для чтения на английском языке

‘The place?’ said I. ‘The Shaws?’

‘Nae other place that I ken,’ said he.

‘Ay, man?’ said I. ‘Is that so? Was my – was Alexander the eldest son?’

‘Deed[38 - Deed = Indeed] was he,’ said the landlord. ‘What else would he have killed him for?’ And with that he went away, as he had been impatient to do from the beginning.

Of course, I had guessed it a long while ago; but it is one thing to guess, another to know; and I sat stunned with my good fortune, and could scarce grow to believe that the same poor lad who had trudged in the dust from Ettrick Forest not two days ago, was now one of the rich of the earth.

I sat staring before me out of the inn window and my eye lighted on Captain Hoseason down on the pier among his seamen, and speaking with some authority. And presently he came marching back towards the house, with no mark of a sailor’s clumsiness, but carrying his fine, tall figure with a manly bearing, and still with the same sober, grave expression on his face. I wondered if it was possible that Ransome’s stories could be true, and half disbelieved them; they fitted so ill with the man’s looks. But indeed, he was neither so good as I supposed him, nor quite so bad as Ransome did; for, in fact, he was two men, and left the better one behind as soon as he set foot on board his vessel.

The next thing, I heard my uncle calling me, and found the pair in the road together. It was the captain who addressed me, and that with an air (very flattering to a young lad) of grave equality.

‘Sir,’ said he, ‘Mr. Balfour tells me great things of you; and for my own part, I like your looks. I wish I was for longer here, that we might make the better friends; but we’ll make the most of what we have. Ye shall come on board my brig for half an hour, till the ebb sets, and drink a bowl with me.’

Now, I longed to see the inside of a ship more than words can tell; but I was not going to put myself in jeopardy, and I told him my uncle and I had an appointment with a lawyer.

‘Ay, ay,’ said he, ‘he passed me word of that. But, ye see, the boat’ll set ye ashore at the town pier, and that’s but a penny stonecast from Rankeillor’s house.’ And here he suddenly leaned down and whispered in my ear: ‘Take care of the old tod[39 - tod = fox]; he means mischief. Come aboard till I can get a word with ye.’ And then, passing his arm through mine, he set off towards his boat. When we were at the boat-side he handed me in. I did not dream of hanging back; I thought (the poor fool!) that I had found a good friend and helper, and I was rejoiced to see the ship.

As soon as we were alongside, Hoseason, declaring that he and I must be the first aboard, ordered a tackle to be sent down from the main-yard. In this I was whipped into the air and set down again on the deck, where the captain stood ready waiting for me, and instantly slipped back his arm under mine.

‘But where is my uncle?’ said I suddenly.

‘Ay,’ said Hoseason, with a sudden grimness, ‘that’s the point.’

I felt I was lost. With all my strength, I plucked myself clear of him and ran to the bulwarks. Sure enough, there was the boat pulling for the town, with my uncle sitting in the stern. I gave a piercing cry – ‘Help, help! Murder!’ – so that both sides of the anchorage rang with it, and my uncle turned round where he was sitting, and showed me a face full of cruelty and terror.

It was the last I saw. Already strong hands had been plucking me back from the ship’s side; and now a thunderbolt seemed to strike me; I saw a great flash of fire, and fell senseless.

Chapter VII

I Go to Sea in the Brig Covenant of Dysart

I came to myself in darkness, in great pain, bound hand and foot, and deafened by many unfamiliar noises. The whole world now heaved giddily up, and now rushed giddily downward; and so sick and hurt was I in body, and my mind so much confounded, that it took me a long while, chasing my thoughts up and down, and ever stunned again by a fresh stab of pain, to realise that I must be lying somewhere bound in the belly of that unlucky ship, and that the wind must have strengthened to a gale. To my other pains and distresses, there was added the sickness of an unused landsman on the sea.

I had no measure of time; day and night were alike in that ill-smelling cavern of the ship’s bowels where, I lay; but sleep at length stole from me the consciousness of sorrow.

I was awakened by the light of a hand-lantern shining in my face. A small man of about thirty, with green eyes and a tangle of fair hair, stood looking down at me.

‘Well,’ said he, ‘how goes it?’

I answered by a sob; and my visitor then felt my pulse and temples, and set himself to wash and dress the wound upon my scalp.

‘Ay,’ said he, ‘a sore dunt[40 - dunt = stroke]. What, man? Cheer up! The world’s no done; you’ve made a bad start of it but you’ll make a better. Have you had any meat?’

I said I could not look at it: and thereupon he gave me some brandy and water in a tin pannikin, and left me once more to myself.

The next time he came to see me I was lying betwixt sleep and waking. I ached in every limb, and the cords that bound me seemed to be of fire. I had suffered tortures of fear, now from the scurrying of the ship’s rats that sometimes pattered on my very face and from the dismal imaginings that haunt the bed of fever.

The glimmer of the lantern, as a trap opened, shone in like the heaven’s sunlight. The man with the green eyes was the first to descend the ladder, and I noticed that he came somewhat unsteadily. He was followed by the captain. Neither said a word; but the first set to and examined me, and dressed my wound as before, while Hoseason looked me in my face with an odd, black look.

‘Now, sir, you see for yourself,’ said the first: ‘a high fever, no appetite, no light, no meat: you see for yourself what that means. I want that boy taken out of this hole and put in the forecastle,’ said Riach.

‘What ye may want, sir, is a matter of concern to nobody but yoursel’, returned the captain; ‘but I can tell ye that which is to be. Here he is; here he shall bide,’ he added, in a sharper note, and set one foot upon the ladder.

But Mr. Riach caught him by the sleeve.

‘Admitting that you have been paid to do a murder —’ he began.

Hoseason turned upon him with a flash. ‘What’s that?’ he cried. ‘What kind of talk is that?’

‘It seems it is the talk that you can understand,’ said Mr. Riach, looking him steadily in the face.

‘Mr. Riach, I have sailed with ye three cruises,’ replied the captain. ‘In all that time, sir, ye should have learned to know me: I’m a stiff man, and a dour man; but for what ye say the now – fie, fie! – it comes from a bad heart and a black conscience. If ye say the lad will die —’

‘Ay, will he!’ said Mr. Riach.

‘Well, sir, is not that enough?’ said Hoseason. ‘Flit him where ye please!’

Thereupon the captain ascended the ladder; and I, who had lain silent throughout this strange conversation, beheld Mr. Riach turn after him and bow as low as to his knees in what was plainly a spirit of derision. Even in my then state of sickness, I perceived two things: that the mate was touched with liquor and that (drunk or sober) he was like to prove a valuable friend.

Five minutes afterwards my bonds were cut, I was hoisted on a man’s back, carried up to the forecastle, and laid in a bunk on some sea-blankets; where the first thing that I did was to lose my senses.

Here I lay for the space of many days a close prisoner, and not only got my health again, but came to know my companions. They were a rough lot indeed, as sailors mostly are. There were some among them that had sailed with the pirates and seen things it would be a shame even to speak of; some were men that had run from the king’s ships, and went with a halter round their necks, of which they made no secret; and all, as the saying goes, were ‘at a word and a blow’ with their best friends. Yet I had not been many days shut up with them before I began to be ashamed of my first judgment, when I thought they had been unclean beasts. Rough they were, sure enough; and bad, I suppose; but they had many virtues. They were kind when it occurred to them, simple even beyond the simplicity of a country lad like me, and had some glimmerings of honesty.

Among other good deeds that they did, they returned my money, which had been shared among them; and though it was about a third short, I was very glad to get it, and hoped great good from it in the land I was going to. The ship was bound for the Carolinas; In those days of my youth, white men were still sold into slavery on the plantations, and that was the destiny to which my wicked uncle had condemned me.

The cabin-boy Ransome (from whom I had first heard of these atrocities) came in at times from the round-house, where he berthed and served, now nursing a bruised limb in silent agony, now raving against the cruelty of Mr. Shuan. It made my heart bleed; but the men had a great respect for the chief mate, who was, as they said, ‘the only seaman of the whole jing-bang, and none such a bad man when he was sober.’

I did my best in the small time allowed me to make something like a man, or rather I should say something like a boy, of the poor creature, Ransome. But his mind was scarce truly human. He could remember nothing of the time before he came to sea. He had a strange notion of the dry land, picked up from sailor’s stories: that it was a place where lads were put to some kind of slavery called a trade, and where apprentices were continually lashed and clapped into foul prisons. To be sure, I would tell him how kindly I had myself been used upon that dry land he was so much afraid of, and how well fed and carefully taught both by my friends and my parents: and if he had been recently hurt, he would weep bitterly and swear to run away; but if he was in his usual crackbrain humour, or (still more) if he had had a glass of spirits in the round-house, he would deride the notion.

All this time, you should know, the Covenant was meeting continual head-winds and tumbling up and down against head-seas, so that the scuttle was almost constantly shut, and the forecastle lighted only by a swinging lantern on a beam. I was never allowed to set my foot on deck, you can picture to yourselves how weary of my life I grew to be, and how impatient for a change.

And a change I was to get, as you shall hear; but I must first tell of a conversation I had with Mr. Riach, which put a little heart in me to bear my troubles. Getting him in a favourable stage of drink (for indeed he never looked near me when he was sober), I pledged him to secrecy, and told him my whole story.

He declared it was like a ballad; that he would do his best to help me; that I should have paper, pen, and ink, and write one line to Mr. Campbell and another to Mr. Rankeillor; and that if I had told the truth, ten to one he would be able (with their help) to pull me through and set me in my rights.

‘And in the meantime,’ says he, ‘keep your heart up. You’re not the only one, I’ll tell you that. There’s many a man hoeing tobacco over-seas that should be mounting his horse at his own door at home; many and many! And life is all a variorum, at the best. Look at me: I’m a laird’s son and more than half a doctor, and here I am, man-Jack[41 - man-Jack – помощник, слуга] to Hoseason!’

I thought it would be civil to ask him for his story.

He whistled loud.

‘Never had one,’ said he. ‘I like fun, that’s all.’ And he skipped out of the forecastle.

Chapter VIII

The Round-House