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House of Torment

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Год написания книги
2017
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As that was heard, a strong, lusty voice came to him.

"I'm here, master, I'm here! We shall not be long now. Ah – ah-h-h!"

Hull, blowing like a grampus, had swam up to them.

"I'll take him, master," he said; "do you rest for a moment. They'll have us out of this 'fore long."

There were no life-belts invented in those days, and to lower a boat from the ship was long in doing. But the St. Iago was brought up with all sails standing, the boat at the stern was let down most gingerly into the sea, and four mariners rowed towards the swimming men. It was near twenty minutes before Hull and Commendone heard the chunk of the oars in the rowlocks. But they heard it at last. The tub-like galley shadowed them, there was a loud cry of welcome and relief, and then the two men, still grasping the inert figure of him who had fallen overboard, caught hold of the stern of the boat. Willing hands hauled the half-drowned man into the boat. Johnnie and Hull clambered over the broad stern, sat down amid-ships, and shook themselves.

The moonlight was still extraordinarily powerful, and gave a fallen day to this southern world.

As Commendone shot the water out of his ears, he looked upon the limp, prone figure of the man he had rescued.

"Dame!" he cried; "it is the torturer that we've been overboard for. Pity we didn't let him drown."

John Hull had turned the figure of the Spaniard upon its stomach and was working vigorously at the arms, using them like pump-handles, as the sailors got their oars into the rowlocks again, and pulled back towards the shivering, silver ship near quarter of a mile away.

"I'll bring the life back to him, master," said John Hull. "He's warm now – there! He's vomited a pint or more of sea-water as I speak."

"I doubt he was worth saving," Johnnie said in a low voice to his servant's ear. "Still, he is saved, and I suppose a man like this hath a soul?"

Hull looked at Commendone in surprise. He knew nothing about the man they had rescued; he could not understand why his master spoke in this way.

But with his usual dog-like fidelity he nodded an assent, though he did not cease the pumping motion of the half-drowned man's arms.

"Perhaps he hath no soul, master," Hull said, "you know better than I. At any rate, we have got him out of this here sea, and so praise God Who hath given us the sturdiness to do it."

Commendone looked at his henchman and then at the slowly reviving Spaniard.

"Amen," he said.

CHAPTER X

THE SILENT MEN IN BLACK

"Sing to us, Johnnie."

"Mais oui, chantez, Monsieur," said Madame La Motte.

Johnnie took up a chitarrone, the archlute, a large, double-necked Spanish instrument, which lay upon a marble table by his side in the courtyard.

He looked up into the sky, the painted sunset sky of Spain, as if to find some inspiration there.

The hum of Seville came to them in an almost organ-like harmony. Bells were tolling from the cathedral and the innumerable churches; pigeons were wheeling round the domes and spires; occasionally a faint burst of music reached them where they sat.

The young man looked gravely at the two women. His face at this moment was singularly tranquil and refined. He was dressed with scrupulous care – the long journey over, his natural habits resumed. He had all the air and grace of a gallant in a Court.

He bowed to Madame La Motte and to his sweetheart, smiling gently at them.

"By your patience, ladies," he said, "I will make endeavour to improvise for you upon a theme. We have spent this day in seeing beauties such as sure I never thought to see with my mortal eyes. We are in the land of colour, of sweet odours; the balmy smells of nard and cassia are flung about the cedarn alleys where we walk. We have sucked the liquid air in a veritable garden of the Hesperides, and, indeed, I looked to see the three fair daughters of Hesperus along those crispèd shades and bowers. And we have seen also" – his voice was almost dreaming as he spoke – "the greatest church e'er built to God's glory by the hand of man. 'Tis indeed a mountain scooped out, a valley turned upsides. The towers of the Abbey Church at Westminster might walk erect in the middle nave; there are pillars with the girth of towers, and which appear so slender that they make one shudder as they rise from out the ground or depend them from the gloomy roof like stalactites in the cave of a giant."

Madame La Motte nodded, purred, and murmured to herself. The whimsical and studied Court language did not now fall upon her ears for the first time. In the fashion of that age all men of culture and position learnt to talk in this fashion upon occasion, with classic allusion and in graceful prose.

But to sweet Elizabeth it was all new and beautiful, and as she gazed at her lover her eyes were liquid with caressing wonder, her lips curved into a bow of pride at such dear eloquence.

Johnnie plucked the strings of the chitarrone once or twice, and then, his eyes half closed, began a simple improvisation in a minor key, the while he lifted his voice and began to sing his ballad of evening colours:

See! limner Phœbus paints the sky
Vermilion and gold
And doth with purple tapestry
The waning day enfold.
– The royal, lucent, Tyrian dye
King Philip wore in Thessaly.

The Lord of Morning now doth keep
Herald for Lady Night,
Whose robes of black and silver sweep
Before his tabard bright.
– All silver-soft and sable-deep,
As when she brought Endymion sleep!

Now honey-coloured Luna she
Hath lit her lamp on high;
And paleth in her Majestie
The twin Dioscuri.
– Set in gold-powdered samite, she —
Queen of the Night! Queen of the Sea!

His voice faded away into silence; the mellow tenor ceasing in an imperceptible diminuendo of sound.

There was a silence, and then Lizzie's hand stole out and touched her lover's. "Oh, Johnnie," she said, "how gracious! And did those lovely words come into thy head as thou sangst them?"

"In truth they did, fairest lady of evening," he answered, bending low over her hand. "And sure 'twas thy dear presence that sent them to me, the musick of thy voice hath breathed a soul into this lute."

… They had arrived safely in Seville the night before, spending three days upon the journey from Cadiz, but travelling in very pleasant and easy fashion.

Mr. Mew, the mate of the St. Iago, had business in the city, and while the vessel was discharging its cargo at Cadiz he went up to Seville and took the four travellers with him on board an alijador– a long barge with quarters for passengers, and a hold for cargo, which was propelled partly by oars in the narrower reaches of the river, but principally by a large lug sail.

Don Perez had remained in Cadiz, but the tall and sinister young fellow whom Hull and Johnnie had rescued from the Atlantic came in the barge also. The fugitives from England had little to say to him, knowing what he was. Alonso – which was the man's name – had been profuse in his gratitude. His profuseness, however, had been mingled with a continuous astonishment, a brutish wonder which was quite inexplicable to Elizabeth.

"He seemeth," she said once to her esquire, "to think as if such a deed of daring as thou didst in thy kindness for a fellow-creature in peril hath never been known in the world before!"

Madame La Motte and Commendone, however, had said nothing. They knew very well why this poor wretch, who gained his food by such a hideous calling, was amazed at his rescue. They said nothing to the girl, however, dreading that she should ever have an inkling of what the man was.

On the voyage to Seville, a happy, lazy time under the bright sun, Johnnie could not quite understand an obvious friendship and liking which seemed to have sprung up between Alonso and Mr. Mew, who spoke Spanish very adequately.

"I cannot understand," he said upon one occasion to the sturdy man from the Isle of Wight, "I cannot understand, sir, how you that are an English mariner can talk and consort with this tool of hell."

Mr. Mew looked at him with a dry smile. "And yet, master," he said in the true Hampshire idiom and drawl, "bless your heart, you jumped overboard for this same man!"
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