Birds of Prey - Smith Wilbur (версия книг TXT) 📗
At last Winterton waved away any further chaff and congratulation.
He stood up, leaned over the table towards Schreuder, and said seriously, "I salute you, sir. You are a gentleman of iron nerve, and a sportsman of the first water. I offer you the hand of friendship." He stretched out his right hand with the palm open. Schreuder looked at it disdainfully, still not moving, and the smiles faded away. Another charged silence fell over the little cabin.
Schreuder spoke out clearly. "I should have examined those dice of yours more closely while I had the chance." He placed a heavy emphasis on the possessive pronoun. "I hope you will forgive me, sir, but I make it a rule never to shake hands with cheats." Vincent recoiled sharply and stared at Schreuder in. disbelief, while the others gasped and gaped.
It took Vincent a long moment to recover from the shock of the unexpected insult, and his handsome young face had paled under his sea and salt-tanned skin as he replied, "I would be deeply obliged if you could see fit to accord me satisfaction for that remark, Colonel Schreuder."
"With the greatest of pleasure." Schreuder rose to his feet, smiling with triumph. He had been challenged so the choice of weapons was his. There would be no aping about with pistols. It would be the steel and this English puppy would have the pleasure of a yard of the Neptune sword in his belly. Schreuder turned to Llewellyn. "Would you do me the honour of acting as my second in this matter?" he asked.
"No!" Llewellyn shook his head firmly. "I will not allow duelling on board any ship of mine. You will have to find yourself another person to act for you, and you will have to check your temper until we reach port. Then you can go ashore to settle this matter."
Schreuder looked back at Vincent. "I will inform you of the name of my second at the first opportunity," he said. "I promise you satisfaction as soon as we reach port." He stood up and marched out of the cabin. He could hear their voices behind him, raised in comment and conjecture, but the brandy fumes rose to mingle with his rage until he feared the veins beating in his temples might burst with the strength of it.
The folloing day Schreuder kept to his own cabin where a servant brought his meals to him. he lay on his bunk like a battle casualty, nursing the terrible wounds to his pride and the unbearable pain caused by the loss of his entire worldly wealth. On the second day he came on deck while the Golden Bough was on a larboard tack and making good her course of west-north-west along the bulging coastline of southern Africa.
As soon as his head appeared above the coaming of the companionway, the officer of the watch turned away and busied himself with the pegs on the traverse board, while Captain Llewellyn raised his telescope and studied the blue mountains that loomed on the horizon to the north. Schreuder paced along the lee rail of the ship while the officers studiously ignored his presence. The servant who had waited at the Captain's dinner party had spread the news of the impending duel through all the ship, and the crew eyed him curiously and kept well out of his path.
After half an hour Schreuder stopped abruptly in front of the officer of the watch and, without preamble, asked, "Mister Fowler, will you act as my second?"
"I beg your pardon, Colonel, Mister Winterton is a friend of mine. Will you excuse me, please?"
During the days that followed Schreuder approached every officer aboard to act for him, but in each case he was received with frigid refusals. Ostracized and humiliated, he prowled the open deck like a night-stalking leopard. His thoughts swung like a pendulum between remorse and agony over Katinka's death, and resentment of the treatment meted out to him by the captain and officers of the ship. His rage swelled until he could barely support it.
On the morning of the fifth day, as he paced the lee rail, a hail from the masthead aroused him from this black mist of suffering. When Captain Llewellyn strode to the windward rail and stared into the south-west, Schreuder followed him across the deck and stood at his shoulder.
For some moments he doubted his own eyesight as he stared at the mountainous range of menacing dark cloud that stretched from the horizon to the heavens and which bore down upon them with such speed that it made him think again of the avalanche sweeping down the dark gorge.
"You had best go below, Colonel," Llewellyn warned him. "We're in for a bit of a blow."
Schreuder ignored the warning and stood by the rail, filled with awe as he- watched the clouds roll down upon them. All around him the ship was in turmoil as the crew rushed to get the sails furled and to bring the bows around, so that the Golden Bough faced into the racing storm. The wind came on so swiftly that it caught her with her royals and jib still set and sheeted home.
The storm hurled itself upon the Golden Bough, howling with fury, and laid her over so that the lee rail went under and green water piled aboard to sweep the deck waist deep. Schreuder was borne away on this flood and might have been washed overboard had he not grabbed hold of the main shrouds.
The Golden Bough's jib and royals burst as though they were wet parchment and for a long minute she wallowed half under as the gale pinned her down. The sea poured into her open hatches, and from below there was the crash and thunder as some of her bulkheads burst and her cargo shifted. Men screamed as they were crushed by a culverin that had broken its breeching tackle and was running amok on the gundeck. Other sailors cried like lost souls falling into the pit as they were carried over the side by the racing green waters. The air turned white with spray so that Schreuder felt himself drowning, even though his face was clear of the water, and the white fog blinded him.
Slowly the Golden Bough righted herself as her lead weighted keel levered her upright, but her spars and rigging were in tatters, snapping and lashing in the gale. Some of her yards were broken away and they clattered, banged and battered the standing masts. Listing heavily with the seawater she had taken in the Golden Bough was driven out of control before the wind.
Gasping and choking, half-drowned and doused to the skin, Schreuder dragged himself across the deck to the shelter of the companionway. From there he watched in dread and fascination as the world around him dissolved in silver spray and maddened green waves streaked with long pathways of foam.
