Birds of Prey - Smith Wilbur (версия книг TXT) 📗
The hull of the Resolution had been cleaned of weed and, barnacles, and as the crew paid off AT her hoving lines she righted herself slowly against the press of the incoming tide.
While she had been careened on the beach, the carpenters had finished shaping and dressing the new mainmast, and it was at last ready to step. It took every hand to carry the long, heavy spar down to the beach and lift the thick end over the gunwale. The tackle was made fast to her other two standing masts, and the slinp were adjusted to raise the new spar.
With gangs heaving cautiously on the lines, "and Big Daniel and Ned directing them, they raised the massive length of gleaming pine towards the vertical. Sir Francis trusted no one else to supervise the crucial business of fitting the heel of the mast through the hole in the main deck and then sliding its length down through the hull to the step on the keelson of the ship. It was a delicate operation that needed the strength of fifty men, and took most of that day.
"Well done, lads!" Sir Francis told them, when at last the massive spar slid home the last few inches and the heel clunked heavily into its prepared step. "Slack off!" No longer supported by the ropes, the fifty-foot mast stood of its own accord.
Big Daniel shouted up to the deck from where he stood waist deep in the lagoon, "Now woe betide those cheese heads Ten days from today, we'll sail her out through the heads, you mark my words."
Sir Francis smiled down at him from the rail. "Not before we get the shrouds on that mainmast. And that will not happen while you stand there with your mouth open and your tongue wagging."
He was about to turn away when suddenly he frowned at the shore. The Governor's wife had come out of the trees, followed by her maid, and now she stood at the top of the beach, spinning the handle of her parasol between her long white fingers so it revolved over her head, a brightly coloured wheel that drew the eye of every man of his crew. Even Hal, who was overseeing the gang on the foredeck, had turned from his work to gawk at her like a ninny. Today she was dressed in a fetching new costume, cut so low in front that her bosom bulged out almost to her nipples.
"Mister Courtney," Sir Francis called, loud enough to shame his son in front of his men, "give a mind to your work. Where are the wedges to steady that spar?"
Hal started, and flushed darkly under his tan as he turned from the rail and seized the heavy mallet. "You heard the captain," he snapped at his gang.
"That strumpet is the Eve in this paradise," Sir Francis dropped his voice, and spoke from the side of his mouth to Aboli at his shoulder. "I have seen Hal mooning at her before and, sweet heavens, she looks back at him bold as a harlot with her dugs sticking out. He is only a boy."
"You see him through a father's eyes." Aboli smiled and shook his head. "He is a boy no longer. He is a man. You told me once that your holy book speaks of an eagle in the sky and a serpent on a rock, and a man with a maid." although Hal could steal little time from his uties, he responded to Katinka's summons like a salmon returning to its native river in the spawning season. When she called him, nothing could stop him answering. He ran up the path with his heart keeping time to his flying feet. It was almost a full day since last he had been alone with Katinka, which was much too long for his liking. Sometimes he was able to sneak away from the camp to meet her twice or even thrice in a single day. Often they could be together only for a few minutes, but that was time enough to get the business done. The two wasted little of their precious time together in ceremony or debate.
They had been forced to find a meeting place other than her hut. Hal's midnight visits to the hostage stockade had almost ended in disaster. Governor van de Velde could not have been sleeping as soundly as his snores suggested and they had grown careless and rowdy in their love play.
Roused by his wife's unrestrained cries and Hal's loud responses, Governor van de Velde seized the lantern and crept up on her hut. Aboli, on guard without, saw the glimmer of it in time to hiss a warning, giving Hal a space to snatch up his clothing and duck out of the hole in the stockade wall, just as van de Velde burst into the hut with the lantern in one hand and a naked sword in the other.
He had complained bitterly to Sir Francis the following morning. "One of your thieving sailors," he accused.
"Is there any item of value missing from your wife's hut?"
Sir Francis wanted to know and, when van de Velde shook his head, he was heavy with innuendo. "Perhaps your wife should not make such a show of her jewels for they excite avaricious thoughts. In future, sir, it might be prudent to take better care of all your possessions."
Sir Francis questioned the off-duty watch, but as the Governor's wife could supply no description of the intruder she had been fast asleep at the time the matter was soon dropped. That had been the last nocturnal visit Hal dared risk to the stockade.
Instead they had found this secret place to meet. It was well hidden but situated close enough to the camp for Hal to be able to respond to her summons and to reach it in just a few minutes. He paused briefly on the narrow terrace in front of the cave, breathing deeply in his haste and excitement. He and Aboli had discovered it as they returned from one of their hunting forays in the hills. It was not really a cave, but an overhang where the soft red sandstone had been eroded from the harder rock strata to form a deep veranda.
They were not the first men to have passed this way. There were old ashes in the stone hearth against the back wall of the shelter, and the low roof was soot-stained. Littering the floor were the bones of fish and small mammals, remnants of meals that had been prepared at the hearth. The bones were dry and picked clean, and the ashes were cold and scattered. The hearth was long disused.
However, these were not the only signs of human occupation. The rear wall was covered from floor to roof with a wild and exuberant cavalcade of paintings. Horned antelope and gazelle that Hal did not recognize streamed in great herds across the smooth rock face, hunted by stick-like human archers with swollen buttocks and incongruously erect sexual members. The paintings were childlike and COlourful, the perspective and the relative size of men and beasts fantastical. Some human figures dwarfed the elephant they pursued, and eagles were twice the size of the herds of black buffalo beneath their outstretched wings. Yet Hal was enchanted by them. Often in the intervals of quiet between wild bouts of lovemaking, he would lie staring up at these strange little men as they hunted the game and fought battles with each other. At those times he felt a strange longing to know more about the artists, and these heroic little hunters and warriors they had depicted.
