The Rescue Read Online Free Page B

Shaw. We couldn't talk those
fellows over. We couldn't bribe them, though the Frenchman offered the
best he had, and I was ready to back him to the last dollar, to the last
rag of cotton, Shaw! No use—they were that blamed respectable. So, says
the Frenchman to me: 'My friend, if they won't take our gunpowder for a
gift let us burn it to give them lead.' I was armed as you see now;
six eight-pounders on the main deck and a long eighteen on the
forecastle—and I wanted to try 'em. You may believe me! However, the
Frenchman had nothing but a few old muskets; and the beggars got to
windward of us by fair words, till one morning a boat's crew from the
Frenchman's ship found the girl lying dead on the beach. That put an end
to our plans. She was out of her trouble anyhow, and no reasonable man
will fight for a dead woman. I was never vengeful, Shaw, and—after
all—she didn't throw that flower at me. But it broke the Frenchman up
altogether. He began to mope, did no business, and shortly afterward
sailed away. I cleared a good many pence out of that trip, I remember."
    With these words he seemed to come to the end of his memories of that
trip. Shaw stifled a yawn.
    "Women are the cause of a lot of trouble," he said, dispassionately.
"In the Morayshire, I remember, we had once a passenger—an old
gentleman—who was telling us a yarn about them old-time Greeks fighting
for ten years about some woman. The Turks kidnapped her, or something.
Anyway, they fought in Turkey; which I may well believe. Them Greeks and
Turks were always fighting. My father was master's mate on board one of
the three-deckers at the battle of Navarino—and that was when we went
to help those Greeks. But this affair about a woman was long before that
time."
    "I should think so," muttered Lingard, hanging over the rail, and
watching the fleeting gleams that passed deep down in the water, along
the ship's bottom.
    "Yes. Times are changed. They were unenlightened in those old days. My
grandfather was a preacher and, though my father served in the navy, I
don't hold with war. Sinful the old gentleman called it—and I think so,
too. Unless with Chinamen, or niggers, or such people as must be kept in
order and won't listen to reason; having not sense enough to know
what's good for them, when it's explained to them by their
betters—missionaries, and such like au-tho-ri-ties. But to fight ten
years. And for a woman!"
    "I have read the tale in a book," said Lingard, speaking down over the
side as if setting his words gently afloat upon the sea. "I have read
the tale. She was very beautiful."
    "That only makes it worse, sir—if anything. You may depend on it she
was no good. Those pagan times will never come back, thank God. Ten
years of murder and unrighteousness! And for a woman! Would anybody do
it now? Would you do it, sir? Would you—"
    The sound of a bell struck sharply interrupted Shaw's discourse. High
aloft, some dry block sent out a screech, short and lamentable, like a
cry of pain. It pierced the quietness of the night to the very core, and
seemed to destroy the reserve which it had imposed upon the tones of the
two men, who spoke now loudly.
    "Throw the cover over the binnacle," said Lingard in his duty voice.
"The thing shines like a full moon. We mustn't show more lights than we
can help, when becalmed at night so near the land. No use in being seen
if you can't see yourself—is there? Bear that in mind, Mr. Shaw. There
may be some vagabonds prying about—"
    "I thought all this was over and done for," said Shaw, busying himself
with the cover, "since Sir Thomas Cochrane swept along the Borneo coast
with his squadron some years ago. He did a rare lot of fighting—didn't
he? We heard about it from the chaps of the sloop Diana that was
refitting in Calcutta when I was there in the Warwick Castle. They took
some king's town up a river hereabouts. The chaps were full of it."
    "Sir Thomas did good work," answered Lingard, "but it will be a