Всего за 179 руб. Купить полную версию
Slowly, with infinite caution and patience, they crept closer and closer, seeing no more of the cliffs than an evanescent dark loom with a narrow border of angry foam at its foot. At the moment of anchoring the fog was so thick that for all they could see they might have been a thousand miles out in the open sea. Yet the shelter of the land could be felt. There was a peculiar quality in the stillness of the air. Very faint, very elusive, the wash of the ripple against the encircling land reached their ears, with mysterious sudden pauses.
The anchor dropped, the leads were laid in. The commanding officer went below into his cabin. But he had not been there very long when a voice outside his door requested his presence on deck. He thought to himself: What is it now? He felt some impatience at being called out again to face the wearisome fog.
He found that it had thinned again a little and had taken on a gloomy hue from the dark cliffs which had no form, no outline, but asserted themselves as a curtain of shadows all round the ship, except in one bright spot, which was the entrance from the open sea. Several officers were looking that way from the bridge. The second in command met him with the breathlessly whispered information that there was another ship in the cove.
She had been made out by several pairs of eyes only a couple of minutes before. She was lying at anchor very near the entrance a mere vague blot on the fogs brightness. And the commanding officer by staring in the direction pointed out to him by eager hands ended by distinguishing it at last himself. Indubitably a vessel of some sort.
Its a wonder we didnt run slap into her when coming in, observed the second in command.
Send a boat on board before she vanishes, said the commanding officer. He surmised that this was a coaster. It could hardly be anything else. But another thought came into his head suddenly. It is a wonder, he said to his second in command, who had rejoined him after sending the boat away.
By that time both of them had been struck by the fact that the ship so suddenly discovered had not manifested her presence by ringing her bell.
We came in very quietly, thats true, concluded the younger officer. But they must have heard our leadsmen at least. We couldnt have passed her more than fifty yards off. The closest shave! They may even have made us out, since they were aware of something coming in. And the strange thing is that we never heard a sound from her. The fellows on board must have been holding their breath.
Aye, said the commanding officer, thoughtfully.
In due course the boarding-boat returned, appearing suddenly alongside, as though she had burrowed her way under the fog. The officer in charge came up to make his report, but the commanding officer didnt give him time to begin. He cried from a distance:
Coaster, isnt she?
No, sir. A stranger a neutral, was the answer.
No. Really! Well, tell us all about it. What is she doing here?
The young man stated then that he had been told a long and complicated story of engine troubles. But it was plausible enough from a strictly professional point of view and it had the usual features: disablement, dangerous drifting along the shore, weather more or less thick for days, fear of a gale, ultimately a resolve to go in and anchor anywhere on the coast, and so on. Fairly plausible.
Engines still disabled? inquired the commanding officer.
No, sir. She has steam on them.
The commanding officer took his second aside. By Jove! he said, you were right! They were holding their breaths as we passed them. They were.
But the second in command had his doubts now.
A fog like this does muffle small sounds, sir, he remarked. And what could his object be, after all?
To sneak out unnoticed, answered the commanding officer.
Then why didnt he? He might have done it, you know. Not exactly unnoticed, perhaps. I dont suppose he could have slipped his cable without making some noise. Still, in a minute or so he would have been lost to view clean gone before we had made him out fairly. Yet he didnt.
They looked at each other. The commanding officer shook his head. Such suspicions as the one which had entered his head are not defended easily. He did not even state it openly. The boarding officer finished his report. The cargo of the ship was of a harmless and useful character. She was bound to an English port. Papers and everything in perfect order. Nothing suspicious to be detected anywhere.
Then passing to the men, he reported the crew on deck as the usual lot. Engineers of the well-known type, and very full of their achievement in repairing the engines. The mate surly. The master rather a fine specimen of a Northman, civil enough, but appeared to have been drinking. Seemed to be recovering from a regular bout of it.
I told him I couldnt give him permission to proceed. He said he wouldnt dare to move his ship her own length out in such weather as this, permission or no permission. I left a man on board, though.
Quite right.
The commanding officer, after communing with his suspicions for a time, called his second aside.
What if she were the very ship which had been feeding some infernal submarine or other? he said in an undertone.
The other started. Then, with conviction:
She would get off scot-free. You couldnt prove it, sir.
I want to look into it myself.
From the report weve heard I am afraid you couldnt even make a case for reasonable suspicion, sir.
Ill go on board all the same.
He had made up his mind. Curiosity is the great motive power of hatred and love. What did he expect to find? He could not have told anybody not even himself.
What he really expected to find there was the atmosphere, the atmosphere of gratuitous treachery, which in his view nothing could excuse; for he thought that even a passion of unrighteousness for its own sake could not excuse that. But could he detect it? Sniff it? Taste it? Receive some mysterious communication which would turn his invincible suspicions into a certitude strong enough to provoke action with all its risks?
The master met him on the after-deck,[12] looming up in the fog amongst the blurred shapes of the usual snips fittings. He was a robust Northman, bearded, and in the force of his age. A round leather cap fitted his head closely. His hands were rammed deep into the pockets of his short leather jacket. He kept them there while lie explained that at sea he lived in the chart-room,[13] and led the way there, striding carelessly. Just before reaching the door under the bridge he staggered a little, recovered himself, flung it open, and stood aside, leaning his shoulder as if involuntarily against the side of the house, and staring vaguely into the fog-filled space. But he followed the commanding officer at once, flung the door to, snapped on the electric light, and hastened to thrust his hands back into his pockets, as though afraid of being seized by them either in friendship or in hostility.
The place was stuffy and hot. The usual chart-rack overhead was full, and the chart on the table was kept unrolled by an empty cup standing on a saucer half-full of some spilt dark liquid. A slightly nibbled biscuit reposed on the chronometer[14] -case. There were two settees, and one of them had been made up into a bed with a pillow and some blankets, which were now very much tumbled. The Northman let himself fall on it, his hands still in his pockets.