Jerry of the Islands / Джерри-островитянин. Книга для чтения на английском языке

And when the fingers touched him, his teeth closed upon them. Next, he was clouted by the black’s free hand with such force as to tear his clenched teeth down the fingers through skin and flesh until the fingers went clear.

Raging like a tiny fiend, Jerry found himself picked up by the neck, half-throttled, and flung through the air. And while flying through the air, he continued to squall his rage. He fell into the sea and went under[102], gulping a mouthful of salt water into his lungs, and came up strangling but swimming. Swimming was one of the things he did not have to think about. He had never had to learn to swim, any more than he had had to learn to breathe. In fact, he had been compelled to learn to walk; but he swam as a matter of course.

The wind screamed about him. Flying froth, driven on the wind’s breath, filled his mouth and nostrils and beat into his eyes, stinging and blinding him. In the struggle to breathe he, all unlearned in the ways of the sea, lifted his muzzle high in the air to get out of the suffocating welter. As a result, off the horizontal, the churning of his legs no longer sustained him, and he went down and under perpendicularly. Again he emerged, strangling with more salt water in his windpipe. This time, without reasoning it out, merely moving along the line of least resistance, which was to him the line of greatest comfort, he straightened out in the sea and continued so to swim as to remain straightened out.

Through the darkness, as the squall spent itself, came the slatting of the half-lowered mainsail[103], the shrill voices of the boat’s crew, a curse of Borckman’s, and, dominating all, Skipper’s voice, shouting:

“Grab the leech[104], you fella boys! Hang on! Drag down strong fella! Come in mainsheet two blocks! Jump, damn you, jump!”

Chapter VI

At recognition of Skipper’s voice, Jerry, floundering in the stiff and crisping sea that sprang up with the easement of the wind, yelped eagerly and yearningly, all his love for his new-found beloved eloquent in his throat. But quickly all sounds died away as the Arangi drifted from him. And then, in the loneliness of the dark, on the heaving breast of the sea that he recognized as one more of the eternal enemies, he began to whimper and cry plaintively like a lost child.

Further, by the dim, shadowy ways of intuition, he knew his weakness in that merciless sea with no heart of warmth, that threatened the unknowable thing, vaguely but terribly guessed, namely, death. As regarded himself, he did not comprehend death. He, who had never known the time when he was not alive, could not conceive of the time when he would cease to be alive.

Yet it was there, shouting its message of warning through every tissue cell, every nerve quickness and brain sensitivity of him – a totality of sensation that foreboded the ultimate catastrophe of life about which he knew nothing at all, but which, nevertheless, he felt to be the conclusive supreme disaster. Although he did not comprehend it, he apprehended it no less poignantly than do men who know and generalize far more deeply and widely than mere four-legged dogs.

As a man struggles in the throes of nightmare, so Jerry struggled in the vexed, salt-suffocating sea. And so he whimpered and cried, lost child, lost puppy-dog that he was, only half a year existent in the fair world sharp with joy and suffering. And he wanted Skipper. Skipper was a god.

* * *

On board the Arangi, relieved by the lowering of her mainsail, as the fierceness went out of the wind and the cloudburst of tropic rain began to fall, Van Horn and Borckman lurched toward each other in the blackness.

“A double squall,” said Van Horn. “Hit us to starboard and to port.[105]”

“Must a-split in half just before she hit us,” the mate concurred.

“And kept all the rain in the second half – ”

Van Horn broke off with an oath.

“Hey! What’s the matter along you fella boy?” he shouted to the man at the wheel.

For the ketch, under her spanker which had just then been flat-hauled, had come into the wind, emptying her after-sail and permitting her headsails to fill on the other tack. The Arangi was beginning to work back approximately over the course she had just traversed. And this meant that she was going back toward Jerry floundering in the sea. Thus, the balance, on which his life titubated, was inclined in his favour by the blunder of a black steersman.

Keeping the Arangi on the new tack, Van Horn set Borckman clearing the mess of ropes on deck, himself, squatting in the rain, undertaking to long-splice the tackle he had cut[106]. As the rain thinned, so that the crackle of it on deck became less noisy, he was attracted by a sound from out over the water. He suspended the work of his hands to listen, and, when he recognized Jerry’s wailing, sprang to his feet, galvanized into action.

“The pup’s overboard![107]” he shouted to Borckman. “Back your jib to wind’ard![108]”

He sprang aft, scattering a cluster of return boys right and left.

“Hey! You fella boat’s crew! Come in spanker sheet! Flatten her down good fella!”

He darted a look into the binnacle and took a hurried compass bearing of the sounds Jerry was making.

“Hard down your wheel!” he ordered the helmsman, then leaped to the wheel and put it down himself, repeating over and over aloud, “Nor’east by east a quarter, nor’east by east a quarter.”

Back and peering into the binnacle, he listened vainly for another wail from Jerry in the hope of verifying his first hasty bearing. But not long he waited. Despite the fact that by his manoeuvre the Arangi had been hove to[109], he knew that windage and sea-driftage would quickly send her away from the swimming puppy. He shouted Borckman to come aft and haul in the whaleboat, while he hurried below for his electric torch and a boat compass.

The ketch was so small that she was compelled to tow her one whaleboat astern on long double painters[110], and by the time the mate had it hauled in under the stern, Van Horn was back. He was undeterred by the barbed wire, lifting boy after boy of the boat’s crew over it and dropping them sprawling into the boat, following himself, as the last, by swinging over on the spanker boom, and calling his last instructions as the painters were cast off.

“Get a riding light on deck, Borckman. Keep her hove to. Don’t hoist the mainsail.[111] Clean up the decks and bend the watch tackle on the main boom.”

He took the steering-sweep and encouraged the rowers with: “Washee-washee, good fella, washee-washee!” – which is the bêche-de-mer for “row hard.”

As he steered, he kept flashing the torch on the boat compass so that he could keep headed northeast by east a quarter east. Then he remembered that the boat compass, on such course, deviated two whole points from the Arangi’s compass, and altered his own course accordingly.

Occasionally he bade the rowers cease, while he listened and called for Jerry. He had them row in circles, and work back and forth, up to windward and down to leeward[112], over the area of dark sea that he reasoned must contain the puppy.

“Now you fella boy listen ear belong you,” he said, toward the first. “Maybe one fella boy hear ’m pickaninny dog sing out, I give ’m that fella boy five fathom calico, two ten sticks tobacco.”

At the end of half an hour he was offering “Two ten fathoms calico and ten ten sticks tobacco” to the boy who first heard “pickaninny dog sing out.”

* * *

Jerry was in bad shape. Not accustomed to swimming, strangled by the salt water that lapped into his open mouth, he was getting loggy when first he chanced to see the flash of the captain’s torch. This, however, he did not connect with Skipper, and so took no more notice of it than he did of the first stars showing in the sky. It never entered his mind that it might be a star nor even that it might not be a star. He continued to wail and to strangle with more salt water. But when he at length heard Skipper’s voice he went immediately wild. He attempted to stand up and to rest his forepaws on Skipper’s voice coming out of the darkness, as he would have rested his forepaws on Skipper’s leg had he been near. The result was disastrous. Out of the horizontal, he sank down and under, coming up with a new spasm of strangling.

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Примечания

1

As regards reality – (разг.) Что же касается реализма

2

with nothing on – (разг.) голышом

3

the blackbirder – (уст.) судно, вербовавшее чернокожих рабочих

4

a-plenty – (уст.) в изобилии, в избытке

5

into the sternsheets – (мор.) на корму

6

Irish terrier – ирландский терьер, гладкошерстная порода собак золотисто-рыжего цвета, 18 дюймов в холке

7

By word and sound – (уст.) Одним словом

8

bent to the oars – (мор.) налегли на весла

9

’Ware niggers! – (разг.) Опасайся негров!

10

Still more. – (разг.) И это еще не все; мало того.

11

given him a delightful thrashing – (разг.) задал ему восхитительную трепку

12

Proper afinities – (разг.) Отличная порода

13

adding weight to his sure intuition that dire fate, he knew not what, was upon him – усиливая предчувствие того, что злая судьба – он не знал, какая – надвигается на него

14

without wince or whimper – (разг.) не пискнув и не поморщившись

15

willy-nilly – (разг.) поневоле; хочешь не хочешь

16

lazily resolved upon no course of action – (разг.) лениво отказывался от какого-либо действия

17

Out of the unknown – (уст.) Неведомо откуда

18

as a matter of course – (разг.) как дело само собой разумеющееся

19

Charon – (греч. миф.) перевозчик умерших через реки земного царства до врат Аида

20

Styx – (греч. миф.) Стикс, река в царстве мертвых

21

a fin-keel of bronze – (мор.) медный киль

22

the cross beams of her crown deck had not been weakened by deck-houses – (мор.) палубные надстройки не ослабляли подпалубных бимсов

23

your heart’d failed you at the last moment – (разг.) в последний момент у вас не хватит мужества

24

barrin’ – (разг.) не считая; за исключением

25

being salt-water men – (разг.) были хорошими моряками; знали морское дело

26

Carnegie – Эндрю Карнеги (1835–1919), американский бизнесмен, филантроп, мультимиллионер, занимался благотворительностью, на его деньги был построен Карнеги-Холл (огромный концертный комплекс в Нью-Йорке)

27

No fear – (разг.) Я и не боюсь

28

I’ve got their goat – (разг.) Козыри у меня на руках

29

can’t get the hang of it – (разг.) не могут понять, в чем тут дело

30

If aught happens you – (уст.) Если с вами что-нибудь случится

31

Rembrandt – Рембрандт ван Рейн (1606–1669), голландский живописец (портреты, религиозная и мифологическая тематика)

32

New Amsterdam – до английской колонизации эта территория была заселена голландскими поселенцами, которые называли ее Нью-Амстердам

33

Caruso – Энрике Карузо (1873–1921), итальянский певец

34

didn’t have anything on – (разг.) и в подметки не годился

35

Get him! Shake him down! Sick him! – Хватай его! Вали! Кусай его!

36

gust of the south-east trade – (мор.) порыв юго-восточного пассата

37

like a bolt from the blue – (разг.) как гром среди ясного неба

38

with a second crash of blocks on traveler – (мор.) раздался еще один треск блока на бугеле

39

to grapple with the huge unknown – (разг.) схватиться с чудовищным неизвестным

40

for the time being – (разг.) на какое-то время

41

the mainsail was ever swooping across from port tack to starboard tack and back again – грот то и дело перелетал с левого галса на правый и обратно

42

to starboard or to port, at the bow or over the stern – (мор.) кренился ли корабль направо или на левый борт, зарывался носом в волны или вода покрывала корму

43

had never voluntarily fought against odds – (разг.) никогда по своей воле не бились с превосходящими силами противника

44

never gave ground – (разг.) никогда не отступали (не сдавались)

45

You’re the goods – (сленг) Молодчина

46

I gave you enough this time – (разг.) на этот раз ты получил достаточно

47

the return boys – (зд.) рабочие, возвращающиеся домой

48

if they trespassed on the compound – (зд.) если они выходили за границу своей территории (на корабле)

49

four-score – (разг.) восемьдесят

50

sensed without a passing thought to it – (разг.) чувствовал, хотя и не задумывался над этим

51

ready to hand – (разг.) всегда под рукой (заряжены и готовы к бою)

52

from the Beyond – (зд.) из внешнего мира

53

went instantly wild – (разг.) тут же взбесился; немедленно пришел в бешенство

54

vainly trying to catch his footing – (разг.) тщетно пытаясь встать на ноги

55

I knock ’m seven bells outa that fella boy. – (мор. руг.) Я выбью из него семь склянок.

56

Small wonder – (уст.) Неудивительно; не стоит удивляться

57

treacherously attacked him in flank from ambuscade – (разг.) предательски напала на него сзади из засады

58

With righteous wrath – (разг.) В праведном гневе; со справедливым негодованием

59

There was no getting at the wild-dog – (разг.) Дикую собаку было никак не достать

60

received his share – (разг.) получил свою порцию еды

61

was beside himself with the joy – (разг.) был вне себя от радости

62

Gott fer dang – (нем. воскл.) Господи помилуй

63

the three-score and odd return boys – (зд.) более шестидесяти рабочих

64

made it a point to identify each one – (разг.) решил научиться по запаху отличать каждого

65

did not fight back – (разг.) даже не защищалась 55

66

parcel of trouble – (разг.) куча проблем (неприятностей)

67

intended to dine off of her – (разг.) собирались ею пообедать

68

to turn her over to the missionaries – (разг.) передать ее с рук на руки миссионерам

69

had been transparent from the first – (разг.) были ясными с самого начала

70

the wind that brought the message – (зд.) ветер, который донес запах земли

71

to turn loose – (зд.) стрелять

72

it makes me keep all my watches and half of his – (зд.) мне приходится нести свои вахты, да еще и половину за него

73

his noddle goes pinwheeling – (сленг) голова его идет кругом

74

in a dead calm – (мор.) в мертвый штиль

75

will never buy you anything – (разг.) до добра не доведет

76

his heart bore no malice – (разг.) не держал на сердце зла

77

was cock of the deck – (разг.) был героем палубы

78

he liked too well to hurt – (разг.) слишком любил, чтобы причинить боль

79

in the peace sign that is as ancient as the human hand – (разг.) жест примирения, такой же древний,как и рука человека

80

alternately rolled in calms and heeled and plunged ahead in squalls – (мор.) то затихало в штиле, то кренилось и ныряло под ударами ветра с дождем

81

The thing was indecent – (разг.) Это было просто неприлично (недопустимо)

82

took wings of flight – (разг.) взлетели в воздух

83

if he could succeed in fattening her – (разг.) если ему удастся ее откормить

84

essayed the ladder again – (мор.) снова полез вверх по трапу

85

needs must joyfully sniff him – (уст.) радостно обнюхал его

86

For all that – (разг.) Несмотря на то, что

87

in a vain effort – (разг.) в тщетной попытке

88

’tis a small matter at most – (разг.) дело совсем пустяковое

89

he’d have them out in a jiffy – (разг.) он мигом вытащит их

90

Is the one alive yet? – (разг.) Кто-нибудь живой?

91

Any nigger that’d hurt that pup – (разг.) Пусть какой-нибудь негр хоть тронет его

92

at a nine-knot clip – (разг.) со скоростью девять узлов в час (1 узел = 1852 м/час, единица скорости на море)

93

throw the halyards down on deck – (мор.) сбросьте фалы на палубу

94

to all intents and purposes – (разг.) на деле; по существу

95

Stand by main halyards! – (мор.) Быстро к грота-фалам!

96

in the starboard scuppers – (мор.) в ватервейсе у борта

97

Wind he go! – (искаж.) Ветер тут как тут!

98

was on his toes – (разг.) насторожился

99

the spanker smashed across overhead – (мор.) контрбизань пронеслась над головой

100

Throw off the turns! – (мор.) Отдать фалы!

101

that it boded ill – (разг.) это было дурное предзнаменование

102

went under – (разг.) пошел ко дну

103

the slatting of the half-lowered mainsail – (мор.) хлопанье полуспущенного грота

104

Grab the leech – (мор.) Хватай за ликтрос (мягкий трос, которым обшивается кромка паруса)

105

Hit us to starboard and to port. – (мор.) Ударил и с левого и с правого борта.

106

undertaking to long-splice the tackle he had cut – (мор.) стал сращивать снасть, которую вынужден был разрезать (во время шквала)

107

The pup’s overboard! – (мор.) Щенок за бортом!

108

Back your jib to wind’ard! – (мор.) Вынести кливер на ветер!

109

had been hove to – (мор.) стал двигаться назад

110

long double painters – (мор.) длинный двойной фалинь

111

Don’t hoist the mainsail. – (мор.) Грот не ставить!

112

up to windward and down to leeward – (мор.) шел по ветру и против ветра