The Blue Lagoon / Голубая лагуна. Генри де Вэр Стэкпул

>Says the Shan van vaught.”

      He was dressed in a striped shirt, rough trousers and a jacket—green from the influence of sun and salt. A typical old shell-back, round-shouldered, hook-fingered like a crab.

      His face was like a moon, red through tropical mists; and as he played it wore an expression of attention as though the fiddle were telling him marvellous tales.

      “Left-handed Pat,” was his nickname; not because he was left-handed, but simply because everything he did he did wrong—or nearly so.

      He was a Celt[3], and all the salt seas that had flowed between him and Connaught[4] these forty years and more had not washed the Celtic element from his blood, nor the belief in fairies from his soul. The Celtic nature is a fast dye[5], and Mr Button’s nature was such that though he had got drunk in most ports of the world, though he had sailed with Yankee captains and been man-handled by Yankee mates, he still carried his fairies about with him.

      Nearly over the musician’s head swung a hammock from which hung a leg. The swinging kerosene lamp cast its light forward, lighting here a naked foot hanging over the side of a bunk, here a face from which stuck a pipe, here a breast covered with dark hair, here an arm tattooed.

      It was in the days when the cockpit of the Northumberland [6] had a full company: a crowd of men who were farm labourers and grazed pigs in Ohio[7] three months back, old seasoned sailors like Paddy Button—a mixture of the best and the worst of the earth, such as you find nowhere else in so small a space as in a ship’s cockpit.

      The Northumberland had experienced a terrible rounding of the Horn[8]. Bound from New Orleans to ’Frisco[9] she had spent thirty days battling with headwinds and storms, and just now, at the moment of this story, she was locked in a calm, south of the line.

      Mr Button finished his tune and drew his right coat sleeve across his forehead[10]. Then he took out a sooty pipe, filled it with tobacco, and lit it.

      “Pawthrick,” drawled a voice from the hammock above, from which hung down the leg, “what vas you singing ter night ’bout a lip?”

      “A which lip?” asked Mr Button, cocking his eye up at the bottom of the hammock while he held the match to his pipe.

      “It vas about a green thing,” came a sleepy Dutch voice from a bunk.

      “Oh, a Leprachaun[11] you mean. Sure, me mother’s sister had one down in Connaught.”

      “Vat vas it like?” asked the dreamy Dutch voice.

      “Like? Sure, it was like a Leprachaun; and what else would it be like?”

      “What like vas that?” persisted the voice.

      “It was like a little man no bigger than a big forked raddish, an’ as green as a cabbidge. Me a’nt had one in her house down in Connaught in the ould days. O, the ould days, the ould days! Now, you may b’lave me or b’lave me not, but you could have put him in your pocket, and the grass-green head of him wouldn’t more than’v stuck out. She kept him in a cupboard, and out of the cupboard he’d pop if it was a crack open, an’ into the milk pans he’d be, or under the beds, or pullin’ the stool from under you. He’d chase the pig till it’d be all ribs like an ould umbrilla with the fright; he’d spoil the eggs so the chickens comin’ out wid two heads on them, an’ twinty-seven legs. And you’d start to chase him, an’ then away he’d go, you behint him, till you’d landed in a ditch, an’ he’d be back in the cupboard.”

      “He was a Troll,” murmured the Dutch voice.

      “I’m tellin’ you he was a Leprachaun, and there’s no knowin’ what he’d be up to[12]. He’d pull the cabbidge, maybe, out of the pot boilin’ on the fire and hit you in the face with it; and thin, maybe, you’d hold out your fist to him, and he’d put a goulden soverin in it.”

      “Wisht he was here!” murmured a voice from a bunk near Pat.

      “Pawthrick,” drawled the voice from the hammock above, “what’d you do first if you found y’self with twenty pound in your pocket?”

      “What’s the use of askin’ me?” replied Mr Button. “What’s the use of twenty pound to a sayman at say[13], where the grog’s all wather an’ the beef’s all horse? Gimme it ashore, an’ you’d see what I’d do wid it!”

      “I guess the nearest grog-shop keeper wouldn’t see you comin’ for dust[14],” said a voice from Ohio.

      “He would not,” said Mr Button; “nor you afther me. Be damned[15] to the grog and thim that sells it!”

      “It’s all darned easy to talk,[16]” said Ohio. “You curse the grog at sea when you can’t get it; set you ashore, and you’re bung full[17].”

      “I likes me dhrunk,” said Mr Button, “I’m free to admit; an’ I’m the divil when it’s in me, and it’ll be the end of me yet, or me ould mother was a liar. ‘Pat,’ she says, ‘storms you may escape, an’ wimmen you may escape, but the potheen ’ill have you[18].’ Forty year ago—forty year ago!”

      “Well,” said Ohio, “it hasn’t had you yet.”

      “No,” replied Mr Button, “but it will.”

      Chapter II

      Under the Stars

      It was a wonderful night up on deck, filled with all the beauty of starlight and a tropic calm.

      The Pacific slept; a ripple lifted the Northumberland on its little waves; while overhead, near the arch of the Milky Way[19], hung the Southern Cross[20].

      Stars in the sky, stars in the sea, stars by the million and the million; so many burning lamps filled the mind with the idea of a big and populous city—yet from all that living beauty not a sound.

      Down in the cabin—or saloon, as it was called—were seated the three passengers of the ship; one reading at the table, two playing on the floor.

      The man at the table, Arthur Lestrange, was seated with his large, deep-sunken eyes fixed on a book. He was most evidently in consumption[21], and a long sea voyage was, indeed, his last remedy.

      Emmeline Lestrange, his little niece—eight years of age, with thoughts of her own,—sat in a corner nursing something in her arms, and rocking herself to the tune of her own thoughts.

      Dick, Lestrange’s little son, eight and a bit, was somewhere under the table. They were Bostonians, bound for San Francisco, or rather for the sun and beauty of Los Angeles, where Lestrange had bought a small estate, hoping there to enjoy the life renewed by the long sea voyage.

      As he sat reading, the cabin door opened, and appeared a female form. This was Mrs Stannard, the stewardess, and Mrs Stannard meant bedtime.

      “Dicky,” said Mr Lestrange, closing his book, and raising the table-cloth a few inches, “bedtime.”

      “Oh, not yet, daddy!” came a sleepy voice from under the table; “I ain’t ready. I dunno want to go to bed!”

      Mrs Stannard, who knew her work, had stooped under the table, seized him by the foot, and pulled him out kicking and fighting all at the same time.

      As for Emmeline, she, having glanced up and recognised the inevitable, rose to her feet, and, holding the ugly rag-doll she had been nursing,

3

кельт, ирландец

4

Коннаут – провинция на западе Ирландии.

5

У него была крепкая кельтская закалка

6

Название корабля и северо-восточное графство Англии.

7

Огайо – американский штат.

8

Мыс Горн – южная оконечность Африки.

9

Направляясь из Нового Орлеана в Сан-Франциско

10

и вытер лоб правым рукавом

11

Лепрекон – гном, персонаж ирландского фольклора; обычно изображается одетым во всё зелёное.

12

и никто не знал, что он ещё затеет

13

seaman at sea – моряку в море

14

Думаю, владелец ближайшего салуна не упустит случая выпотрошить тебя до последнего гроша

15

Будь проклят

16

Легко, чёрт возьми, говорить

17

ты надираешься как свинья

18

самогон тебя погубит

19

Млечный Путь – галактика.

20

Южный Крест – созвездие южного полушария.

21

У него явно была чахотка