Told in the East, Talbot Mundy [crime books to read .txt] 📗

The Puncher leaped, as all destroyers do the second day they are loosed. She sliced through the storm straight for the coral beach beyond the bar, shaking her graceful shoulders free of the sticky spray—reeling, rolling, thugging, kicking, bucking through the welter to where quiet water waited and the ever-lasting, utterly unrighteous stink of sun-baked Arab beaches. As each tremendous breaker thundered on her stern each time she lifted to the underswell, the pilot vowed that she had struck, rolling his eyes and calling two different deities to witness that none of it was any fault of his.

“Thar's no water, sah—no water, Captain, sah—not one drop! You've piled up you-ah ship! Ah told you so; Ah said—”

“By the deep—four!”

“And a half-four!”

“By the mark—five!”

The Puncher was across the bar, gliding through muddy water on an even keel and giving the lie direct to him whose fee was ten pounds English. The pilot drew a talisman of some kind from underneath the least torn portion of his shirt, and to the commander's amazement kissed it. It is not often that a woolly headed, or any other, native of the East kisses either folk or things. But the commander was too busy at the moment to ask questions.

“Have your starboard anchor ready!” he commanded, making mental notes.

“Ready, sir!”

The glittering, wet, wind-blown beach and the little estuary slid by like a painted panorama smelling of all the evil in the world as the Puncher eased her helm a time or two seeking a comfortable berth with Joe Byng's chanted aid.

“Let go twenty fathoms!”

The pilot sighed relief as the starboard anchor splashed into the water and the cable roared after it through the hawse pipe.

“What nationality are you?” asked the commander, watching the Puncher swing and gaging distances, but sparing one eye now for his unwelcome but official guest.

“Me, sah?”

“Yes, you.”

The pilot looked anywhere but at his questioner, and a picture passed before the commander's eyes—a memory, perhaps, of something he had read about at school—of Christians in Nero's day being asked what their religion was.

“Are you afraid to tell me?” he asked, softening his voice to a kinder tone as he remembered that God did not make all men Englishmen, and turning just in time to cause Crothers to withdraw his right leg.

The pilot's toes were, after all, not destined to be trodden on just then.

“No, sah, Ah'm not afraid.”

“What are you, then?”

“Ah'm—”

“Well? What?”

“Ah'm English!”

“What?”

“Captain, sah, Ah'm English!”

“Oh! Are you? Um-m-m! Mr. White, give this man his ten pounds, will you? And get his receipt for it.”

That appeared to end matters, so far as the commander was concerned; official dignity forbade any further interest. But it was not so very long since Mr. White was senior midshipman, and it takes a man until he is admiral of the fleet to unlearn all he knew then and forget the curiosity of those days.

“Now, I should have thought you were a Scotchman,” he suggested without smiling, studying the salt-encrusted wrinkles on the ebony face. “You like whisky?”

“Yes, sah—positively, sah! Yes, Captain, sah—Ah do!”

Mr. White sent for whisky and poured out a stiff four fingers, to the awful disgust of Curley Crothers, who saw the whole transaction. The pilot consumed it so instantly that there seemed never to have been any in the glass.

“I suppose your name's Macnab—or Macphairson—which? Sign here, please.”

The pilot took the proffered pen in unaccustomed fingers and made a crisscross scrawl, adorned with thirteen blots. The pen nib broke under the strain, and he handed it back with an air of confidential remonstrance.

“That thing's no mo-ah good,” he volunteered.

“So I see. Now tell me your name in full, so that I can write it next to the mark. It's a wonder of a mark! Mac—what's the rest of it?”

“Hassan Ah.”

“Machassan?”

“No, sah. Hassan Ah.”

“And you're English?”

“Yes, sah.”

“With that name?”

“Mah name makes no diffunts, sah. Ah'm English.”

“Well—here's your money. Cutter away, there! Put the pilot and his crew ashore! Sorry about your boat, pilot, but it couldn't be helped.”

“Makes me believe that I'm a nigger!” muttered Curley Crothers, not yet released from duty on the bridge.

“First time I ever wished I was a Dutchman!” swore Joe Byng, coiling up his sounding line.

Ten minutes later the cutter's captain swung the boat's stern in shore when he judged that he was reasonably near enough and too far in for sharks. He had his orders to put the pilot and his crew ashore, but the means had not been too exactly specified.

“Get out and swim for it, you bally Englishman!” he ordered, using a boat-hook on the nearest one to make his meaning clear.

One by one they jumped for it, the pilot going last. He plainly did not understand the point of view.

“Ah'm English!” he expostulated. “Lissen he-ah, Ah'm English! Damwell English!”

“All right; let's see you swim, English!” jeered the cutter's captain, and the pilot took the water with a splash.

“Ah su-ah am English!” he vowed, as he swam for the shore, and he stood by the sea's edge repeating his assertion with a leathery pair of lungs until the cutter had rowed out of ear-shot.

“English, is he?” said Joe Byng to Curley Crothers in the fo'castle, not twenty minutes later. “I'd show him, if I had him in here for twenty minutes!”

“That fellow's interested me,” said Crothers. “He's got me thinking. I vote we investigate him.”

“How?”

“Ashore, fathead.”

“There'll be no shore leave.”

“No? You left off being wet nurse to the dawg?” “I brush him, mornin's; if that's what you mean.”