章节正文
bore no likeness to the faces of men. The roan horse snorted
beneath them, and the rider caressed and soothed it and tied it
farther away.
Entering the house, he found the interior a wreck. He trod on
empty cartridges as he walked from room to room to reconnoiter
from the windows. Men had camped and slept everywhere, and on
the floor of one room he came upon stains unmistakable where
the wounded had been laid down.
Again outside, he led the horse around behind the barn and
invaded the orchard. A dozen trees were burdened with ripe
apples. He filled his pockets, eating while he picked. Then a
thought came to him, and he glanced at the sun, calculating the
time of his return to camp. He pulled off his shirt, tying the
sleeves and making a bag. This he proceeded to fill with
apples.
As he was about to mount his horse, the animal suddenly pricked
up its ears. The man, too, listened, and heard, faintly, the
thud of hoofs on soft earth. He crept to the corner of the barn
and peered out. A dozen mounted men, strung out loosely,
approaching from the opposite side of the clearing, were only a
matter of a hundred yards or so away. They rode on to the
house. Some dismounted, while others remained in the saddle as
an earnest that their stay would be short. They seemed to be
holding a council, for he could hear them talking excitedly in
the detested tongue of the alien invader. The time passed, but
they seemed unable to reach a decision. He put the carbine away
in its boot, mounted, and waited impatiently, balancing the
shirt of apples on the pommel.
He heard footsteps approaching, and drove his spurs so fiercely
into the roan as to force a surprised groan from the animal as
it leaped forward. At the comer of the barn he saw the
intruder, a mere boy of nineteen or twenty for all of his
uniform jump back to escape being run down. At the same moment
the roan swerved and its rider caught a glimpse of the aroused
men by the house. Some were springing from their horses, and he
could see the rifles going to their shoulders. He passed the
kitchen door and the dried corpses swinging in the shade,
compelling his foes to run around the front of the house. A
rifle cracked, and a second, but he was going fast, leaning
forward, low in the saddle, one hand clutching the shirt of
apples, the other guiding the horse.
The top bar of the fence was four feet high, but he knew his
roan and leaped it at full career to the accompaniment of
several scattered shots. Eight hundred yards straight away were
the woods, and the roan was covering the distance with mighty
strides. Every man was now firing. pumping their guns so
rapidly that he no longer heard individual shots. A bullet went
through his hat, but he was unaware, though he did know when
another tore through the apples on the pommel. And he winced
and ducked even lower when a third bullet, fired low, struck a
stone between his horse's legs and ricochetted off through the
air, buzzing and humming like some incredible insect.
The shots died down as the magazines were emptied, until,
quickly, there was no more shooting. The young man was elated.
Through that astonishing fusillade he had come unscathed. He
glanced back. Yes, they had emptied their magazines. He could
see several reloading. Others were running back behind the
house for their horses. As he looked, two already mounted, came
back into view around the comer, riding hard. And at the same
moment, he saw the man with the unmistakableginger beard kneel
down on the ground, level his gun, and coolly take his time for
the long shot.
The young man threw his spurs into the horse, crouched very
low, and swerved in his flight in order to distract the other's
aim. And still the shot did not come. With each jump of the
horse, the woods sprang nearer. They were only two hundred
yards away and still the shot was delayed.
And then he heard it, the last thing he was to hear, for he was
dead ere he hit the ground in the long crashing fall from the
saddle. And they, watching at the house, saw him fall, saw his
body bounce when it struck the earth, and saw the burst of
red-cheeked apples that rolled about him. They laughed at the
unexpected eruption of apples, and clapped their hands in
applause of the long shot by the man with the ginger beard.
UNDER THE DECK AWNINGS
"CAN any man--a gentleman, I mean--call a woman a pig?"
The little man flung this challenge forth to the whole group,
then leaned back in his deck chair, sipping lemonade with an
air commingled of certitude and watchful belligerence. Nobody
made answer. They were used to the little man and his sudden
passions and high elevations.
"I repeat, it was in my presence that he said a certain lady,
whom none of you knows, was a pig. He did not say swine. He
grossly said that she was a pig. And I hold that no man who is
a man could possibly make such a remark about any woman."
Dr. Dawson puffed stolidly at his black pipe. Matthews, with
knees hunched up and clasped by his arms, was absorbed in the
flight of a gunie. Sweet, finishing his Scotch and soda, was
questing about with his eyes for a deck steward.
"I ask you, Mr. Treloar, can any man call any woman a pig?"
Treloar, who happened to be sitting next to him, was startled
by the abruptness of the attack, and wondered what grounds he
had ever given the little man to believe that he could call a
woman a pig.
"I should say," he began his hesitant answer, "that
it--er--depends on the--er--the lady."
The little man was aghast.
"You mean . . .?" he quavered.
"That I have seen female humans who were as bad as pigs--and
worse."
There was a long pained silence. The little man seemed withered
by the coarse brutality of the reply. In his face was
unutterable hurt and woe.
"You have told of a man who made a not nice remark and you have
classified him," Treloar said in cold, even tones. "I shall now
tell you about a woman--I beg your pardon--a lady, and when I
have finished I shall ask you to classify her. Miss Caruthers I
shall call her, principally for the reason that it is not her
name. It was on a P. & 0. boat, and it occurred neither more
nor less than several years ago.
"Miss Caruthers was charming. No; that is not the word. She was
amazing. She was a young woman, and a lady. Her father was a
certain high official whose name, if I mentioned it, would be
immediately recognized by all of you. She was with her mother
and two maids at the time, going out to join the old gentleman
wherever you like to wish in the East.
"She, and pardon me for repeating, was amazing. It is the one
adequate word. Even the most minor adjectives applicable to her
are bound to be sheer superlatives. There was nothing she could
not do better than any woman and than most men. Sing,
play--bah!--as some rhetorician once said of old Nap,
competition fled from her. Swim! She could have made a fortune
and a name as a public performer. She was one of those rare
women who can strip off all the frills of dress, and in simple
swimming suit be more satisfying beautiful. Dress! She was an
artist.
"But her swimming. Physically, she was the perfect woman--you
know what I mean, not in the gross, muscular way of acrobats,
but in all the delicacy of line and fragility of frame and
texture. And combined with this, strength. How she could do it
was the marvel. You know the wonder of a woman's arm--the fore
arm, I mean; the sweet fading away from rounded biceps and hint
of muscle, down through small elbow and firm soft swell to the
wrist, small, unthinkably small and round and strong. This was
hers. And yet, to see her swimming the sharp quick English
overhand stroke, and getting somewhere with it, too, was--well,
I understand anatomy and athletics and such things, and yet it
was a mystery to me how she could do it.
"She could stay under water for two minutes. I have timed her.
No man on board, except Dennitson, could capture as many coins
as she with a single dive. On the forward main-deck was a big
canvas tank with six feet of sea-water. We used to toss small
coins into it. I have seen her dive from the bridge deck--no
mean feat in itself--into that six-feet of water, and fetch up
no less than forty-seven coins, scattered willy-nilly over the
whole bottom of the tank. Dennitson, a quiet young Englishman,
never exceeded her in this, though he made it a point always to
tie her score.
"She was a sea-woman, true. But she was a land-woman, a
horsewoman--a--she was the universal woman. To see her, all
softness of soft dress, surrounded by half a dozen eager men,
languidly careless of them all or flashing brightness and wit
on them and at them and through them, one would fancy she was
good for nothing else in the world. At such moments I have
compelled myself to remember her score of forty-seven coins
from the bottom of the swimming tank. But that was she, the
everlasting, wonder of a woman who did all things well.
"She fascinated every betrousered human around her. She had
me--and I don't mind confessing it--she bad me to heel along
with the rest. Young puppies and old gray dogs who ought to
have known better--oh, they all came up and crawled around her
skirts and whined and fawned when she whistled. They were all
guilty, from young Ardmore, a pink cherub of nineteen outward
bound for some clerkship in the Consular Service, to old
Captain Bentley, grizzled and sea-worn, and as emotional, to
look at, as a Chinese joss. There was a nice middle-aged chap,
Perkins, I believe, who forgot his wife was on board until Miss
Caruthers sent him to the right about and back where he
belonged.
"Men were wax in her hands. She melted them, or softly molded
them, or incinerated them, as she pleased. There wasn't a
steward, even, grand and remote as she was, who, at her
bidding, would have hesitated to souse the Old Man himself with
a plate of soup. You have all seen such women--a sort of
world's desire to all men. As a man-conqueror she was supreme.
She was a whip-lash, a sting and a flame, an electric spark.
Oh, believe me, at times there were flashes of will that
scorched through her beauty and seduction and smote a victim
into blank and shivering idiocy and fear.
"And don't fail to mark, in the light of what is to come, that
she was a prideful woman. Pride of race, pride of caste, pride
of sex, pride of power--she had it all, a pride strange and
wilful and terrible.
"She ran the ship, she ran the voyage, she ran everything, and
she ran Dennitson. That he had outdistanced the pack even the
least wise of us admitted. That she liked him, and that this
feeling was growing, there was not a doubt. I am certain that
she looked on him with kinder eyes than she had ever looked
with on man before. We still worshiped, and were always hanging
about waiting to be whistled up, though we knew that Dennitson
was laps and laps ahead of us. What might have happened we
shall never know, for we came to Colombo and something else
happened.
"You know Colombo, and how the native boys dive for coins in
the shark-infested bay. Of course, it is only among the ground
sharks and fish sharks that they venture. It is almost uncanny
the way they know sharks and can sense the presence of a real
killer--a tiger shark, for instance, or a gray nurse strayed up
from Australian waters. Let such a shark appear, and, long
before the passengers can guess, every mother's son of them is
out of the water in a wild scramble for safety.
beneath them, and the rider caressed and soothed it and tied it
farther away.
Entering the house, he found the interior a wreck. He trod on
empty cartridges as he walked from room to room to reconnoiter
from the windows. Men had camped and slept everywhere, and on
the floor of one room he came upon stains unmistakable where
the wounded had been laid down.
Again outside, he led the horse around behind the barn and
invaded the orchard. A dozen trees were burdened with ripe
apples. He filled his pockets, eating while he picked. Then a
thought came to him, and he glanced at the sun, calculating the
time of his return to camp. He pulled off his shirt, tying the
sleeves and making a bag. This he proceeded to fill with
apples.
As he was about to mount his horse, the animal suddenly pricked
up its ears. The man, too, listened, and heard, faintly, the
thud of hoofs on soft earth. He crept to the corner of the barn
and peered out. A dozen mounted men, strung out loosely,
approaching from the opposite side of the clearing, were only a
matter of a hundred yards or so away. They rode on to the
house. Some dismounted, while others remained in the saddle as
an earnest that their stay would be short. They seemed to be
holding a council, for he could hear them talking excitedly in
the detested tongue of the alien invader. The time passed, but
they seemed unable to reach a decision. He put the carbine away
in its boot, mounted, and waited impatiently, balancing the
shirt of apples on the pommel.
He heard footsteps approaching, and drove his spurs so fiercely
into the roan as to force a surprised groan from the animal as
it leaped forward. At the comer of the barn he saw the
intruder, a mere boy of nineteen or twenty for all of his
uniform jump back to escape being run down. At the same moment
the roan swerved and its rider caught a glimpse of the aroused
men by the house. Some were springing from their horses, and he
could see the rifles going to their shoulders. He passed the
kitchen door and the dried corpses swinging in the shade,
compelling his foes to run around the front of the house. A
rifle cracked, and a second, but he was going fast, leaning
forward, low in the saddle, one hand clutching the shirt of
apples, the other guiding the horse.
The top bar of the fence was four feet high, but he knew his
roan and leaped it at full career to the accompaniment of
several scattered shots. Eight hundred yards straight away were
the woods, and the roan was covering the distance with mighty
strides. Every man was now firing. pumping their guns so
rapidly that he no longer heard individual shots. A bullet went
through his hat, but he was unaware, though he did know when
another tore through the apples on the pommel. And he winced
and ducked even lower when a third bullet, fired low, struck a
stone between his horse's legs and ricochetted off through the
air, buzzing and humming like some incredible insect.
The shots died down as the magazines were emptied, until,
quickly, there was no more shooting. The young man was elated.
Through that astonishing fusillade he had come unscathed. He
glanced back. Yes, they had emptied their magazines. He could
see several reloading. Others were running back behind the
house for their horses. As he looked, two already mounted, came
back into view around the comer, riding hard. And at the same
moment, he saw the man with the unmistakableginger beard kneel
down on the ground, level his gun, and coolly take his time for
the long shot.
The young man threw his spurs into the horse, crouched very
low, and swerved in his flight in order to distract the other's
aim. And still the shot did not come. With each jump of the
horse, the woods sprang nearer. They were only two hundred
yards away and still the shot was delayed.
And then he heard it, the last thing he was to hear, for he was
dead ere he hit the ground in the long crashing fall from the
saddle. And they, watching at the house, saw him fall, saw his
body bounce when it struck the earth, and saw the burst of
red-cheeked apples that rolled about him. They laughed at the
unexpected eruption of apples, and clapped their hands in
applause of the long shot by the man with the ginger beard.
UNDER THE DECK AWNINGS
"CAN any man--a gentleman, I mean--call a woman a pig?"
The little man flung this challenge forth to the whole group,
then leaned back in his deck chair, sipping lemonade with an
air commingled of certitude and watchful belligerence. Nobody
made answer. They were used to the little man and his sudden
passions and high elevations.
"I repeat, it was in my presence that he said a certain lady,
whom none of you knows, was a pig. He did not say swine. He
grossly said that she was a pig. And I hold that no man who is
a man could possibly make such a remark about any woman."
Dr. Dawson puffed stolidly at his black pipe. Matthews, with
knees hunched up and clasped by his arms, was absorbed in the
flight of a gunie. Sweet, finishing his Scotch and soda, was
questing about with his eyes for a deck steward.
"I ask you, Mr. Treloar, can any man call any woman a pig?"
Treloar, who happened to be sitting next to him, was startled
by the abruptness of the attack, and wondered what grounds he
had ever given the little man to believe that he could call a
woman a pig.
"I should say," he began his hesitant answer, "that
it--er--depends on the--er--the lady."
The little man was aghast.
"You mean . . .?" he quavered.
"That I have seen female humans who were as bad as pigs--and
worse."
There was a long pained silence. The little man seemed withered
by the coarse brutality of the reply. In his face was
unutterable hurt and woe.
"You have told of a man who made a not nice remark and you have
classified him," Treloar said in cold, even tones. "I shall now
tell you about a woman--I beg your pardon--a lady, and when I
have finished I shall ask you to classify her. Miss Caruthers I
shall call her, principally for the reason that it is not her
name. It was on a P. & 0. boat, and it occurred neither more
nor less than several years ago.
"Miss Caruthers was charming. No; that is not the word. She was
amazing. She was a young woman, and a lady. Her father was a
certain high official whose name, if I mentioned it, would be
immediately recognized by all of you. She was with her mother
and two maids at the time, going out to join the old gentleman
wherever you like to wish in the East.
"She, and pardon me for repeating, was amazing. It is the one
adequate word. Even the most minor adjectives applicable to her
are bound to be sheer superlatives. There was nothing she could
not do better than any woman and than most men. Sing,
play--bah!--as some rhetorician once said of old Nap,
competition fled from her. Swim! She could have made a fortune
and a name as a public performer. She was one of those rare
women who can strip off all the frills of dress, and in simple
swimming suit be more satisfying beautiful. Dress! She was an
artist.
"But her swimming. Physically, she was the perfect woman--you
know what I mean, not in the gross, muscular way of acrobats,
but in all the delicacy of line and fragility of frame and
texture. And combined with this, strength. How she could do it
was the marvel. You know the wonder of a woman's arm--the fore
arm, I mean; the sweet fading away from rounded biceps and hint
of muscle, down through small elbow and firm soft swell to the
wrist, small, unthinkably small and round and strong. This was
hers. And yet, to see her swimming the sharp quick English
overhand stroke, and getting somewhere with it, too, was--well,
I understand anatomy and athletics and such things, and yet it
was a mystery to me how she could do it.
"She could stay under water for two minutes. I have timed her.
No man on board, except Dennitson, could capture as many coins
as she with a single dive. On the forward main-deck was a big
canvas tank with six feet of sea-water. We used to toss small
coins into it. I have seen her dive from the bridge deck--no
mean feat in itself--into that six-feet of water, and fetch up
no less than forty-seven coins, scattered willy-nilly over the
whole bottom of the tank. Dennitson, a quiet young Englishman,
never exceeded her in this, though he made it a point always to
tie her score.
"She was a sea-woman, true. But she was a land-woman, a
horsewoman--a--she was the universal woman. To see her, all
softness of soft dress, surrounded by half a dozen eager men,
languidly careless of them all or flashing brightness and wit
on them and at them and through them, one would fancy she was
good for nothing else in the world. At such moments I have
compelled myself to remember her score of forty-seven coins
from the bottom of the swimming tank. But that was she, the
everlasting, wonder of a woman who did all things well.
"She fascinated every betrousered human around her. She had
me--and I don't mind confessing it--she bad me to heel along
with the rest. Young puppies and old gray dogs who ought to
have known better--oh, they all came up and crawled around her
skirts and whined and fawned when she whistled. They were all
guilty, from young Ardmore, a pink cherub of nineteen outward
bound for some clerkship in the Consular Service, to old
Captain Bentley, grizzled and sea-worn, and as emotional, to
look at, as a Chinese joss. There was a nice middle-aged chap,
Perkins, I believe, who forgot his wife was on board until Miss
Caruthers sent him to the right about and back where he
belonged.
"Men were wax in her hands. She melted them, or softly molded
them, or incinerated them, as she pleased. There wasn't a
steward, even, grand and remote as she was, who, at her
bidding, would have hesitated to souse the Old Man himself with
a plate of soup. You have all seen such women--a sort of
world's desire to all men. As a man-conqueror she was supreme.
She was a whip-lash, a sting and a flame, an electric spark.
Oh, believe me, at times there were flashes of will that
scorched through her beauty and seduction and smote a victim
into blank and shivering idiocy and fear.
"And don't fail to mark, in the light of what is to come, that
she was a prideful woman. Pride of race, pride of caste, pride
of sex, pride of power--she had it all, a pride strange and
wilful and terrible.
"She ran the ship, she ran the voyage, she ran everything, and
she ran Dennitson. That he had outdistanced the pack even the
least wise of us admitted. That she liked him, and that this
feeling was growing, there was not a doubt. I am certain that
she looked on him with kinder eyes than she had ever looked
with on man before. We still worshiped, and were always hanging
about waiting to be whistled up, though we knew that Dennitson
was laps and laps ahead of us. What might have happened we
shall never know, for we came to Colombo and something else
happened.
"You know Colombo, and how the native boys dive for coins in
the shark-infested bay. Of course, it is only among the ground
sharks and fish sharks that they venture. It is almost uncanny
the way they know sharks and can sense the presence of a real
killer--a tiger shark, for instance, or a gray nurse strayed up
from Australian waters. Let such a shark appear, and, long
before the passengers can guess, every mother's son of them is
out of the water in a wild scramble for safety.
- interior [in´tiəriə]
n.&a.内部地(的) (初中英语单词) - orchard [´ɔ:tʃəd] n.果园 (初中英语单词)
- saddle [´sædl] n.鞍子 v.装鞍(于) (初中英语单词)
- earnest [´ə:nist] a.认真的 n.认真；诚恳 (初中英语单词)
- excitedly [ik´saitidli] ad.兴奋地，激动地 (初中英语单词)
- invader [in´veidə] n.入侵者；侵袭物 (初中英语单词)
- unable [ʌn´eibəl] a.不能的；无能为力的 (初中英语单词)
- glimpse [glimps] n.&v.瞥见 (初中英语单词)
- career [kə´riə] n.经历；生涯；职业 (初中英语单词)
- bullet [´bulit] n.子弹 (初中英语单词)
- running [´rʌniŋ] a.奔跑的；流动的 (初中英语单词)
- flight [flait] n.逃走；飞行；班机 (初中英语单词)
- sprang [spræŋ] spring 的过去式 (初中英语单词)
- challenge [´tʃælindʒ] n.&vt.向....挑战；怀疑 (初中英语单词)
- female [´fi:meil] a.女(性)的 n.女人 (初中英语单词)
- coarse [kɔ:s] a.粗(糙)的；粗鲁的 (初中英语单词)
- charming [´tʃɑ:miŋ] a.可爱的；极好的 (初中英语单词)
- pardon [´pɑ:dən] n.&vt.原谅；饶恕；赦免 (初中英语单词)
- amazing [ə´meiziŋ] a.惊人的；惊奇的 (初中英语单词)
- marvel [´mɑ:vəl] n.令人惊异的事；奇迹 (初中英语单词)
- muscle [´mʌsəl] n.肌肉；体力；力量 (初中英语单词)
- mystery [´mistəri] n.神秘；秘密；故弄玄虚 (初中英语单词)
- capture [´kæptʃə] vt.&n.捕获；俘获；夺取 (初中英语单词)
- universal [,ju:ni´və:səl] a.宇宙的；普遍的 (初中英语单词)
- careless [´keəlis] a.粗心的；草率的 (初中英语单词)
- emotional [i´məuʃənəl] a.易动感情的；情感的 (初中英语单词)
- softly [´sɔftli] ad.软化地；柔和地 (初中英语单词)
- remote [ri´məut] a.遥远的；偏僻的 (初中英语单词)
- voyage [´vɔi-idʒ] n.&vi.航海；航程；旅行 (初中英语单词)
- waiting [´weitiŋ] n.等候；伺候 (初中英语单词)
- venture [´ventʃə] n.投机 v.冒险；敢于 (初中英语单词)
- instance [´instəns] n.例子，实例，例证 (初中英语单词)
- likeness [´laiknis] n.相似；肖像；外表 (高中英语单词)
- faintly [´feintli] ad.微弱地，软弱无力的 (高中英语单词)
- incredible [in´kredəbəl] a.不能相信的；惊人的 (高中英语单词)
- astonishing [əs´tɔniʃiŋ] a.令人惊讶的 (高中英语单词)
- ginger [´dʒindʒə] n.姜；精神，元气 (高中英语单词)
- distract [di´strækt] vt.使分心 (高中英语单词)
- bounce [bauns] v.&n.(使)反弹；拍 (高中英语单词)
- scotch [skɔtʃ] vt.&n.刻痕(于)；划伤 (高中英语单词)
- principally [´prinsəpli] ad.主要地；大体上 (高中英语单词)
- muscular [´mʌskjulə] a.肌肉的；强有力的 (高中英语单词)
- delicacy [´delikəsi] n.精美；娇弱，微妙 (高中英语单词)
- brightness [´braitnis] n.光明；快乐 (高中英语单词)
- scramble [´skræmbəl] v.&n.爬；争夺；炒(蛋) (高中英语单词)
- clearing [´kliəriŋ] n.(森林中的)空旷地 (英语四级单词)
- impatiently [im´peiʃəntli] ad.不耐烦地，急躁地 (英语四级单词)
- accompaniment [ə´kʌmpənimənt] n.伴随物；伴奏(唱) (英语四级单词)
- unaware [,ʌnə´weə] a.不知道的；不觉察的 (英语四级单词)
- coolly [´ku:li] ad.冷(静地)，沉着地 (英语四级单词)
- lemonade [,lemə´neid] n.柠檬水 (英语四级单词)
- watchful [´wɔtʃfəl] a.注意的；戒备的 (英语四级单词)
- classify [´klæsifai] vt.把...分类(归类) (英语四级单词)
- physically [´fizikəli] ad.按照自然规律 (英语四级单词)
- anatomy [ə´nætəmi] n.解剖(学) (英语四级单词)
- athletics [æθ´letiks] n.体育(运动)；竞技 (英语四级单词)
- bridge [bridʒ] n.桥(梁)；鼻梁；桥牌 (英语四级单词)
- unmistakable [,ʌnmi´steikəbəl] a.明显的；错不了的 (英语六级单词)
- cracked [krækt] a.有裂缝的；碎的；粗哑 (英语六级单词)
- eruption [i´rʌpʃən] n.喷发；出疹；出牙 (英语六级单词)
- applicable [´æplikəbəl] a.合适的；适用的 (英语六级单词)
- performer [pə´fɔ:mə] n.执行者；表演者 (英语六级单词)
- cherub [´tʃerəb] n.小天使 (英语六级单词)
- middle-aged [´midl´eidʒid] a.中年的 (英语六级单词)
文章标签:名著
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