"Conrad, Joseph - The End Of The Tether" - читать интересную книгу автора (Conrad Joseph)

had established a white fixed light on the north end (with
a red danger sector over the Condor Reef), but most of
them would have been extremely surprised to hear that
a flesh-and-blood Whalley still existed--an old man
going about the world trying to pick up a cargo here
and there for his little bark.

And everywhere it was the same. Departed the men
who would have nodded appreciatively at the mention
of his name, and would have thought themselves bound
in honor to do something for Dare-devil Harry Whalley.
Departed the opportunities which he would have known
how to seize; and gone with them the white-winged flock
of clippers that lived in the boisterous uncertain life of
the winds, skimming big fortunes out of the foam of
the sea. In a world that pared down the profits to an
irreducible minimum, in a world that was able to count
its disengaged tonnage twice over every day, and in
which lean charters were snapped up by cable three
months in advance, there were no chances of fortune for
an individual wandering haphazard with a little bark
--hardly indeed any room to exist.

He found it more difficult from year to year. He suf-
fered greatly from the smallness of remittances he was
able to send his daughter. Meantime he had given up
good cigars, and even in the matter of inferior cheroots
limited himself to six a day. He never told her of his
difficulties, and she never enlarged upon her struggle
to live. Their confidence in each other needed no ex-
planations, and their perfect understanding endured
without protestations of gratitude or regret. He would
have been shocked if she had taken it into her head to
thank him in so many words, but he found it perfectly
natural that she should tell him she needed two hundred
pounds.

He had come in with the Fair Maid in ballast to look
for a freight in the Sofala's port of registry, and her
letter met him there. Its tenor was that it was no use
mincing matters. Her only resource was in opening a
boarding-house, for which the prospects, she judged,
were good. Good enough, at any rate, to make her tell
him frankly that with two hundred pounds she could
make a start. He had torn the envelope open, hastily,
on deck, where it was handed to him by the ship-
chandler's runner, who had brought his mail at the mo-
ment of anchoring. For the second time in his life he
was appalled, and remained stock-still at the cabin door
with the paper trembling between his fingers. Open a