"Conrad, Josph - Youth" - читать интересную книгу автора (Conrad Joseph)

dare say he was right. It seems to me I knew very little
then, and I know not much more now; but I cherish a
hate for that Jermyn to this day.

"We were a week working up as far as Yarmouth
Roads, and then we got into a gale--the famous October
gale of twenty-two years ago. It was wind, lightning,
sleet, snow, and a terrific sea. We were flying light, and
you may imagine how bad it was when I tell you we had
smashed bulwarks and a flooded deck. On the second
night she shifted her ballast into the lee bow, and by
that time we had been blown off somewhere on the Dogger
Bank. There was nothing for it but go below with
shovels and try to right her, and there we were in that
vast hold, gloomy like a cavern, the tallow dips stuck
and flickering on the beams, the gale howling above, the
ship tossing about like mad on her side; there we all
were, Jermyn, the captain, everyone, hardly able to keep
our feet, engaged on that gravedigger's work, and try-
ing to toss shovelfuls of wet sand up to windward. At
every tumble of the ship you could see vaguely in the
dim light men falling down with a great flourish of shov-
els. One of the ship's boys (we had two), impressed by
the weirdness of the scene, wept as if his heart would
break. We could hear him blubbering somewhere in the
shadows.

"On the third day the gale died out, and by-and-by a
north-country tug picked us up. We took sixteen days
in all to get from London to the Tyne! When we got
into dock we had lost our turn for loading, and they
hauled us off to a tier where we remained for a month.
Mrs. Beard (the captain's name was Beard) came from
Colchester to see the old man. She lived on board. The
crew of runners had left, and there remained only the
officers, one boy, and the steward, a mulatto who an-
swered to the name of Abraham. Mrs. Beard was an old
woman, with a race all wrinkled and ruddy like a winter
apple, and the figure of a young girl. She caught sight
of me once, sewing on a button, and insisted on having
my shirts to repair. This was something different from
the captains' wives I had known on board crack clippers.
When I brought her the shirts, she said: 'And the
socks? They want mending, I am sure, and John's--
Captain Beard's--things are all in order now. I would
be glad of something to do.' Bless the old woman. She
overhauled my outfit for me, and meantime I read for the
first time 'Sartor Resartus' and Burnaby's 'Ride to
Khiva.' I didn't understand much of the first then;
but I remember I preferred the soldier to the philosopher