"Innes, Hammond - The Killer Mine" - читать интересную книгу автора (Innes Hammond)

And then something hit me. A great explosion of pain burst at the foot of my skull. For an instant I saw the wheelhouse clear through the splitting agony of my eyeballs. My arms sagged beneath Mulligan's weight and his face came close to mine. Then my legs seemed to melt under me and everything was as black as hell as I crumpled up.

Next thing I knew was there was water on my face. It was cold and salt. I was going under again. There was a swimming blackness all about me. I struggled, thrusting upwards with my arms and legs. Again the sting of water on my face and the cold of the night air. I breathed in a great gulp that hurt my lungs. The darkness was shot with flame and then I was sinking again. This time I didn't struggle. I let the suffocating blackness steal over me. It was such a restful way to go. The water was cool and still as I sank. But the urge to live rose in me and I began to struggle upward again. My hands reached out, clutched and broke their nails against something solid. I grasped hold of it and fought my way back to consciousness. It was wood -- a wooden board. It lifted slightly and then clamped down, pinching my fingers.

"E's comin' r'and, skipper.' The voice was right above me. It was Shorty.

'He's a skull on him like a rhinoceros,' Mulligan's voice replied. 'Ye hit him hard enough to split it open, yet he's no bin oot more'n fifteen minutes.'

I opened my eyes. It was dark, but I could see the darker outline of a pair of knees hunched against the stars. Then I closed my eyes again. The pain was unbearable. It was as though a great lump of lead had got loose inside my skull and was being pitched around by the movement of the sea. But it didn't hurt me to listen and my ears told me all I wanted to know. Waves were slopping at the gunnels of the boat and there was a steady creak of the rowlocks as the oars swung in and out. I was being rowed to the shore. The bow pitched violently and smacked into a small wave that slopped water over on to my face. I struggled up to my elbow.

'Ye'd best lie still,' said Mulligan in his phoney Scots. 'If ye don't Ah'll gi' ye anither crack on the head wi' the butt end o' me pistol.' His face was so close to me as he bent down that I could smell the reek of cognac on his breath.

'Okay, I'll keep still,' I breathed. My voice sounded faint and far away. I relaxed against the gunnel, the nerves of my whole body racked and wearied by the hammering pain in my head. A slight wind had got up, and over Shorty's rhythmically swinging shoulders the lights of the Arisaig danced in the ruffled water. The little schooner was hove to under mains' and stays'l. She was about three hundred yards astern of us, a graceful shadow in the faint light of the stars and the swinging beam of the Longships.

I twisted my head round and caught the gleam of Mulligan's eyes watching me. Pain stabbed at my eye sockets as I turned my neck muscles. I shifted the weight of my body to my right elbow, so that I could look for'ard without turning my head. Mulligan made a threatening movement with the pistol, which he held by the barrel. Then he relaxed as I lay still. The shore was a black shadow reared up against the night sky. With each sweep of the oars it came closer and blacker. Soon it towered above us, blotting out half the sky with its rugged, granite cliffs, and through the still night came the steady thud and suck of waves breaking.

'Where are you landing me, Mulligan?' I asked.

'Just where I said I would,' he replied. 'Northern end at Whitesands Bay. You'll be aboot two miles from Sennen. Or, if ye climb straight up from the beach and strike inland, ye'll reach the main road an' that'll take ye into Penzance.'

I didn't say anything. The black line of the coast was very near now. I thought I could see the faint white of the waves breaking. I strained my eyes into the darkness. But it made them ache so that I had to close them.

So that was England, and only a few miles from where I was born. My father had talked so much about the Cornish coast that I seemed almost to recognise it, even in the dark. But it was a queer way to be coming back - to be landed alone from a boat at dead of night with no friend and A sudden fear seized me. I forgot the pain in my head for a second as my fingers fumbled for the belt. I could feel it there against my skin. I searched for the pocket. Yes, it was still solid and packed with notes. Or was it less packed? Had they fooled me? Fifteen minutes they said I'd been out. Time enough for them to take the money.

I glanced up at Mulligan. His eyes were fixed on me.

Was it a trick of the dark or was there a sardonic gleam in them?

'What about the boat fare, Mulligan?' I asked. 'How much have you taken?'

'Lie still,' he hissed, and he held out the butt of his pistol ready.

The great granite cliffs were very near now. They seemed reared up, high, high into the night. A line of white seethed at their foot.

I slipped my hand under my jersey, beneath my vest, till I felt the leather of the belt lying against my skin. I found the pocket. It bulged. But when I got my fingers inside it the crispness of the notes had changed to paper, as though the pouch were stuffed with worthless Italian lire. I looked at Mulligan. 'How much did you take?' I asked him.

His face was so close to mine I could see the hare-lip stretch as he grinned. 'What Ah said Ah'd take, plus fifteen quid for the inconvenience ye caused me. Ye've got five quid, me bonnie boy, and that's five quid more'n ye deserve.'

'Five quid!' And I'd had two hundred when I hailed him at Port Santa Lucia in Naples Bay. 'Why didn't you take the five quid as well?' I asked.

He laughed. It was a hard, grating sound; like the creak of the oars in the rowlocks. 'Because Ah'm no wanting inquiries made about the Arisaig. Five pounds'll last ye quite a bit. The will to stay free is awfu' strong in a man. Ah could've filled ye full of lead and thrown ye overboard wi' some old iron in yer boots. But I dinna trust me crew when it comes to murdering a man. Though it's what ye deserve.'

'How do you know what I deserve?' The anger boiled up in me, stronger than the pain in my head. 'What were you doing sailing in and out of the North African ports when Rommel held the coast? I'll bet you weren't talking your phoney Scots then.'

He laughed again. 'Mais non, mon vieux - jeparlais toujours le francais quand j'etais en Afrique.' 'Or German,' I added. Who was he to tell me what I deserved, this rotten, crooked little bastard of a Scots father and a French mother.

A wave broke and the white of its crest licked along the gunnel, wetting my sleeve and slopping water into my face. We were very near the beach now. I could see it - a faint smudge of steeply rising sand that ended in a granite wall. Damn them! Why should I let them get away with my money like that?

'Do you know how long it took me to make that two hundred pounds?' I asked.