"Ballantyne 01 - A Falcon Flies" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Wilbur)

Tippoo stepped forward, hairless as an enormous toad, and stood a foot behind Codrington's left shoulder.

With a visible effort, the English captain retained his temper, as he inclined his head towards Mungo St. John. May God grant we meet again, sir. " He turned back to Robyn and saluted her briefly. May I wish you a pleasant continuation of your voyage, madam. "Captain Codrington, I think you are mistaken, she almost pleaded with him. He did not reply but stared at her for a moment longer, the pale eyes were direct and disturbing, the eyes of a prophet or a fanatic, then he turned and went with a gangling boyish stride to Huron's entry port.

Tippoo had stripped off the high-necked tunic and oiled his upper body so it gleamed in the sunlight with the metallic lustre of the skin of some exotic reptile.

He stood stolidly on flat bare feet, balancing effortlessly to the Huron's roll, his thick arms hanging at his side and the lash of the whip coiled on the deck at his feet.

There was a grating fixed at the ship's side and the sailor who had been at the masthead lookout when they had raised the African coast, was spread-eagled upon it like a stranded starfish on a rock exposed at low tide.

He twisted his head awkwardly to look back over his shoulder at the mate, and his face was white with terror.

You were excused witnessing punishment, Doctor Ballantyne, " Mungo St. John told her quietly. I feel it my duty to suffer this barbaric-"As you wish, he cut her short with a nod, and turned away. "Twenty, Mr. Tippoo. "Twenty it is, Cap'n."

With no expression at all Tippoo stepped up behind the man, hooked his finger into the back of his collar and ripped the shirt down to the belt. The man's back was pale as suet pudding, but studded with fat purple carbuncles, the sailor's affliction, caused by salty, wet clothing and the unhealthy diet.

Tippoo stepped back and flicked out the lash so that it extended to its full length along the seamed oak planking. Ship's company! " Mungo St. John called. "The charge is inattention to duty, and endangering the ship's safety."

They shuffled their bare feet, but not one of them looked up at him. "The sentence is twenty lashes."

On the grating the man turned his face away and closed his eyes tightly, hunching his shoulders. Lay on, Mr. Tippoo, Mungo St. John said, and Tippoo squinted carefully at the bare, white skin, through which the knuckles of the spine showed clearly. He reared back, one thickly muscled arm thrown high above his head, and the lash snaked higher, hissing like an angry cobra, then he stepped forward into the stroke, pivoting the full weight and force of his shoulders into it.

The man on the grating shrieked, and his body convulsed in a spasm that smeared the skin from his wrists against the coarse hemp bonds.

The white skin opened in a thin bright scarlet line, from one side of his ribs to the other, and one of the angry purple carbuncles between his shoulder blades erupted in a spurt of yellow matter that ran down the pale skin and soaked into the waistband of his breeches. One, " said Mungo St. John, and the man on the grating began to sob quietly.

Tippoo stepped back, shook out the lash carefully, squinted at the bloody line across the white shuddering flesh, reared back and grunted as he stepped forward into the next stroke. Two, said Mungo St. John. Robyn felt her gorge rise to choke her. She fought it down, and forced herself to watch. She could not allow him to see her weakness.

On the tenth stroke the body on the grating relaxed suddenly, the head lolled sideways and the fists unclenched slowly so that she could see the little bloody half-moon wounds where the nails had been driven into the palms. There was no further sign of life during the rest of the leisurely ritual of punishment.

At the twentieth stroke, she almost flung herself down the ladder to the maindeck and was feeling for the pulse before they could cut the body down from the grating. Praise be to God, " she whispered as she felt it fluttering under her fingers, and then to the seamen who were lifting the man down, "Gently now! " She saw that Mungo St. John had got his wish, for the white porcelain crests of the spinal column were jutting up through the sliced meat of the back muscles.

She had a cotton dressing ready and she placed it across the ruined back as they laid him on to an oak plank and hustled him towards the forecastle.

In the narrow, crowded forecastle, thick with the fumes of cheap pipe tobacco and the almost solid reek of bilges and wet clothing, of unwashed men and mouldering food, they laid the man on the mess table and she worked as best she could in the guttering light of the oil-lamp in its gimbals overhead. She stitched back the flaps and ribbons of mushy, torn flesh with horsehair sutures and then bound up the whole in weak phenol solution, treatment which Joseph Lister had recently pioneered with much success against mortification.

The man was conscious again and whimpering with pain. She gave him five drops of laudanum, and promised to visit him the following day to change the bindings.

As she packed away her instruments and closed her black valise, one of the crew, a little pockmarked bosun, named Nathaniel, picked it up and when she nodded her thanks, he muttered with embarrassment, "We are beholden, missus."

It had taken all of them time to accept her ministrations. First it had been only the lancing of carbuncles and sea-boils, calomel for the flux and the grippe, but later, after a dozen successful treatments, which included a fractured humerus, an ulcerated and ruptured eardrum and the banishing of a venereal chancre with mercury, she had become a firm favourite amongst the crew, and her sick-call a regular feature of shipboard life.

The bosun climbed the companionway behind her, carrying the valise, but before they reached the deck, an idea struck her and she stooped to him, placing a hand on his shoulder. Nathaniel, she asked urgently, but in a low voice, "is there a way of entering the ship's hold without lifting the maindeck hatches? " The man looked startled, and she shook his shoulder roughly. "Is there! she demanded. Aye, ma'am, there is. "Where?

How? " Through the lazaretto, below the officers" saloon there is a hatchway through the forward bulkhead. Is it locked? "Aye, ma'am, it is, and Captain St. John keeps the keys on his belt."

Tell nobody that I asked, she ordered him, and hastened up on the maindeck.

At the foot of the mainmast, Tippoo was washing down the lash in a bucket of seawater that was already tinged pale pink; he looked up at her, still stripping the water off the leather between thick hairless fingers, and he grinned at Robyn as she passed, squatting down'on thick, brown haunches with his loin cloth drawn up into his crotch, swinging his round bald head on its bull neck to follow her.