Читать книгу Beyond the Great South Wall: The Secret of the Antarctic онлайн

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“Is thy servant a dog,” said I, holding out my hand, “that he should do this thing? No, my dear Mr. Crum, though I may be of a slow-blooded, not to say poltroon-like spirit, and you are still in the midst of the middle ages, if you will excuse my saying so, as far as the practicalities of life go, I’m sure we shall get on together as well as two thorough opposites always do, and I can’t say more than that.” Then I wrung his hand heartily, and fled, but for the life of me I couldn’t say for certain that I was right and he was wrong.

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It was three weeks after my first interview with Crum that I found myself travelling down to Liverpool to meet Baines, my uncle’s man, who was bringing home his body. It was a dull, rainy, depressing day as I stood upon the dock-side above the landing-stage, and watched the tender come sidling up with the crowd of umbrellaed passengers upon her deck, and my errand was not of a kind to elevate the spirits. Beyond the mournful circumstances that had brought me there, I had a sense of foreboding as if undefined evil was coming to me with the dead, though, considering my very slender acquaintanceship with my uncle, it seemed extremely unreasonable. But there it was all the same. I put it down to the weather and the worry of the last three weeks. For really I had had a very trying time. Gerry was more or less at the bottom of it, and Crum and my own conscience helped largely. The fact was that in a moment of weakness I had detailed to Gerry the story of the screed and the two mysterious coins left by my old buccaneer ancestor. He had fastened upon the thing like a dog chewing a meaty bone, and rested not day nor night dinning into me his opinion that my bounden duty was to investigate the affair “up to the hilt,” as he inappositely remarked. And in another astoundingly weak phase of absent-mindedness I had taken him with me on one of my visits to Crum. The two had managed somehow to get on the subject of the mystery, and then had started in full cry together to browbeat me for my lack of enthusiasm, proving—Gerry with terse vulgarity and the lawyer with deliberate decorum—that I was throwing away the chance of a lifetime, failing in my duty to myself, my honor, and my nation, and showing forth a pusillanimity and poverty of imagination which was a disgrace to the name of Dorinecourte. And out of their badgerings a wild and hasty promise had grown—wrung from me by pure bullying—that should any further news of the ancient scroll of hieroglyphics come to hand, or perchance the scroll itself, I would not fail to do my utmost to obtain translation for the same, even to the extent of crossing the Atlantic myself and interviewing Professor Lessaution. Pondering, therefore, this rash mortgaging of my future happiness and freedom of movement, I stared down upon the snapping little steamboat with melancholy eyes, reflecting that she possibly bore to me a cargo of worry and unrest which would shadow my life with unmerited discontent.