Читать книгу List, Ye Landsmen!. A Romance of Incident онлайн

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“He was so full of objections that on the morning of the sixth day of my stay at his house I flung from him in a rage. ‘I know what you want,’ I told him: ‘you want the silver and you don’t want to pay for it. I will see you——’ and I damned him in the names of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He is a little man: he arose from a velvet armchair, and following me on tiptoe as I was leaving the room, he put his hand upon my shoulder and said in a soft voice, ‘Michael, how much?’ To cut this long yarn short, he commissioned me to seek a vessel, and when I had found the sort of ship I wanted I was to enter into a calculation of the cost of the adventure and let him know the amount I should need within as few guilders as possible. That is the story.”

“It is a very remarkable story. I am flattered by your confiding this secret to me.”

“It was necessary,” he answered.

I did not see that, but I let the remark pass. “Where did you meet with this brig?”

“She is owned by a friend of mine who lives at Shadwell. I was thinking all the way home of the Black Watch as the ship for my purpose, and strangely enough, among the vessels lying near me in the Pool when I brought up was this brig. In London I shipped the English sailors we have on board and sailed for Amsterdam at the request of Tulp, who desired to victual and equip the ship himself. He put Van Laar upon me, on some friend’s recommendation, and the remainder of the hands—much too few, but the spirit of Rebecca Sweers sweats like a demon in Tulp when there is a stiver to be saved—I shipped at Amsterdam.”