Shout at the Devil - Smith Wilbur - Страница 20
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A four-day diet of coconut pulp and milk had left all their bellies grumbling.
"Why red?"
"They go for red. Make a lure."
"You haven't any hooks or line."
"Tie it to a bit of twine from the sack and tease them up to the surface then harpoon one with your knife tied to an oar."
Sebastian was silent, peering thoughtfully over the side at the deep flashes of gold where the shoal of dolphin played under the raft. "It's got to be red, hey?" he asked, and Flynn looked at him sharply;
"Yeah. It's got to be red."
"Well..." Sebastian hesitated, and then flushed with embarrassment under his tropical sunburn.
"What's wrong with you?"
Still blushing, Sebastian stood up and loosened his belt then, shyly as a bride on her wedding night, he drew down his pants.
"MY God," breathed Flynn in shock, as he held up his hand to shield his eyes.
"Haul Haul"was the chorus of admiration from the crew.
"Got them at Harrods," said Sebastian with becoming modesty.
Red, Flynn had asked for but Sebastian's underpants were the brightest, most beautiful red; the most vivid sunset and roses red, he could have imagined. They hung in oriental splendour to Sebastian's knees.
"Pure silk," said Sebastian, fingering the cloth. "Ten shillings a pair."
"Whoa now! Come on, little fishy. Come on there, Flynn whispered as he lay on his belly, head and shoulders over the edge of the raft. On its thread of twine, the scrap of red danced deep in the green water. A long, slithering flash of gold shot towards it, and Flynn jerked the twine away at the last instant. The dolphin swirled and darted back. Again Flynn jerked the twine. Chameleon lines and dots of excitement showed against the gold of the dolphin's body.
"That's it, fishy. Chase it." The other fish of the shoal joined the hunt, forming a sparkling planetary system of movement around the lure. "Get ready!"
"I'm ready." Sebastian stood over him, poised like a javelin thrower. In the excitement he had forgotten to don his pants and his shirt-tails flapped around his thighs in a most undignified manner. But his legs were long and finely muscled, the legs of an athlete. "Get back!" he snapped at the crew who were crowded around him so that the raft was listing dangerously. "Get back give me room," and he hefted the oar with the long hunting knife lashed to the tip.
"Here they come." Flynn's voice trembled with excitement as he worked the scrap of red cloth upwards, and the shoal followed it. "Now!" he shouted as a single fish broke the surface four feet of flashing gold, and Sebastian lunged.
The steady hand and eye that had once clean-bowled the great Frank Woolley directed the oar. Sebastian hit the dolphin an inch behind the eye, and the blade slipped through to lacerate the gills.
For a few seconds the oar came alive in his hands as the dolphin twitched and fought on the blade, but there were no barbs to hold in the flesh, and the fish slipped from the knife.
"God damn it to hell! "bellowed Flynn.
"Dash it all! "echoed Sebastian.
But ten feet down the dolphin was mortally wounded; it jigged and whipped like a golden kite in a high wind while the rest of the shoal scattered.
Sebastian dropped the oar and began stripping his shirt.
"What are you doing? "demanded Flynn.
"Going after it."
"You're mad. Sharks!"
"I'm so hungry, I'll eat a shark also," and he dived over the side. Thirty seconds later he surfaced, blowing like a grampus but grinning triumphantly, with the dead dolphin clasped lovingly to his bosom.
They ate strips of raw fish seasoned with evaporated salt, squatting around the mutilated carcass of the dolphin.
"Well, I've paid a guinea for worse meals than this said Sebastian, and belched softly. "Oh, I beg your pardon."
"Granted," Flynn grunted with his mouth full of fish; and then eyeing Sebastian's nudity with a world-weary eye, "Stop boasting and put your pants on before you trip over. Flynn O'Flynn was slowly, very slowly, revising his estimate of Sebastian Oldsmith.
The rowers had long since lost any enthusiasm they might have had for the task. They kept at it only in response to offers of bodily violence by Flynn and the example set by Sebastian, who worked tirelessly.
The thin layer of fat that had sheathed Sebastian's muscles was long since consumed, and his sun-baked body was a Michelangelo sculpture as he leaned and dug and pulled the oar.
Six days they had dragged the raft across the southward push of the current. Six days of sun-blazing calm, with the sea flattening, until now in the late afternoon, it looked like an endless sheet of smooth green velvet.
"No," said Mohammed. "That means, The two porcupines
:.
make love under the blanket."
"Oh!" Sebastian repeated the phrase without interrupting the rhythm of his rowing. Sebastian was a dogged pupil of Swahili, making Lip in determination what he lacked in brilliance. Mohammed was proud of him, and opposed any attempt by the other members of the crew to usurp his position as chief tutor. "That's all right about the porcupines shagging them selves to a standstill," grunted Flynn. "But what does this mean... and he spoke in Swahili.
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