书城外语杰克·伦敦经典短篇小说
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第24章 Confession(3)

I had joined the Glenmore in England; in the two yearsthat had elapsed before my desertion at Montreal, whathad the Glenmore done and where had she been? Andthereat I took those landlubbers around the world withme. Buffeted by pounding seas and stung with flying spray,they fought a typhoon with me off the coast of Japan.

They loaded and unloaded cargo with me in all the portsof the Seven Seas. I took them to India, and Rangoon,and China, and had them hammer ice with me around theHorn and at last come to moorings at Montreal.

And then they said to wait a moment, and one policemanwent forth into the night while I warmed myself at thestove, all the while racking my brains for the trap theywere going to spring on me.

I groaned to myself when I saw him come in the doorat the heels of the policeman. No gypsy prank had thrustthose tiny hoops of gold through the ears; no prairie windshad beaten that skin into wrinkled leather; nor had snowdriftand mountain-slope put in his walk that reminiscentroll. And in those eyes, when they looked at me, I saw theunmistakable sun-wash of the sea. Here was a theme, alas with half a dozen policemen to watch me read—I who hadnever sailed the China seas, nor been around the Horn,nor looked with my eyes upon India and Rangoon.

I was desperate. Disaster stalked before me incarnate inthe form of that gold-ear-ringed, weather-beaten son ofthe sea. Who was he? What was he? I must solve him erehe solved me. I must take a new orientation, or else thosewicked policemen would orientate me to a cell, a policecourt, and more cells. If he questioned me first, before Iknew how much he knew, I was lost.

But did I betray my desperate plight to those lynx-eyedguardians of the public welfare of Winnipeg? Not I. I metthat aged sailorman glad-eyed and beaming, with all thesimulated relief at deliverance that a drowning man woulddisplay on finding a life-preserver in his last despairingclutch. Here was a man who understood and who wouldverify my true story to the faces of those sleuth-houndswho did not understand, or, at least, such was what Iendeavored to play-act. I seized upon him; I volleyed himwith questions about himself. Before my judges I wouldprove the character of my savior before he saved me.

He was a kindly sailorman—an “easy mark”. Thepolicemen grew impatient while I questioned him. Atlast one of them told me to shut up. I shut up; but whileI remained shut up, I was busy creating, busy sketchingthe scenario of the next act. I had learned enough togo on with. He was a Frenchman. He had sailed alwayson French merchant vessels, with the one exception of avoyage on a “lime-juicer”. And last of all—blessed fact! —hehad not been on the sea for twenty years.

The policeman urged him on to examine me.

“You called in at Rangoon?” he queried.

I nodded. “We put our third mate ashore there. Fever.”

If he had asked me what kind of fever, I should haveanswered, “Enteric,” though for the life of me I didn’tknow what enteric was. But he didn’t ask me. Instead, hisnext question was: —

“And how is Rangoon?”

“All right. It rained a whole lot when we were there.”

“Did you get shore-leave?”

“Sure,” I answered. “Three of us apprentices went ashoretogether.”

“Do you remember the temple?”

“Which temple?” I parried.

“The big one, at the top of the stairway.”

If I remembered that temple, I knew I’d have to describeit. The gulf yawned for me.

I shook my head.

“You can see it from all over the harbor,” he informedme. “You don’t need shore-leave to see that temple.”

I never loathed a temple so in my life. But I fixed thatparticular temple at Rangoon.

“You can’t see it from the harbor,” I contradicted. “Youcan’t see it from the town. You can’t see it from the top ofthe stairway. Because—” I paused for the effect. “Becausethere isn’t any temple there.”

“But I saw it with my own eyes!” he cried.

“That was in—?” I queried.

“Seventy-one.”

“It was destroyed in the great earthquake of 1887,” Iexplained. “It was very old.”

There was a pause. He was busy reconstructing in hisold eyes the youthful vision of that fair temple by the sea.

“The stairway is still there,” I aided him. “You can seeit from all over the harbor. And you remember that littleisland on the right-hand side coming into the harbor?” Iguess there must have been one there (I was prepared toshift it over to the left-hand side), for he nodded. “Gone,”

I said. “Seven fathoms of water there now.”

I had gained a moment for breath. While he ponderedon time’s changes, I prepared the finishing touches of mystory.

“You remember the custom-house at Bombay?”

He remembered it.

“Burned to the ground,” I announced.

“Do you remember Jim Wan?” he came back at me.

“Dead,” I said; but who the devil Jim Wan was I hadn’tthe slightest idea.

I was on thin ice again.

“Do you remember Billy Harper, at Shanghai?” I queriedback at him quickly.

That aged sailorman worked hard to recollect, but the BillyHarper of my imagination was beyond his faded memory.

“Of course you remember Billy Harper,” I insisted.

“Everybody knows him. He’s been there forty years. Well,he’s still there, that’s all.”

And then the miracle happened. The sailorman remembered Billy Harper. Perhaps there was a Billy Harper,and perhaps he had been in Shanghai for forty years andwas still there; but it was news to me.

For fully half an hour longer, the sailorman and I talkedon in similar fashion. In the end he told the policementhat I was what I represented myself to be, and after anight’s lodging and a breakfast I was released to wanderon westward to my married sister in San Francisco.