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The Floating Press - William Hornung Ernest

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132 pages

English

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An English author who gained fame with a series of novels about a raffish but lovable thief named Arthur J. Raffles, Ernest William Hornung also tried his hand at mystery and detective fiction, perhaps inspired by his brother-in-law, Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of master detective Sherlock Holmes. In Dead Men Tell No Tales, Hornung spins a yarn that starts out with a love affair that blossoms on a boat journey, but soon turns deadly. A must-read for lovers of classic detective fiction.

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Publié par	The Floating Press
Date de parution	01 août 2010
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781775418641
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0134€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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DEAD MEN TELL NO TALES
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ERNEST WILLIAM HORNUNG

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Dead Men Tell No Tales First published in 1897 ISBN 978-1-775418-64-1 © 2010 The Floating Press
While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in The Floating Press edition of this book, The Floating Press does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. The Floating Press does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Many suitcases look alike.
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Contents
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Chapter I - Love on the Ocean Chapter II - The Mysterious Cargo Chapter III - To the Water's Edge Chapter IV - The Silent Sea Chapter V - My Reward Chapter VI - The Sole Survivor Chapter VII - I Find a Friend Chapter VIII - A Small Precaution Chapter IX - My Convalescent Home Chapter X - Wine and Weakness Chapter XI - I Live Again Chapter XII - My Lady's Bidding Chapter XIII - The Longest Day of My Life Chapter XIV - In the Garden Chapter XV - First Blood Chapter XVI - A Deadlock Chapter XVII - Thieves Fall Out Chapter XVIII - A Man of Many Murders Chapter XIX - My Great Hour Chapter XX - The Statement of Francis Rattray
Chapter I - Love on the Ocean
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Nothing is so easy as falling in love on a long sea voyage, exceptfalling out of love. Especially was this the case in the days when thewooden clippers did finely to land you in Sydney or in Melbourne underthe four full months. We all saw far too much of each other, unless,indeed, we were to see still more. Our superficial attractions mutuallyexhausted, we lost heart and patience in the disappointing stratawhich lie between the surface and the bed-rock of most natures. My ownexperience was confined to the round voyage of the Lady Jermyn, in theyear 1853. It was no common experience, as was only too well knownat the time. And I may add that I for my part had not the faintestintention of falling in love on board; nay, after all these years,let me confess that I had good cause to hold myself proof against suchweakness. Yet we carried a young lady, coming home, who, God knows,might have made short work of many a better man!
Eva Denison was her name, and she cannot have been more than nineteenyears of age. I remember her telling me that she had not yet come out,the very first time I assisted her to promenade the poop. My own namewas still unknown to her, and yet I recollect being quite fascinated byher frankness and self-possession. She was exquisitely young, and yetludicrously old for her years; had been admirably educated, chieflyabroad, and, as we were soon to discover, possessed accomplishmentswhich would have made the plainest old maid a popular personage on boardship. Miss Denison, however, was as beautiful as she was young, with thebloom of ideal health upon her perfect skin. She had a wealth of lovelyhair, with strange elusive strands of gold among the brown, that drownedher ears (I thought we were to have that mode again?) in sunny ripples;and a soul greater than the mind, and a heart greater than either, laysleeping somewhere in the depths of her grave, gray eyes.
We were at sea together so many weeks. I cannot think what I was made ofthen!
It was in the brave old days of Ballarat and Bendigo, when ship aftership went out black with passengers and deep with stores, to bounce homewith a bale or two of wool, and hardly hands enough to reef topsailsin a gale. Nor was this the worst; for not the crew only, but, in manycases, captain and officers as well, would join in the stampede to thediggings; and we found Hobson's Bay the congested asylum of all mannerof masterless and deserted vessels. I have a lively recollection of ourskipper's indignation when the pilot informed him of this disgracefulfact. Within a fortnight, however, I met the good man face to face uponthe diggings. It is but fair to add that the Lady Jermyn lost everyofficer and man in the same way, and that the captain did obey traditionto the extent of being the last to quit his ship. Nevertheless, ofall who sailed by her in January, I alone was ready to return at thebeginning of the following July.
I had been to Ballarat. I had given the thing a trial. For the mostodious weeks I had been a licensed digger on Black Hill Flats; and I hadactually failed to make running expenses. That, however, will surpriseyou the less when I pause to declare that I have paid as much as fourshillings and sixpence for half a loaf of execrable bread; that my mateand I, between us, seldom took more than a few pennyweights of gold-dustin any one day; and never once struck pick into nugget, big or little,though we had the mortification of inspecting the "mammoth masses" ofwhich we found the papers full on landing, and which had brought thegold-fever to its height during our very voyage. With me, however, aswith many a young fellow who had turned his back on better things, themalady was short-lived. We expected to make our fortunes out of hand,and we had reckoned without the vermin and the villainy which renderedus more than ever impatient of delay. In my fly-blown blankets I dreamtof London until I hankered after my chambers and my club more than aftermuch fine gold. Never shall I forget my first hot bath on getting backto Melbourne; it cost five shillings, but it was worth five pounds, andis altogether my pleasantest reminiscence of Australia.
There was, however, one slice of luck in store for me. I found the dearold Lady Jermyn on the very eve of sailing, with a new captain, a newcrew, a handful of passengers (chiefly steerage), and nominally no cargoat all. I felt none the less at home when I stepped over her familiarside.
In the cuddy we were only five, but a more uneven quintette I defy youto convene. There was a young fellow named Ready, packed out forhis health, and hurrying home to die among friends. There was anoutrageously lucky digger, another invalid, for he would drink nothingbut champagne with every meal and at any minute of the day, and I haveseen him pitch raw gold at the sea-birds by the hour together. MissDenison was our only lady, and her step-father, with whom she wastravelling, was the one man of distinction on board. He was a Portugueseof sixty or thereabouts, Senhor Joaquin Santos by name; at first it wasincredible to me that he had no title, so noble was his bearing; butvery soon I realized that he was one of those to whom adventitioushonors can add no lustre. He treated Miss Denison as no parent evertreated a child, with a gallantry and a courtliness quite beautiful towatch, and not a little touching in the light of the circumstances underwhich they were travelling together. The girl had gone straight fromschool to her step-father's estate on the Zambesi, where, a few monthslater, her mother had died of the malaria. Unable to endure the placeafter his wife's death, Senhor Santos had taken ship to Victoria, thereto seek fresh fortune with results as indifferent as my own. He wasnow taking Miss Denison back to England, to make her home with otherrelatives, before he himself returned to Africa (as he once told me) tolay his bones beside those of his wife. I hardly know which of the pairI see more plainly as I write—the young girl with her soft eyes and hersunny hair, or the old gentleman with the erect though wasted figure,the noble forehead, the steady eye, the parchment skin, the whiteimperial, and the eternal cigarette between his shrivelled lips.
No need to say that I came more in contact with the young girl. She wasnot less charming in my eyes because she provoked me greatly as I cameto know her intimately. She had many irritating faults. Like most youngpersons of intellect and inexperience, she was hasty and intolerant innearly all her judgments, and rather given to being critical in a crudeway. She was very musical, playing the guitar and singing in a stylethat made our shipboard concerts vastly superior to the average of theirorder; but I have seen her shudder at the efforts of less gifted folkswho were also doing their best; and it was the same in other directionswhere her superiority was less specific. The faults which are mostexasperating in another are, of course, one's own faults; and I confessthat I was very critical of Eva Denison's criticisms. Then she hada little weakness for exaggeration, for unconscious egotism inconversation, and I itched to tell her so. I felt so certain that thegirl had a fine character underneath, which would rise to noble heightsin stress or storm: all the more would I long now to take her in handand mould her in little things, and anon to take her in my arms just asshe was. The latter feeling was resolutely crushed. To be plain, I hadendured what is euphemistically called "disappointment" already; and,not being a complete coxcomb, I had no intention of courting a second.
Yet, when I write of Eva Denison, I am like to let my pen outrun mytale. I lay the pen down, and a hundred of her sayings ring in myears, with my own contradictious comments, that I was doomed so soonto repent; a hundred visions of her start to my eyes; and there is thetrade-wind singing in the rigging, and loosening a tress of my darling'shair, till it flies like a tiny golden streamer in the tropic sun.There, it is out! I have called her what she was to be in my heart everafter. Yet at the time I must argue with her—with her! When all mycourage should have gone to love-making, I was plucking it up to sail asnear as I might to plain remonstrance! I little dreamt how the ghost ofevery petty word was presently to return and torture me.
So it is that I can see her and hear her now on a hundred separateoccasions beneath the awning beneath the stars on deck below at noonor night but plainest of all in the evening of the day we signalledthe Island of Ascension, at the close of