Perhaps, presently, he would wake up. Yes, this must be some unusually vivid nightmare which had him in its clutches.
“Squat right down on that rock, stranger, and make yourself at home.” Of course, it was Haskins who broke in on his reverie. “If any more mavericks2 stray off your range up this way, I’ll be right here to throw, tie, and brand ’em. Have a cigarette?”
“No — Yes, thank you, I believe I will.”
For a few moments the two smoked without speaking. The night was silent, save for the low, distant murmur3 of the sea and the occasional squeak4 of a bat. Overhead the great, brilliant stars, which hung so strangely low and near, seemed to wink5 at Jones, as if they were sharers in some huge joke of whose nature he was not yet informed, but of which he was unquestionably the butt6.
“Strange,” he reflected. “I can’t remember ever having smoked in a dream before. I can taste the tobacco, too. And my hands hurt like the dickens, where I scraped ’em on the rocks. I wonder if I ever will wake up. That girl is a winner for looks, all right; but, oh, mama, I don’t like her disposition7 one little bit! Seems to have it in for me, all right. I wonder — ”
“Pleasant dreams!” It was James Haskins again. “Say, did you really get washed ashore8 like you told the bunch?”
“I certainly did,” said Jones with convincing vigor9 and promptitude. “Look here; if I should tell you the whole story about what has happened since I reached this place, would you believe me?”
“Fire away!” the other replied noncommittally.
Jones obeyed, and his jailer listened patiently and in silence to the full tale of his misadventures. Barring the fact that it was a liner and not his own yacht from which he had fallen, he adhered closely to facts; for, in the light of his reception, it seemed it was only for his own good that Doherty had warned him not to speak of the other camp. And in this opinion his listener presently confirmed him.
“So this man Doherty told you not to tell you’d been in his camp, did he?” was Haskins’s comment at the end of the recital10. “Well, he, was dead right, friend castaway. Prince Paul has got just the same love for Prince Sergius that a grizzly11 has for a rattlesnake.
“But me, I think you’re straight. For one thing, you haven’t got the map of a bunco-steerer; and for another, I think you are because size thinks you ain’t. Do you get me? I never saw anything in skirts yet that you couldn’t copper12 her guess and be on the right trail. Only your swim seems to have twisted your geography some. It isn’t the Azores you mean — it’s the Philippines, or Hawaii. Now, if you and me should swap13 yarns14, will you give me away to my outfit15, or will you keep it under your hair?”
“Prince Sergius’ knout wouldn’t extract it from me,” sighed Mr. Jones, with the happy sense that here again, where least expected, he had found a friend.
“Well, to commence with, me, I’m riding a long way off my own range, which is Colorado, by rights, though I was born in Arizona. Arizona Jim, that’s me. Well, this prince fellow come along when I was on my uppers in Frisco, having gone up against a few large doses of redeye and an outfit of card-sharks some simultaneous. But, say, you fellows started from Savannah, you said. Did you get into the Pacific through the canal?”
The Pacific? Jones’s brain reeled again, but he managed to keep his voice steady and reply: “Yes, of course we went through the canal.”
“I asked because I know a fellow that runs a cafe in Colon16. Did you stop there?”
“I didn’t go ashore there. But how did you meet the prince?”
“Oh, yes. Well, as I was saying, he met up with me, and he offers me a job. Says he’s goin’ on a big trip and wants a guy with a good gun-eye. That’s me, all right; so I joins the outfit immediate17. Then’s when I meet this brother of his, they bein’ on good terms then, just like an owl18 and a prairie-dog.
“So brother Sergius, it seems, he’s gone right ahead and chartered a yacht without waiting for brother Paul to approve the deal. This annoys us some, but not half so much as when we get away out on the broad, be-yutiful, lonesome Pacific Ocean and finds that the captain and the crew are all ‘brothers’ of his, too. Yes, little Annie, Sergius is in with the anarchists19, saddle, bridle20, and spurs, and the great and noble cause has got to get its share in the profits, even if brother Sergius has to knife brother Paul to do it. Oh, yes, it was some rotten deal, take it from me.”
“But where does this Miss . . . Miss — ”
“Weston come in? Not yet but soon. We picks Miss Weston up out of an open boat, along with a couple of half-dead sailors. She’s a Boston young lady that’s been taking lessons in nursing. She aims to join the Red Cross, but she’s some foxy, so she comes clear across to Frisco and takes a boat for Japan, figurin’ to get into the festivities by the back gate, so to speak. No German torpedoes21 in hers.”
(Jones gave a mental groan22. Again!)
“And right then, was when the lid blew off the kettle for keeps. I never did see two brothers take a shine to the same girl quite so simultaneous and sudden. Gee23, they ought to have been twins, their tastes are so similar. Was she going to be Princess Sergius or Princess Paul? I suggests to Paul, casual-like, that they cut her in two and divide her up, it being my idea that there ain’t any female woman born that’s any real good in a round-up like this one. But he didn’t seem to take to it.
“So brother Paul, he reveals to her the perfidy24 of brother Sergius, and right away that swings her. No nihilanarchists for hers. In which she shows more sense than I’d expected.
“Right about then we sights this here Joker Island. Some name, Joker; but she’s some Island, too, believe me. There being considerable hard feeling, what with one thing and another, me and Prince Paul and this Weston girl and her two sailors, we thinks it wise and becoming to withdraw ourselves from evil associations, and we drops off the yacht the first dark night. Then Prince Paul he says there’s a guy on the island expecting him, which is the first I heard of Holloway. As near as I can make out, this is Holloway’s island, by right of being wrecked25 here and finding out some darn thing about the inside of it. These cliffs go all the way around, you know, but there’s a cave runs under ’em, and Mr. Holloway, he’s the only one that knows where it is.”
“I shouldn’t think it would be very difficult to find a cave in a wall of rock like this, if one hunted for it,” suggested Jones, deeply interested in the narrative26.
“Oh, no, it’s dead easy — like three guesses at which is the right hole in a colander27. There’s about fifteen hundred other caves, and they all run back under the cliffs, and there’s only one that goes clear through. And if you get lost in a blind lead — good night!”
“But what is there inside, anyway?”
“Me not being Prince Paul’s confidential28 secretary, I don’t know, nor I don’t know how Sergius thinks he’s going to get there without dear brother Paul and friend Holloway. But it’s plain he knows something about Holloway, or he wouldn’t have made that nice, kind offer to persuade you when he thought you was Holloway. One thing, it’s clear he don’t know him by sight. The way I figure it is that when Holloway was wrecked here, after he comes out of the inside again, he was taken off by some ship, and then he hikes right after Prince Paul, who, it seems, is his dear old college chum. It must be some secret, all right; for Paul, he gets leave immediate from his regiment29 by the Czar’s special permit.
“But brother Sergius, who’s some unpopular at home, he don’t need no permit, because he’s in America already. I don’t think Paul was lookin’ to run across him; but when he does, he takes him in on the deal for the sake of them old days back on the farm. Well, while Paul is rustling30 this outfit together, friend Richard gets himself put on the island alone again, with provisions, and stays right on the claim to wait for Paul. Paul comes along with a brother and a aggregation31 of nihilanarchists and a Boston schoolmarm girl, and now the only way out is in.”
“What?”
“Just like I says — in. We’re going through the caves at daybreak. Holloway says even he might get the wrong one at night.”
“Good Lord!” murmured Mr. Jones softly. From boyhood he had suffered from a dread32 of dark, shut-in places, running parallel, perhaps, with his habit of sleep-walking. Even now be never slept without a light in his room, and he would not have explored the Mammoth33 Caves with a guard of fifty guides for all the money in the world. “Are you — are they going to take me along?”
“What’s the matter? Don’t you want to sit in? Take it from me, you’re better off with Paul than you would be with Sergius, and you’ve only got Paul and Sergius to choose between.”
“What sort of lights are you going to use?” queried34 Mr. Jones anxiously.
“Oh, we have some electric torches. Stranger, I’ve talked myself into the finest thirst outside of Arizona. But it’s wasted — absolutely wasted. Ain’t that a sad thought? By gracious, I’d almost go over and take up with this naughty Sergius party, if I thought he had anything stronger than water to give me. But, alas35! The Monterey is like Russia — she’s gone prohibition36. Don’t you notice a different feeling in the air? What time’s it getting to be?” He glanced at his watch.
“‘What time were you intending to start?” inquired Jones.
“Half an hour. It’s three now. Here comes Holloway.”
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收听单词发音
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1
steered
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| v.驾驶( steer的过去式和过去分词 )；操纵；控制；引导 | |
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2
mavericks
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| 未烙印的牲畜( maverick的名词复数 )； 标新立异的人，不合常规的人 | |
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3
murmur
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| n.低语，低声的怨言；v.低语，低声而言 | |
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4
squeak
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| n.吱吱声，逃脱；v.（发出）吱吱叫，侥幸通过；（俚）告密 | |
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5
wink
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| n.眨眼，使眼色，瞬间；v.眨眼，使眼色，闪烁 | |
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6
butt
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| n.笑柄；烟蒂；枪托；臀部；v.用头撞或顶 | |
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7
disposition
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| n.性情，性格；意向，倾向；排列，部署 | |
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8
ashore
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| adv.在(向)岸上，上岸 | |
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9
vigor
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| n.活力，精力，元气 | |
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10
recital
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| n.朗诵，独奏会，独唱会 | |
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11
grizzly
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| adj.略为灰色的，呈灰色的；n.灰色大熊 | |
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12
copper
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| n.铜；铜币；铜器；adj.铜(制)的；(紫)铜色的 | |
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13
swap
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| n.交换；vt.交换，用...作交易 | |
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14
yarns
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| n.纱( yarn的名词复数 )；纱线；奇闻漫谈；旅行轶事 | |
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15
outfit
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| n.（为特殊用途的）全套装备，全套服装 | |
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16
colon
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| n.冒号，结肠，直肠 | |
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17
immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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18
owl
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| n.猫头鹰，枭 | |
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19
anarchists
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| 无政府主义者( anarchist的名词复数 ) | |
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20
bridle
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| n.笼头，束缚；vt.抑制，约束；动怒 | |
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21
torpedoes
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| 鱼雷( torpedo的名词复数 )； 油井爆破筒； 刺客； 掼炮 | |
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22
groan
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| vi./n.呻吟，抱怨；(发出)呻吟般的声音 | |
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23
gee
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| n.马；int.向右！前进！，惊讶时所发声音；v.向右转 | |
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24
perfidy
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| n.背信弃义，不忠贞 | |
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25
wrecked
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| adj.失事的，遇难的 | |
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26
narrative
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| n.叙述，故事；adj.叙事的，故事体的 | |
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27
colander
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| n.滤器，漏勺 | |
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28
confidential
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| adj.秘（机）密的，表示信任的，担任机密工作的 | |
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29
regiment
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| n.团，多数，管理；v.组织，编成团，统制 | |
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30
rustling
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| n. 瑟瑟声，沙沙声 adj. 发沙沙声的 | |
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31
aggregation
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| n.聚合，组合；凝聚 | |
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32
dread
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| vt.担忧，忧虑；惧怕，不敢；n.担忧，畏惧 | |
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33
mammoth
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| n.长毛象；adj.长毛象似的，巨大的 | |
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34
queried
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| v.质疑，对…表示疑问( query的过去式和过去分词 )；询问 | |
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35
alas
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| int.唉(表示悲伤、忧愁、恐惧等) | |
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36
prohibition
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| n.禁止；禁令，禁律 | |
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