Clarissa Oakes Read Online Free PDF Page B

right. 'Who brought you here?' he asked with cold displeasure.
       'I came of myself, sir,' said the girl in a trembling voice.
       This was utter nonsense. It could be demolished in a minute, but he did not wish to make her lie and lie until she was driven into a corner and forced to bring out the name—obvious enough, in all conscience.
       'Let us carry on, Mr Pullings,' he said.
       'What, and leave her here?'
       'You heard me, sir. Take the lantern.'
       They silently inspected the sail-rooms, the bosun's, gunner's, carpenter's store-rooms, the pitch-room and so returned to the open air, where all hats came off once more and where all faces changed at the sight of Captain Aubrey's pale severity.
       'We shall not rig church, Captain Pullings,' he said. 'The Articles will do very well for this occasion.'
       The parade, such as it was, dissolved and the hands moved aft, lining the quarterdeck as far as the companion hatchway and sitting on benches or stools or capstan-bars poised between two match-tubs, or on the belaying-bitts round the mainmast: chairs were placed for the Captain and the officers on the windward side, for the midshipmen and the warrant-officers to the lee.
       A sword-rack covered with an ensign and holding the Articles of War stood in front of Captain Aubrey; and all this time the sun shone from a clear sky, the warm air breathed across the deck, slanting from forward with just enough strength to fill her great array of canvas: there was very little sound from the breeze, the rigging or the blocks, and the water only whispered down the side. Norfolk Island, rising and falling on the long even swell beyond the larboard bow, was perceptibly nearer. Nobody spoke.
       'Silence fore and aft,' called Pullings; and after a moment Jack stood up, opened the thin boards that held the Articles and began: there were thirty-six of them, and nineteen of the offences named carried the death sentence, sometimes qualified by the words 'or such other punishment as the nature and degree of the offence shall deserve, and the court-martial shall impose'. He read them deliberately, with a powerful voice; and the Articles, already inimical, took on a darker, more threatening tone. When he had finished the silence was still quite as profound, and now there was a greater uneasiness in it.
       He closed the boards, looked coldly fore and aft, and said 'Captain Pullings, we will take in the royals and haul down the flying jib. When they are stowed, hands may be piped to dinner.'
       It was a quiet meal, with little or none of the shouting and banging of mess-kids that usually greeted the Sunday plum-duff and the grog; and while it was being eaten Jack walked his quarterdeck as he had so very often walked it before: seventeen paces forward, seventeen paces aft, turning on a ring-bolt long since polished silver by his shoe.
       Now of course the half-heard jokes, the covert allusions to Mr Oakes's weariness, his need for a sustaining diet and so on, were perfectly clear. He turned the situation over and over in his mind; flushes of pure exasperation interrupted his judgment from time to time, but he felt in perfect command of his temper when he went below and sent for the midshipman.
       'Well, Mr Oakes,' he said, 'what have you to say?'
       'I have nothing to say, sir,' replied Oakes, turning his oddly mottled face aside. 'Nothing at all, and I throw myself on your mercy. Only we hoped—I hoped—you would carry us away from that horrible place. She was so very unhappy.'
       'I am to take it she was a convict?'
       'Yes, sir; but unjustly condemned, I am sure.'
       'You know perfectly well that I have turned away dozens, scores of others.'
       'Yet you let Padeen come aboard, sir,' said Oakes, and then clasped his hands in a hopeless, stupid attempt at unsaying the words, doing utterly away with them.
       'Get away forward,' said Jack. 'I shall take no action, make no decision today, this