Read Online Complete Short Stories by Robert Graves - Free Book Online
Authors: Robert Graves
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out of my way to make myself pleasant to him; that would have been no sort of game – an auction with thebidding in sugar plums and the prize to go to the men who bid highest. No, no, no! I answered his questions civilly, though not always pertinently, I supplied him with necessaries, and saw that he didn’t run into danger: but I allowed him no loose conversation. Little Pekey Durnsford felt ever so uncomfortable (and even, I believe, went so far as to ask Morgan to apologize to me), but I felt perfectlyhappy. You see, child, having got accustomed to the deathly silence of Desolation Island when Iwas by myself for months at a time, I thoroughly enjoyed the very lively silence of the man Morgan. Often he was on the point of asking me something important about the island which only I could tell him, but then his haughty pride choked back the question. And so next day the question would come innocentlyenough through Durnsford. I would put on my “Schoolgirls we” voice and say: “Darling, that’s a
great
secret. But if you promise
on your honour
never to tell anyone else in the world about it, I’ll whisper it to you.” Durnsford would smile unhappily, and Morgan would scowl.
‘There were several rooms in my shack, but mostly storerooms, and only one big stove. Morgan made a show of moving his belongingsinto another room; but he got too cold and had to sneak back. It was a log-built shack, by the way, with steel doors and steel window shutters. It had an airtight lining and it was anchored to the rock with four great steel cables that went right across the roof. Understand, child, that in the Antarctic we keep a special and unique sort of blizzard, so these were necessary precautions.
‘Well!The oil tanker had steamed off and the whalers had come and dumped their barrels and had their blubber parties and said goodbye; so unless there came a chance call from a vessel that was built pretty sturdy against the ice, like the one my predecessor went away in – he’d been killing himself with Scotch and couldn’t lay off it because nobody was at hand to tell him not to make a beast of himself– unless a chance vessel called, you see, there we were together for another nine or ten solid months. I had a wireless apparatus, but it hadn’t much of a range, and it was rarely I picked up a passing ship except in the season.
‘For five solid months the man Morgan kept it up’ (here Papa Johnson resumed the moustache, which had fallen off). ‘“Durnsford, old fellow, do you think that you couldprevail on that comedian friend of yours to disencumber the case he’s sitting on? It happens to contain the photographic plates. He has apparently taken a three-year lease on it, with the option of renewal. Haw! Haw! Haw!” Durnsford looked at me apologetically. I didn’t get off the packing case, of course… I never asked Durnsford to relay a message to Morgan. I pretended he didn’t exist, and ifhe had been sitting on the packing case and I had wanted anything inside it, I should simply have opened it with him on it. He was afraid of me and careful not to start a roughhouse.
‘They didn’t get on too well with their natural-history studies, because they didn’t know where to look. I knew my island well and there’s a surprising amount of life on it, if you look in the right places, besidesthe prions and the other creatures I mentioned before, which don’t take much finding, and a few ratlike animals that spend most of their life hibernating, and even a few honest-to-God birds. In the interior are fresh-water pools with all sorts of little bugs living in the ice. Heaven knows how they keepalive, but when you thaw them out they wriggle nicely. Durnsford didn’t know that I knew andI didn’t let on; his big friend took him round to see the sights, but he wasn’t by any means so good a guide as Old Papa Johnson would have been.
‘One day, it was twelve noon on Midsummer Eve with the thermometer forty-five below and
great
secret. But if you promise
on your honour
never to tell anyone else in the world about it, I’ll whisper it to you.” Durnsford would smile unhappily, and Morgan would scowl.
‘There were several rooms in my shack, but mostly storerooms, and only one big stove. Morgan made a show of moving his belongingsinto another room; but he got too cold and had to sneak back. It was a log-built shack, by the way, with steel doors and steel window shutters. It had an airtight lining and it was anchored to the rock with four great steel cables that went right across the roof. Understand, child, that in the Antarctic we keep a special and unique sort of blizzard, so these were necessary precautions.
‘Well!The oil tanker had steamed off and the whalers had come and dumped their barrels and had their blubber parties and said goodbye; so unless there came a chance call from a vessel that was built pretty sturdy against the ice, like the one my predecessor went away in – he’d been killing himself with Scotch and couldn’t lay off it because nobody was at hand to tell him not to make a beast of himself– unless a chance vessel called, you see, there we were together for another nine or ten solid months. I had a wireless apparatus, but it hadn’t much of a range, and it was rarely I picked up a passing ship except in the season.
‘For five solid months the man Morgan kept it up’ (here Papa Johnson resumed the moustache, which had fallen off). ‘“Durnsford, old fellow, do you think that you couldprevail on that comedian friend of yours to disencumber the case he’s sitting on? It happens to contain the photographic plates. He has apparently taken a three-year lease on it, with the option of renewal. Haw! Haw! Haw!” Durnsford looked at me apologetically. I didn’t get off the packing case, of course… I never asked Durnsford to relay a message to Morgan. I pretended he didn’t exist, and ifhe had been sitting on the packing case and I had wanted anything inside it, I should simply have opened it with him on it. He was afraid of me and careful not to start a roughhouse.
‘They didn’t get on too well with their natural-history studies, because they didn’t know where to look. I knew my island well and there’s a surprising amount of life on it, if you look in the right places, besidesthe prions and the other creatures I mentioned before, which don’t take much finding, and a few ratlike animals that spend most of their life hibernating, and even a few honest-to-God birds. In the interior are fresh-water pools with all sorts of little bugs living in the ice. Heaven knows how they keepalive, but when you thaw them out they wriggle nicely. Durnsford didn’t know that I knew andI didn’t let on; his big friend took him round to see the sights, but he wasn’t by any means so good a guide as Old Papa Johnson would have been.
‘One day, it was twelve noon on Midsummer Eve with the thermometer forty-five below and
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