Strange Yesterday by Howard Fast Read Free Book Online Page A

crumpled there in a heap and lay with his face to the boards, the blood running in a little rivulet from his nose, staining the clear whiteness of the wood. When Mr. Mitchell came over and stirred him with the point of his boot, he did not move.
    â€œYou had best have a couple of men stow him in the forecastle, and tell the cook to bring him a bowl of hot broth,” Mr. Cortlandt suggested.
    Still eying the unconscious man, Mr. Mitchell nodded. “Fine build of a fellow,” he remarked, “and I’m willing to wager it’s a pretty penny our good Kwalkee made out of him. After a while, he’ll do. The treatment does for the toughest of them. No seaman, though, and that’s a pity.” And then he walked away, calling to two sailors as he went.
    They came over, and they took up John Preswick, one by the feet and one beneath the shoulders, and they walked with him to the forecastle, blood leaving a trail of thin drops in their wake.
    While they were carrying him, he opened his eyes, and as they set him into a bunk, he studied them quizzically, saying nothing. One tore a piece from a handkerchief and plugged his nose. John Preswick nodded his thanks. When the broth came, he drank it, and after that he felt better. He drank a glass of water, too, and munched upon a piece of bread soaked to a degree of softness. Then, for a time, he lay silently upon his side, watching the men come in and out, each glancing at him with no great show of interest. At last, when darkness had settled down, he slept—an easy, restful sleep.

4
    I T was not yet day when he awoke; he sat up, rubbed his eyes, and drank a cup of coffee some one handed him. While he was sitting there on the edge of the bunk, a tallish, thin man came to the entrance, looked in, and finally rested his eyes upon John Preswick. “Outside on the main deck!” he snapped, turning upon his heel, and finishing his words as he wheeled out.
    â€œThird mate,” a seaman put in. “Best hurry.”
    â€œWhat ship is this?” John Preswick asked.
    â€œBrig Angel , out of Portsmouth.”
    â€œMerchant ship?”
    The seaman, a young fellow with an uncropped beard curling about his cheeks, smiled, and then nodded. “Yes—merchant.”
    John Preswick rose, standing for a moment as lost in thought; then he said: “We dock in Charleston again—soon?”
    â€œSoon?—I wouldn’t say that.”
    â€œWhere are we bound for?”
    â€œLiverpool—then Venice.”
    â€œWhat—” He was dulled; he shook his head. “You mean—?”
    â€œI’d be getting on deck if I were you. The old man likes his crew on the alert.”
    â€œBut I am not the crew! I have been drugged, robbed, starved, beaten when I was too weak to lift a hand to defend myself. But I am not a part of this rotten hulk!—” The seaman was no longer listening to him. Still forms lay in the bunks about him, like, cadavers on the shelves of a mausoleum. Outside, there was a gray mist in the air. He went up the few steps and onto the deck.
    To the east, the sun was rising. It was the first time John Preswick had ever seen a sunrise at sea. It threw its rays before it, so that the sky became pink and then vermilion behind the tracery of clouds, before even the edge of the disc showed itself. A violet color was striking in from somewhere, dappling the upper reaches of the heavens. Then the globe itself crept out of the horizon, slyly, and then flamboyantly, a haphazard clump of fire, dripping with the long blue flesh of the ocean. It crept up; and, transfixed, John Preswick watched it.
    A hand fell upon his shoulder, and he was spun about. It was the genial Mr. Mitchell of the black mustache and the dark eyes; he stood with his thumbs hooked into his belt, his legs widespread and solid. “Lovely, eh?” he remarked, nodding at the sun.
    Like a tiger prepared to spring, John Preswick glared at him, his