章节正文
Merry Men
by Robert Louis Stevenson
Contents:
The Merry Men
i. Eilean Aros
ii. What the wreck had brought to Aros
iii. Land and sea in Sandag Bay
iv. The gale
v. A man out of the sea
Will o' the Mill
i. The plain and the stars
ii. The Parson's Marjory
iii. Death
Markheim
Thrawn Janet
Olalla
The Treasure of Franchard
i. By the dying Mountebank
ii. Morning tale
iii. The adoption
iv. The education of the philosopher
v. Treasure trove
vi. A criminalinvestigation, in two parts
vii. The fall of the House of Desprez
viii. The wages of philosophy
***
THE MERRY MEN
CHAPTER I. EILEAN AROS.
IT WAS a beautiful morning in the late July when I set forth on
foot for the last time for Aros. A boat had put me ashore the
night before at Grisapol; I had such breakfast as the little inn
afforded, and, leaving all my baggage till I had an occasion to
come round for it by sea, struck right across the promontory with a
cheerful heart.
I was far from being a native of these parts, springing, as I did,
from an unmixed lowland stock. But an uncle of mine, Gordon
Darnaway, after a poor, rough youth, and some years at sea, had
married a young wife in the islands; Mary Maclean she was called,
the last of her family; and when she died in giving birth to a
daughter, Aros, the sea-girt farm, had remained in his possession.
It brought him in nothing but the means of life, as I was well
aware; but he was a man whom ill-fortune had pursued; he feared,
cumbered as he was with the young child, to make a fresh adventure
upon life; and remained in Aros, biting his nails at destiny.
Years passed over his head in that isolation, and brought neither
help nor contentment. Meantime our family was dying out in the
lowlands; there is little luck for any of that race; and perhaps my
father was the luckiest of all, for not only was he one of the last
to die, but he left a son to his name and a little money to support
it. I was a student of Edinburgh University, living well enough at
my own charges, but without kith or kin; when some news of me found
its way to Uncle Gordon on the Ross of Grisapol; and he, as he was
a man who held blood thicker than water, wrote to me the day he
heard of my existence, and taught me to count Aros as my home.
Thus it was that I came to spend my vacations in that part of the
country, so far from all society and comfort, between the codfish
and the moorcocks; and thus it was that now, when I had done with
my classes, I was returning thither with so light a heart that July
day.
The Ross, as we call it, is a promontory neither wide nor high, but
as rough as God made it to this day; the deep sea on either hand of
it, full of rugged isles and reefs most perilous to seamen - all
overlooked from the eastward by some very high cliffs and the great
peals of Ben Kyaw. THE MOUNTAIN OF THE MIST, they say the words
signify in the Gaelic tongue; and it is well named. For that hill-
top, which is more than three thousand feet in height, catches all
the clouds that come blowing from the seaward; and, indeed, I used
often to think that it must make them for itself; since when all
heaven was clear to the sea level, there would ever be a streamer
on Ben Kyaw. It brought water, too, and was mossy (1) to the top
in consequence. I have seen us sitting in broad sunshine on the
Ross, and the rain falling black like crape upon the mountain. But
the wetness of it made it often appear more beautiful to my eyes;
for when the sun struck upon the hill sides, there were many wet
rocks and watercourses that shone like jewels even as far as Aros,
fifteen miles away.
The road that I followed was a cattle-track. It twisted so as
nearly to double the length of my journey; it went over rough
boulders so that a man had to leap from one to another, and through
soft bottoms where the moss came nearly to the knee. There was no
cultivation anywhere, and not one house in the ten miles from
Grisapol to Aros. Houses of course there were - three at least;
but they lay so far on the one side or the other that no stranger
could have found them from the track. A large part of the Ross is
covered with big granite rocks, some of them larger than a two-
roomed house, one beside another, with fern and deep heather in
between them where the vipers breed. Anyway the wind was, it was
always sea air, as salt as on a ship; the gulls were as free as
moorfowl over all the Ross; and whenever the way rose a little,
your eye would kindle with the brightness of the sea. From the
very midst of the land, on a day of wind and a high spring, I have
heard the Roost roaring, like a battle where it runs by Aros, and
the great and fearful voices of the breakers that we call the Merry
Men.
Aros itself - Aros Jay, I have heard the natives call it, and they
say it means THE HOUSE OF GOD - Aros itself was not properly a
piece of the Ross, nor was it quite an islet. It formed the south-
west corner of the land, fitted close to it, and was in one place
only separated from the coast by a little gut of the sea, not forty
feet across the narrowest. When the tide was full, this was clear
and still, like a pool on a land river; only there was a difference
in the weeds and fishes, and the water itself was green instead of
brown; but when the tide went out, in the bottom of the ebb, there
was a day or two in every month when you could pass dryshod from
Aros to the mainland. There was some good pasture, where my uncle
fed the sheep he lived on; perhaps the feed was better because the
ground rose higher on the islet than the main level of the Ross,
but this I am not skilled enough to settle. The house was a good
one for that country, two storeys high. It looked westward over a
bay, with a pier hard by for a boat, and from the door you could
watch the vapours blowing on Ben Kyaw.
On all this part of the coast, and especially near Aros, these
great granite rocks that I have spoken of go down together in
troops into the sea, like cattle on a summer's day. There they
stand, for all the world like their neighbours ashore; only the
salt water sobbing between them instead of the quiet earth, and
clots of sea-pink blooming on their sides instead of heather; and
the great sea conger to wreathe about the base of them instead of
the poisonous viper of the land. On calm days you can go wandering
between them in a boat for hours, echoes following you about the
labyrinth; but when the sea is up, Heaven help the man that hears
that cauldron boiling.
Off the south-west end of Aros these blocks are very many, and much
greater in size. Indeed, they must grow monstrously bigger out to
sea, for there must be ten sea miles of open water sown with them
as thick as a country place with houses, some standing thirty feet
above the tides, some covered, but all perilous to ships; so that
on a clear, westerly blowing day, I have counted, from the top of
Aros, the great rollers breaking white and heavy over as many as
six-and-forty buried reefs. But it is nearer in shore that the
danger is worst; for the tide, here running like a mill race, makes
a long belt of broken water - a ROOST we call it - at the tail of
the land. I have often been out there in a dead calm at the slack
of the tide; and a strange place it is, with the sea swirling and
combing up and boiling like the cauldrons of a linn, and now and
again a little dancing mutter of sound as though the ROOST were
talking to itself. But when the tide begins to run again, and
above all in heavy weather, there is no man could take a boat
within half a mile of it, nor a ship afloat that could either steer
or live in such a place. You can hear the roaring of it six miles
away. At the seaward end there comes the strongest of the bubble;
and it's here that these big breakers dance together - the dance of
death, it may be called - that have got the name, in these parts,
of the Merry Men. I have heard it said that they run fifty feet
high; but that must be the green water only, for the spray runs
twice as high as that. Whether they got the name from their
movements, which are swift and antic, or from the shouting they
make about the turn of the tide, so that all Aros shakes with it,
is more than I can tell.
The truth is, that in a south-westerly wind, that part of our
archipelago is no better than a trap. If a ship got through the
reefs, and weathered the Merry Men, it would be to come ashore on
the south coast of Aros, in Sandag Bay, where so many dismal things
befell our family, as I propose to tell. The thought of all these
dangers, in the place I knew so long, makes me particularly welcome
the works now going forward to set lights upon the headlands and
buoys along the channels of our iron-bound, inhospitable islands.
The country people had many a story about Aros, as I used to hear
from my uncle's man, Rorie, an old servant of the Macleans, who had
transferred his services without afterthought on the occasion of
the marriage. There was some tale of an unlucky creature, a sea-
kelpie, that dwelt and did business in some fearful manner of his
own among the boiling breakers of the Roost. A mermaid had once
met a piper on Sandag beach, and there sang to him a long, bright
midsummer's night, so that in the morning he was found stricken
crazy, and from thenceforward, till the day he died, said only one
form of words; what they were in the original Gaelic I cannot tell,
but they were thus translated: 'Ah, the sweet singing out of the
sea.' Seals that haunted on that coast have been known to speak to
man in his own tongue, presaging great disasters. It was here that
a certain saint first landed on his voyage out of Ireland to
convert the Hebrideans. And, indeed, I think he had some claim to
be called saint; for, with the boats of that past age, to make so
rough a passage, and land on such a ticklish coast, was surely not
far short of the miraculous. It was to him, or to some of his
monkish underlings who had a cell there, that the islet owes its
holy and beautiful name, the House of God.
Among these old wives' stories there was one which I was inclined
to hear with more credulity. As I was told, in that tempest which
scattered the ships of the Invincible Armada over all the north and
west of Scotland, one great vessel came ashore on Aros, and before
the eyes of some solitary people on a hill-top, went down in a
moment with all hands, her colours flying even as she sank. There
was some likelihood in this tale; for another of that fleet lay
sunk on the north side, twenty miles from Grisapol. It was told, I
thought, with more detail and gravity than its companion stories,
and there was one particularity which went far to convince me of
its truth: the name, that is, of the ship was still remembered, and
sounded, in my ears, Spanishly. The ESPIRITO SANTO they called it,
a great ship of many decks of guns, laden with treasure and
grandees of Spain, and fierce soldadoes, that now lay fathom deep
to all eternity, done with her wars and voyages, in Sandag bay,
upon the west of Aros. No more salvos of ordnance for that tall
ship, the 'Holy Spirit,' no more fair winds or happy ventures; only
to rot there deep in the sea-tangle and hear the shoutings of the
Merry Men as the tide ran high about the island. It was a strange
thought to me first and last, and only grew stranger as I learned
the more of Spain, from which she had set sail with so proud a
company, and King Philip, the wealthy king, that sent her on that
voyage.
And now I must tell you, as I walked from Grisapol that day, the
by Robert Louis Stevenson
Contents:
The Merry Men
i. Eilean Aros
ii. What the wreck had brought to Aros
iii. Land and sea in Sandag Bay
iv. The gale
v. A man out of the sea
Will o' the Mill
i. The plain and the stars
ii. The Parson's Marjory
iii. Death
Markheim
Thrawn Janet
Olalla
The Treasure of Franchard
i. By the dying Mountebank
ii. Morning tale
iii. The adoption
iv. The education of the philosopher
v. Treasure trove
vi. A criminalinvestigation, in two parts
vii. The fall of the House of Desprez
viii. The wages of philosophy
***
THE MERRY MEN
CHAPTER I. EILEAN AROS.
IT WAS a beautiful morning in the late July when I set forth on
foot for the last time for Aros. A boat had put me ashore the
night before at Grisapol; I had such breakfast as the little inn
afforded, and, leaving all my baggage till I had an occasion to
come round for it by sea, struck right across the promontory with a
cheerful heart.
I was far from being a native of these parts, springing, as I did,
from an unmixed lowland stock. But an uncle of mine, Gordon
Darnaway, after a poor, rough youth, and some years at sea, had
married a young wife in the islands; Mary Maclean she was called,
the last of her family; and when she died in giving birth to a
daughter, Aros, the sea-girt farm, had remained in his possession.
It brought him in nothing but the means of life, as I was well
aware; but he was a man whom ill-fortune had pursued; he feared,
cumbered as he was with the young child, to make a fresh adventure
upon life; and remained in Aros, biting his nails at destiny.
Years passed over his head in that isolation, and brought neither
help nor contentment. Meantime our family was dying out in the
lowlands; there is little luck for any of that race; and perhaps my
father was the luckiest of all, for not only was he one of the last
to die, but he left a son to his name and a little money to support
it. I was a student of Edinburgh University, living well enough at
my own charges, but without kith or kin; when some news of me found
its way to Uncle Gordon on the Ross of Grisapol; and he, as he was
a man who held blood thicker than water, wrote to me the day he
heard of my existence, and taught me to count Aros as my home.
Thus it was that I came to spend my vacations in that part of the
country, so far from all society and comfort, between the codfish
and the moorcocks; and thus it was that now, when I had done with
my classes, I was returning thither with so light a heart that July
day.
The Ross, as we call it, is a promontory neither wide nor high, but
as rough as God made it to this day; the deep sea on either hand of
it, full of rugged isles and reefs most perilous to seamen - all
overlooked from the eastward by some very high cliffs and the great
peals of Ben Kyaw. THE MOUNTAIN OF THE MIST, they say the words
signify in the Gaelic tongue; and it is well named. For that hill-
top, which is more than three thousand feet in height, catches all
the clouds that come blowing from the seaward; and, indeed, I used
often to think that it must make them for itself; since when all
heaven was clear to the sea level, there would ever be a streamer
on Ben Kyaw. It brought water, too, and was mossy (1) to the top
in consequence. I have seen us sitting in broad sunshine on the
Ross, and the rain falling black like crape upon the mountain. But
the wetness of it made it often appear more beautiful to my eyes;
for when the sun struck upon the hill sides, there were many wet
rocks and watercourses that shone like jewels even as far as Aros,
fifteen miles away.
The road that I followed was a cattle-track. It twisted so as
nearly to double the length of my journey; it went over rough
boulders so that a man had to leap from one to another, and through
soft bottoms where the moss came nearly to the knee. There was no
cultivation anywhere, and not one house in the ten miles from
Grisapol to Aros. Houses of course there were - three at least;
but they lay so far on the one side or the other that no stranger
could have found them from the track. A large part of the Ross is
covered with big granite rocks, some of them larger than a two-
roomed house, one beside another, with fern and deep heather in
between them where the vipers breed. Anyway the wind was, it was
always sea air, as salt as on a ship; the gulls were as free as
moorfowl over all the Ross; and whenever the way rose a little,
your eye would kindle with the brightness of the sea. From the
very midst of the land, on a day of wind and a high spring, I have
heard the Roost roaring, like a battle where it runs by Aros, and
the great and fearful voices of the breakers that we call the Merry
Men.
Aros itself - Aros Jay, I have heard the natives call it, and they
say it means THE HOUSE OF GOD - Aros itself was not properly a
piece of the Ross, nor was it quite an islet. It formed the south-
west corner of the land, fitted close to it, and was in one place
only separated from the coast by a little gut of the sea, not forty
feet across the narrowest. When the tide was full, this was clear
and still, like a pool on a land river; only there was a difference
in the weeds and fishes, and the water itself was green instead of
brown; but when the tide went out, in the bottom of the ebb, there
was a day or two in every month when you could pass dryshod from
Aros to the mainland. There was some good pasture, where my uncle
fed the sheep he lived on; perhaps the feed was better because the
ground rose higher on the islet than the main level of the Ross,
but this I am not skilled enough to settle. The house was a good
one for that country, two storeys high. It looked westward over a
bay, with a pier hard by for a boat, and from the door you could
watch the vapours blowing on Ben Kyaw.
On all this part of the coast, and especially near Aros, these
great granite rocks that I have spoken of go down together in
troops into the sea, like cattle on a summer's day. There they
stand, for all the world like their neighbours ashore; only the
salt water sobbing between them instead of the quiet earth, and
clots of sea-pink blooming on their sides instead of heather; and
the great sea conger to wreathe about the base of them instead of
the poisonous viper of the land. On calm days you can go wandering
between them in a boat for hours, echoes following you about the
labyrinth; but when the sea is up, Heaven help the man that hears
that cauldron boiling.
Off the south-west end of Aros these blocks are very many, and much
greater in size. Indeed, they must grow monstrously bigger out to
sea, for there must be ten sea miles of open water sown with them
as thick as a country place with houses, some standing thirty feet
above the tides, some covered, but all perilous to ships; so that
on a clear, westerly blowing day, I have counted, from the top of
Aros, the great rollers breaking white and heavy over as many as
six-and-forty buried reefs. But it is nearer in shore that the
danger is worst; for the tide, here running like a mill race, makes
a long belt of broken water - a ROOST we call it - at the tail of
the land. I have often been out there in a dead calm at the slack
of the tide; and a strange place it is, with the sea swirling and
combing up and boiling like the cauldrons of a linn, and now and
again a little dancing mutter of sound as though the ROOST were
talking to itself. But when the tide begins to run again, and
above all in heavy weather, there is no man could take a boat
within half a mile of it, nor a ship afloat that could either steer
or live in such a place. You can hear the roaring of it six miles
away. At the seaward end there comes the strongest of the bubble;
and it's here that these big breakers dance together - the dance of
death, it may be called - that have got the name, in these parts,
of the Merry Men. I have heard it said that they run fifty feet
high; but that must be the green water only, for the spray runs
twice as high as that. Whether they got the name from their
movements, which are swift and antic, or from the shouting they
make about the turn of the tide, so that all Aros shakes with it,
is more than I can tell.
The truth is, that in a south-westerly wind, that part of our
archipelago is no better than a trap. If a ship got through the
reefs, and weathered the Merry Men, it would be to come ashore on
the south coast of Aros, in Sandag Bay, where so many dismal things
befell our family, as I propose to tell. The thought of all these
dangers, in the place I knew so long, makes me particularly welcome
the works now going forward to set lights upon the headlands and
buoys along the channels of our iron-bound, inhospitable islands.
The country people had many a story about Aros, as I used to hear
from my uncle's man, Rorie, an old servant of the Macleans, who had
transferred his services without afterthought on the occasion of
the marriage. There was some tale of an unlucky creature, a sea-
kelpie, that dwelt and did business in some fearful manner of his
own among the boiling breakers of the Roost. A mermaid had once
met a piper on Sandag beach, and there sang to him a long, bright
midsummer's night, so that in the morning he was found stricken
crazy, and from thenceforward, till the day he died, said only one
form of words; what they were in the original Gaelic I cannot tell,
but they were thus translated: 'Ah, the sweet singing out of the
sea.' Seals that haunted on that coast have been known to speak to
man in his own tongue, presaging great disasters. It was here that
a certain saint first landed on his voyage out of Ireland to
convert the Hebrideans. And, indeed, I think he had some claim to
be called saint; for, with the boats of that past age, to make so
rough a passage, and land on such a ticklish coast, was surely not
far short of the miraculous. It was to him, or to some of his
monkish underlings who had a cell there, that the islet owes its
holy and beautiful name, the House of God.
Among these old wives' stories there was one which I was inclined
to hear with more credulity. As I was told, in that tempest which
scattered the ships of the Invincible Armada over all the north and
west of Scotland, one great vessel came ashore on Aros, and before
the eyes of some solitary people on a hill-top, went down in a
moment with all hands, her colours flying even as she sank. There
was some likelihood in this tale; for another of that fleet lay
sunk on the north side, twenty miles from Grisapol. It was told, I
thought, with more detail and gravity than its companion stories,
and there was one particularity which went far to convince me of
its truth: the name, that is, of the ship was still remembered, and
sounded, in my ears, Spanishly. The ESPIRITO SANTO they called it,
a great ship of many decks of guns, laden with treasure and
grandees of Spain, and fierce soldadoes, that now lay fathom deep
to all eternity, done with her wars and voyages, in Sandag bay,
upon the west of Aros. No more salvos of ordnance for that tall
ship, the 'Holy Spirit,' no more fair winds or happy ventures; only
to rot there deep in the sea-tangle and hear the shoutings of the
Merry Men as the tide ran high about the island. It was a strange
thought to me first and last, and only grew stranger as I learned
the more of Spain, from which she had set sail with so proud a
company, and King Philip, the wealthy king, that sent her on that
voyage.
And now I must tell you, as I walked from Grisapol that day, the
- criminal [´kriminəl]
a.犯罪的 n.罪犯 (初中英语单词) - investigation [in,vesti´geiʃən] n.调查(研究) (初中英语单词)
- ashore [ə´ʃɔ:] ad.向岸上 (初中英语单词)
- meantime [´mi:ntaim] n.&ad.其间；同时 (初中英语单词)
- existence [ig´zistəns] n.存在；生存；生活 (初中英语单词)
- thither [´ðiðə] ad.到那里 a.那边的 (初中英语单词)
- height [hait] n.高度；顶点；卓越 (初中英语单词)
- consequence [´kɔnsikwəns] n.结果；后果；推断 (初中英语单词)
- sunshine [´sʌnʃain] n.日光，阳光 (初中英语单词)
- anywhere [´eniweə] ad.无论何处；任何地方 (初中英语单词)
- whenever [wen´evə] conj.&ad.无论何时 (初中英语单词)
- fearful [´fiəfəl] a.可怕的；担心的 (初中英语单词)
- properly [´prɔpəli] ad.适当地；严格地 (初中英语单词)
- pasture [´pɑ:stʃə] n.牧场；放牧 v.吃(草) (初中英语单词)
- spoken [´spəukən] speak的过去分词 (初中英语单词)
- standing [´stændiŋ] n.持续 a.直立的 (初中英语单词)
- running [´rʌniŋ] a.奔跑的；流动的 (初中英语单词)
- mutter [´mʌtə] v.&n.咕哝；嘀咕 (初中英语单词)
- haunted [´hɔ:tid] a.常出现鬼的，闹鬼的 (初中英语单词)
- voyage [´vɔi-idʒ] n.&vi.航海；航程；旅行 (初中英语单词)
- vessel [´vesəl] n.容器；船；脉管 (初中英语单词)
- companion [kəm´pæniən] n.同伴；同事；伴侣 (初中英语单词)
- convince [kən´vins] vt.使确信；使认识错误 (初中英语单词)
- fierce [fiəs] a.残忍的；强烈的 (初中英语单词)
- wealthy [´welθi] a.富有的；丰富的 (初中英语单词)
- baggage [´bægidʒ] n.行李 (高中英语单词)
- lowland [´ləulənd] n.&a.低地(的) (高中英语单词)
- rugged [´rʌgid] a.不平的；粗犷的 (高中英语单词)
- perilous [´periləs] a.危险的；冒险的 (高中英语单词)
- granite [´grænit] n.花岗岩 (高中英语单词)
- kindle [´kindl] v.点燃；(使)激动 (高中英语单词)
- brightness [´braitnis] n.光明；快乐 (高中英语单词)
- skilled [skild] a.有技能的，熟练的 (高中英语单词)
- westward [´westwəd] a.向西的 n.西方；西部 (高中英语单词)
- dismal [´dizməl] a.灰暗的；阴郁的 (高中英语单词)
- ireland [´aiələnd] n.爱尔兰 (高中英语单词)
- tempest [´tempist] n.暴风雨 (高中英语单词)
- solitary [´sɔlitəri] a.独居的；孤独的 (高中英语单词)
- gravity [´græviti] n.严肃；严重；重力 (高中英语单词)
- eternity [i´tə:niti] n.永恒，来世，无穷 (高中英语单词)
- contentment [kən´tentmənt] n.满足；使人满意的事 (英语四级单词)
- edinburgh [´edinbərə] n.爱丁堡 (英语四级单词)
- eastward [´i:stwəd] a.&ad.向东(的) (英语四级单词)
- mainland [´meinlənd] n.大陆；本土 (英语四级单词)
- blooming [´blu:miŋ] a.正开花的；妙龄的 (英语四级单词)
- wreathe [ri:ð] v.做成花圈；盘绕；拧 (英语四级单词)
- poisonous [´pɔizənəs] a.有毒的；讨厌的 (英语四级单词)
- afloat [ə´fləut] ad.&a.漂浮；在海上 (英语四级单词)
- unlucky [ʌn´lʌki] a.倒霉的，不幸的 (英语四级单词)
- fathom [´fæðəm] n.英寻 vt.推测，揣摩 (英语四级单词)
- biting [´baitiŋ] a.刺痛的；尖利的 (英语六级单词)
- isolation [,aisə´leiʃən] n.隔离，孤立 (英语六级单词)
- seaward [´si:wəd] a.&ad.朝海(的) (英语六级单词)
- heather [´heðə] n.石南属植物 (英语六级单词)
- miraculous [mi´rækjuləs] a.非凡的；奇迹般的 (英语六级单词)
- credulity [kri´dju:liti] n.轻信 (英语六级单词)
- armada [ɑ:´mɑ:də] n.舰队；(飞机)机群 (英语六级单词)
- likelihood [´laiklihud] n.可能，相似性 (英语六级单词)
文章标签:名著
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