Niall laughed and stretched himself and yawned. He wondered if it would be a good idea to finish the brandy and the ginger syrup. He stared idly down into the cabin. It was then he noticed, for the first time, the long trickle of water on the cabin floor. He stared at it, puzzled. There was nothing to upset. No spray had come in through the ports; and, anyway, the ports were closed. No rain had settled in the bilges, because no rain had fallen for the past two days. Why then the water on the cabin floor? Niall went down below to inspect the trickle closer.
He put his fingers in the liquid. It was salt. He looked about him for a screw-driver to lift up the floorboard. He found one at last at the back of a locker. The search had taken time, and when he knelt down to lift the board, the trickle had become a stream.
He jerked up the board with his screwdriver, and he saw that the bilges were full of water, salt like the stream upon the floor. In some part of the boat, whether forward or aft he had no notion where, a leak had sprung. He supposed that it must be a bad leak because of the rate at which the water was entering the boat.
He wondered what to do. He took up more floorboards, with the idea of finding the leak and plugging it with something, but when he did this the water came up more quickly and lapped over his feet.
He hastily put back the boards, so that the water became a stream again. But the trouble was that it became an ever-widening stream.
He remembered vaguely a phrase from boyhood books, “All hands to the pumps,” and he knew there was a pump in the locker aft of the cockpit. He found the pump. It was rusty, he had not used it for some time. He assembled it clumsily and placed the nozzle in the socket on the deck. It made a curious hissing sound, like the pump on a child’s bicycle that would not work. It felt much too light. He took it out of the nozzle and examined it. The rubber washer round the base had perished, and there was a hole that should have had a screw inside it, but the screw was missing. The pump, in fact, was useless. Nor had he a baler, he had left the baler in the dinghy at the moorings. There was an old jug below that would have to serve instead. He went below again to get the jug, but by now the water covered the boards of the floor. He started baling the water with the jug. After five minutes of this, kneeling, with cramped back, and throwing the water from the porthole, he realized that he was making little if no impression on the rising stream. To bale was wasted effort. He went up again on deck.
The wind, if anything, had lightened; the sea was slaty smooth. There was no steamer smoke now on the horizon, and no sign of any ship. The land lay astern, about seven miles distant. Even the gull had gone. Niall sat down in the cockpit once again and watched the water rising on the cabin floor.
His first reaction was relief to be alone. He had not the responsibility of a second person. But swiftly upon this thought came a feeling of melancholy, of sadness. It would have been nice, at such a moment, to talk aloud. Someone like Charles would have been invaluable. Men who had fought in wars, who ran estates, who were efficient, would be sure to know how to cope with a leaking boat. Charles would have found the leak. Charles, if he had not found the leak, would have known how to make a raft. He would have busied himself lashing boards together. Niall did not know how to do any of these things. He only knew how to write songs. Thinking of his song, he looked down again into the cabin, and he saw that the notebook in which he had written down the score had fallen from the ledge beside his bunk, and was now floating, face downwards, in the rising stream. Already it was brown and sodden. He rescued it and brought it back, and kept it beside him on the cockpit seat. There was something sinister and inevitable about the swishing water in the cabin, and he closed the hatch, so that he need not watch it rise. He set a course for land, but now that the breeze had fallen away the ship had very little way under her and hardly moved. The sails lapped softly, scandalized no longer, it was true, but ill at ease. Niall had never installed an engine in the boat because he had always known that he could not make an engine work. He was glad the wind did not come in gusts to rattle him. Had it done so the odds were that something would have carried away, some rope, some shroud, some vital piece of tackle.
He was glad too that the sea was still so smooth. To swim about for hours in rough water would have frightened him, made him catch his breath and choke and lose his head. Whereas in the water that lay about him now he need not even swim; he could lie upon his back and float.
One thing at any rate was certain. Maria would get his telegram.
As Niall sat in the cockpit, waiting, and watching the sun go down upon the land, he found himself thinking, not of Maria, not of the songs he had written, not even of the lost, faded image of Mama; but of Truda. He thought of kind, comforting old Truda, and of her broad, safe lap. He thought of the gray stuff dress she used to wear and of how he had rubbed his face against it as a little boy.
And it seemed to him, sitting there in the cockpit, alone, upon the sea, that the sea itself was calm and comforting, even as Truda had been long ago. The sea was another Truda, upon which he could cast himself when the time came, without anguish, without fear.
About the Author
Daphne du Maurier (1907–1989) was born in London, the daughter of the actor Sir Gerald du Maurier and granddaughter of the author and artist George du Maurier. Her first novel, The Loving Spirit, was published in 1931, but it would be her fifth novel, Rebecca, that made her one of the most popular authors of her day. Besides novels, du Maurier wrote plays, biographies, and several collections of short fiction. Many of her works were made into films, including Rebecca, Jamaica Inn, My Cousin Rachel, “Don’t Look Now,” and “The Birds.” She lived most of her life in Cornwall, and was made a Dame of the British Empire in 1969.
Books by Daphne du Maurier
Novels
The Loving Spirit
I’ll Never Be Young Again
Julius
Jamaica Inn
Rebecca
Frenchman’s Creek
Hungry Hill
The King’s General
The Parasites
My Cousin Rachel
Mary Anne
The Scapegoat
Castle Dor
The Glass-Blowers
The Flight of the Falcon
The House on the Strand
Rule Britannia
Short Stories
The Birds and Other Stories
The Breaking Point: Stories
Don’t Look Now and Other Stories
Nonfiction
Gerald: A Portrait
The du Mauriers
The Infernal World of Branwell Brontë
Golden Lads: A Study of Anthony Bacon, Francis, and Their Friends
The Winding Stair: Francis Bacon, His Rise and Fall
Myself When Young
The Rebecca Notebook and Other Memories
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Welcome
Dedication
Epigraph
Foreword
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
&nbs
p; Chapter 25
About the Author
Books by Daphne du Maurier
Newsletters
Copyright
Copyright
The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Copyright © 1949 by The Estate of Daphne du Maurier
Foreword copyright © 2005 by Julie Myerson
Cover design by Susan Zucker
Cover image by Arcangel
Cover copyright © 2013 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at
[email protected] Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
Little, Brown and Company
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First Little, Brown ebook edition: December 2013
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ISBN 978-0-316-25350-5
E3
Daphne Du Maurier, The Parasites
(Series: # )
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