Page:The Best Continental Short Stories of 1923–1924.djvu/86

 along the masts and the ships' sides were mirrored in the Water.…

It must be gone—tomorrow—the day after—next week it must be in Memel.… His grim features become restless, his lips deep hidden in his beard no longer twitch with ready humour. His eyes glare like those of a beast of prey—behind his brow his wits are at work—he cudgels his brain striving to find a plan.… he must be set free this time.… That is the haven towards which he must fight his way. He must be as sure, as certain of himself, as when he steered his smuggler's craft past hidden rocks and watchful coastguards.

The blind alley in which he is vainly groping becomes unbearable, he turns again to the lads whom chance has given him for companions, and in their curious eyes he reads the thought that fills his own mind; they are wondering will he escape imprisonment this time or no?

“Brushwood thieves,” he grinned contemptuously at them, drawing himself up sharply to his full height, so that his broad shoulders seemed to support his body like a spar on which all else was hung.

“Boys ahoy!—what would you say was my size?” he said.

One of the youths, the one who had spoken earlier, smiled slyly, winking at the speaker.

“Too big to be held by these walls, anyhow.”

“Right,” he thundered in pleasure.

“We were playing ‘durak’ for thy luck,” the youth went on, growing bolder.

“I need no luck but my own,” he answered, with head thrown back.

“They say the judge is a new one—come lately from the Mainland,” the other lad put in hurriedly, anxious for a say in the matter.

Parbu-Jaan looked at the last speaker's long face, at his forehead hidden by the thick hair, at the bony contours of his nose and jaw.

“Whose boy art thou?” he asked with an attempt of good humour. “A new judge,” he added thoughtfully, already forgetting the boy.