Scarface Read Free Page A

half-closed eyes.
    â€œYou were asking for me, sir?” Scarface measured with his eyes the level of rum in the decanter on the table. For by that barometer might the Captain's mood be foretold.
    â€œAye, you hang-dog rogue. Where have you been?” Cheap's features did not lose their pleasant openness, but the boy knew the threat which lay just beneath the surface of the Captain's good humor.
    â€œOut in the hills. When a man's ashore—”
    â€œA man? You spindle-shanked brat—dare you call yourself a man? Do you hold yourself above correction? I would have you know that I am still master in my own house! Do you dare to trifle with me—?”
    Cheap was deliberately working himself into one of those rages with which Scarface was painfully familiar. It was almost as if Cheap were sometimes two different men—one raging and the other cool and unruffled standing aside to watch with curious interest the excesses of his baser self. The only answer was to stand unreplying and let the Captain's anger wash where it willed until the two menwere one again. But today Cheap put rein to his rage himself.
    â€œGo to,” he reached for his half-filled glass. “You're gallows’ meat and will come to that end. Like father, like son.” He laughed, a low, evil and yet curiously sweet laugh which was his alone, the tinkling of which would ring in Scarface's ears for all his life. “Since you have at last remembered your duties, you'd best be about them. Get my sea chest down to the ship—we sail with the tide. Do not show me a long face now, ’tis time for us tobe asea. The land air grows thick in my throat.” He sniffed delicately at the scent on his fine handkerchief.
    Without answer Scarface tramped back through the house to the Captain's bedchamber, summoning the black slave to shoulder the chest. Errand boy he might be, but he was a freeman and as such he did not appear in the lanes carrying his master's boxes.
    Back again through the patio they went. Liza had returned there and was squatting in her favorite seat by the ever dry fountain, mumbling to herself, her eyes fast upon the forepart of the house where the Captain took his wine-bought ease. She was slitting red peppers into long tongue-shaped strips with a knife, but she little resembled a cook at honest employment. At the boy's passing she looked up at him with a grunted farewell of her own fashioning.
    â€œOff be ye, eh? An’ a rope at th’ end, loike enough.”
    â€œLike as not,” he replied as carelessly. “ ’Tis the usual end of those of our trade. Like man, like master though, Liza. If you foresee that end for me, you'd better hunt you another sty for I sail with Cheap and captains hang as easily and as high as their men.”

    For a moment her knife was still as she peered at him intently through the filthy ropes of her hair. Then with a boom of laughter she reached for another pepper. “ ’Twill take a man t’ ’ang th’ Cap'n!”
    â€œOne like Sir Robert Scarlett?” asked Scarface idly.
    To his surprise the pepper fell from her fingers and blood welled from a cut on her thumb where the knife had slipped. But to this or to the pepper in the dust she paid no heed. Her attention was all for the boy standing over her and for once in her life she found no words.
    â€œWot d'ye know o’ Scarlett?” she croaked at last.
    â€œThat he was once a pirate and then contrived to win himself a better place in the world. And that in consequence he is hated by the scum here.”
    Liza's claw-hand closed about the boy's wrist, leaving a drabble of blood on his arm. “Wot else? I ’ave always bin friend t’ ye, ain't I now?” she whined, drawing herself up by her hold on him. Her breath, sour with gin fumes, was hot on his cheek. “Iffen I ‘ave cuffed ye now an’ again, ‘twas fer yer own good. Look ye,