Текст книги "A Smuggler Tale of the Romney Marsh"

Автор книги: Russell Thorndike

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Chapter 4

The Captain

Just as suddenly as the pandemonium had begun, just so suddenly did it cease, for there strode through the door a short, thickset man, with a bull neck and a red face, a regular rough fighting dog, who, by his dress and the extraordinary effect he produced upon the men, Denis and Jerk at once knew to be an officer. “Bo’sun,” he said in a thick voice, addressing one of the sailors, “in a quarter of an hour pipe the men outside the inn, and we’ll see to the billeting. Meantime make ’em pay for their drinks and no chalking. Hi, youngster!” he

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cried, catching hold of young Jerk by the ear, “if you’re the potboy, tumble round behind and look after your job.” Jerk, mentally consigning him to the gibbet, did as he was ordered, for his ear was hurting horribly.

“And now, sir,” went on the officer, addressing himself to Denis, “is there any one in this law-forsaken hole who can answer questions in King’s English?”

“Certainly, sir,” said Denis proudly, “if they are asked with a civil tongue. I am Denis Cobtree, and my father, the squire, is the best-known man on Romney Marsh.”

“Then,” ordered the seadog curtly, “fetch him along her quick!”

“Really, sir,” retorted Denis hotly, “I do not think you would afford him sufficient interest. He has not the honour of your acquaintance, and I am bound to consider that he’ll have no great zeal to make it!”

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“Nor I, neither,” said Mr. Mipps, who had been looking round the kitchen door. “I don’t like his looks.”

The infuriated officer was inside the kitchen like a hurricane, glaring at the little sexton with all the condensed fury of the British navy.

“What’s this?” he said, addressing himself again to Denis, who had followed him into the kitchen to be quit of the crowd of seamen. “I suppose you’ll tell me that this shrivelled up little monkey is a squire’s son too, eh?”

“A squire’s son!” repeated the sexton. “Oh, well, if I is, I ain’t come into my title yet.”

“Don’t you play the fool with me, sir!” thundered the King’s man.

“And don’t you try the swagger with me, sir!” volleyed back the sexton.

“The swagger with you, sir?” exploded the officer.

“Right, sir,” exclaimed the sexton, “that’s what I said—the swagger, sir!”

But the other swallowed his wrath and announced coldly:

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“I am Captain Collyer, Captain Howard Collyer, coast agent and commissioner; come ashore to lay a few of you by the heels, I’ve no doubt.”

“Oh! is that all?” replied the sexton with a sigh of relief. “Well, there, I have been mistook. I’d quite made up my mind that you was the Grand Turk or at least the Lord Rear Admiral of the Scilly Isles.”

Ignoring the sexton’s humour, the captain turned to Denis and said: “Who is this person?”

But Mipps was not so easily crushed, and he cried: “A man to be looked up to in these parts. I undertakes for the district. The only one wot does it for miles around. They all comes to me, rich and poor alike, I tells you; for they know that Mipps knocks ’em up solid.”

“Knocks what up solid?” demanded the captain furiously.

“Coffins up solid,” replied the sexton promptly.

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“Coffins!” repeated the captain. “Oh, you’re a coffin-maker, are you? Yes, you look it. Thought you might be the landlord of this run-amuck old inn here. That’s the man I want. Where can I find him?”

Mipps pointed out of the window toward the church.

“Up in the churchyard,” he said.

“What’s he doing in the churchyard?” demanded the captain.

Mipps came right up to him and whispered in this ear the significant word, “Worrumps!”

“What?” shouted the captain, who didn’t understand.

“Sh!” said Mipps, pointing across at Mrs. Waggetts, who had begun to weep into her apron. “He’s a-keepin’ ’em out.”

“Keeping who out?” snapped the captain.

“I keep telling you,” replied the sexton. “Worrumps!”

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“Danged if I can make out what you say.” The captain’s patience was well-nigh exhausted. “Go and fetch the landlord!” he ordered.

“Oh, would that he could,” sobbed Mrs. Waggetts. “Oh, dear, oh, dear!”

The captain turned on her with an oath. “What’s the matter with you, my good woman?” he said.

“That good woman is the landlord,” volunteered Mr. Mipps.

“You exasperating little liar!” shouted the captain, seizing the enigmatical sexton and shaking him violently; “you said the landlord was in the churchyard a minute ago.”

“A minute ago!” cried the breathless undertaker. “Why, he’s been there a year and a half, and there he’ll stop till as wot time as they gets him. Though I must say I gave him the best pine and knocked him up solid with my own hands —”

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“Released from Missus Waggetts

I left him to the maggots—

and there’s Waggetts, and she’s the landlord,” and the sexton, chuckling with delight at his ready wit, pointed to the still weeping landlady.

“Well, ma’am,” said the captain, coming to the point at once, “you must really blame yourself if your scores are not settled. A little potboy who has to stand on tiptoe to look over the bar is not the sort of person to prevent people helping themselves; and that’s what my seadogs are doing now—helping themselves.”

Mrs. Waggetts, with a scream, rushed from the kitchen, followed by Imogene, the sexton and the schoolmaster being glad enough to follow their example and so escape from the bullying captain, who was now left alone with Denis.

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“Now, then, Mr. Squire’s son, listen to me,” he said.

“My name is Denis Cobtree,” returned the young man. “The name Cobtree is well enough known upon the Marsh to be remembered by a sea captain.”

“Look here, young fellow,” said the officer warningly, “I am here representing the law, commissioned by King George.”

“I have heard that the King’s taste may be called in question,” Denis replied.

“I can prove to you otherwise,” returned the captain, “for it so happens that Captain Collyer holds the majority for stringing up smugglers. I have sent more from the coast to the sessions than any of his Majesty’s agents. And stap my vitals, I believe I have landed on a perfect hornets’ nest here. Now tell me, sir,” he went on with that tone of authority that Denis found so utterly aggressive, “what do you know of the smuggling business in these parts? I have small doubt but that your father finds the business a pretty valuable asset to his land

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revenues, eh? I warrant me half goes to your own pockets and the rest to the lost cause of the Jacobites.”

The captain was becoming insulting, so Denis took great pains to hold his temper in check. “Let me tell you, sir,” he said, “in the first place, my father is no Jacobite, no, nor yet his father before him. My people were instrumental in bringing across William of Orange. Although my father has withdrawn from political strife, he is still a profound Whig; and on that score he and I have but little sympathy together; for I stoutly affirm that the Dutchman had no right whatever in England, and I never lose an opportunity of drinking to our King over the water, and praying for a speedy restoration.”

“You just bear in mind, young man,” said the captain, “that the ’45 was not so very long ago. I am here to look for smugglers, not royalists, but there’s still a price on their heads, so you should keep whatever opinions you may hold to yourself.”

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“If you are really here to look for smugglers,” said Denis, scorning his threat, “you must first take pains to curry favour with my father, for he is the head of our jurisdiction. The Marsh has its own laws, sir; and you will find to

*

your inconvenience, I fear, that the ‘Leveller of the Marsh Scotts’ is a bigpower.”

“I hold my commission from the King’s Admiralty, and that’s enough for me,” laughed the captain, “and for Marshmen, too, as you’ll find.”

But Denis replied: “Possibly, sir, you have not heard of the old saying, that ‘The world is divided into five parts—Europe, Asia, Africa, America, and Romney Marsh’. We are independent on the Marshes.”

*

The old title of Head Magistrate on the Marsh.

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“The Act of Parliament,” retorted the captain largely, “brought in by the late King William against all smugglers will cook that goose, young sir.”

“Ah, well,” said Denis finally, “it’s no odds to me; but let me tell you this: Your King George may rule Whitehall, but my father rules Romney Marsh,” and humming an old royalist tune, much to the annoyance of the captain, the young man sauntered out of the inn.

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Chapter 5

A Bottle of Alsace Lorraine

Left to himself, the captain rapidly examined the kitchen; then going to the door that led to the bar-parlour, he called out: “Bo’sun, come in here, and bring that mulatto with you.” The bo’sun answered with alacrity, pushing before him into the kitchen an altogether horrible apparition: a thin mulatto in the dress of a navy cook. His skin was cracked like parchment and drawn tightly over the prominent cheekbones. His black eyes shone brightly, and the lids turned up at the corners like those of a Chinaman. The unusual brilliance of these eyes may have been

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accounted for by the scrags of pure white hair that grew from the skull. These were bound at the back into a thin pigtail, leaving the sides of the head bare, and it must have been this that gave him that curiously revolting look, for the foreigner had no ears. Another horrible thing about him was that he could not speak, for his tongue had been cut out by the roots. He had evidently suffered much, this cook.

“Job Mallet,” said the captain, when the door was shut, “we have now got this room to ourselves, and as there is no time like the present, turn that white-haired old spider of yours on to the floor and walls. This panelling seems likely.”

The bo’sun approached the mulatto, and jabbered some weird lingo into his ear-hole, which immediately made the uncouth figure hop about the room, spreading his lean arms along the panels, which he kept tapping with his fingers, at the same time executing a curious tattoo with his bare feet upon the

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floor. In this fashion he encircled the room twice, apparently without achieving any result. In the corner of the room was fixed a wooden table with a heavy flap which reached nearly to the ground. Upon this table was a large assortment of cooking utensils, while underneath, almost entirely hidden by the rags, there reposed a like collection of buckets, pails, and old saucepans.

The mulatto, after his double journey round the room, turned his attention to this table. He struck the flap up and, pushing aside the pots and pans, uttered a strange, excited gurgle.

“Ha! ha!” said the captain to the bo’sun, “your spider has caught a fly, eh?”

Job Mallet looked under the table and saw the mulatto pulling desperately at a brass ring that was fixed to the floor. Pushing him aside, the bo’sun had pulled up a trap and was descending a flight of steps before the captain had even locked both the doors.

“What is it?” he whispered; for the bo’sun had entirely disappeared.

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“Here you are, sir,” said the sailor, reappearing with a bottle in his hand. “There’s a wine-cellar down there the size of an admiral’s cabin.”

“Oh!” replied the captain. “Well, like enough it’s the regular cellar.”

“Then why should they be at such pains to hide the entrance, sir?” returned the bo’sun.

“There’s nothing in that,” replied the captain. “It’s natural that they don’t want every Tom, Dick, and Harry going into the wine-cellar.”

“I suppose it is, sir,” agreed the bo’sun, “but it looks a costly bottle, though it could do with a bit of a shine,” he added, spitting on it and giving it a vigorous rub with his sleeve.

“Let’s look at the label,” said the captain. “‘Alsace Lorraine, White, Rare 500’. What on earth does ‘500’ mean?”

“The date, sir,” ejaculated the bo’sun; “it’s the date. My eye! that’s enough to give a man a bad head. It’s over a thousand years old.”

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“Nonsense, my man,” said the captain, laughing. “It means that this bottle is one of a cargo of five hundred.”

“Of course,” said the bo’sun, slapping his knee. “What a thundering old idiot I am, to be sure. You’re right, sir, as you always are, for I see the other four hundred and ninety-nine down below there. But,” he added ruefully, “we’ve got no proof that they’re smuggled.”

“We’ll soon get to that,” said the captain, thrusting the bottle into the capacious skirt pocket of his sea-coat. “Put these things back, and summon the landlady.”

Then the captain unlocked the door and quietly opened it.

Coming up quickly from a stooping position near the keyhole was Mr. Mipps, the sexton.

“You’re a fine fellow,” he said, not at all put out of countenance by the captain having found him eavesdropping, “a very fine fellow to come lookin’

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for smuggling, with a gang o’ blasphemous scoundrels wot kick up more to-do than the Tower of Babel. Look here, sir, are you coming in to keep order or not? I only want a word, Yes or No, for I shall go straight round to the Court House and report you to the squire. And then p’raps he won’t put you and your crew into the cells there; p’raps he won’t—only p’raps, ’cos I’m dead sure he will.” than the Tower of Babel. Look here, sir, are you coming in to keep order or not? I only want a word, Yes or No, for I shall go straight round to the Court House and report you to the squire. And then p’raps he won’t put you and your crew into the cells there; p’raps he won’t—only p’raps, ’cos I’m dead sure he will.”

“What are my boys doing?” laughed the captain.

“What are the little dears not doing?” answered the sexton, thoroughly angry. “Oh, nothing, I assure you! Only upsetting the barrels, throwin’ about the tankards, stealin’ the drinks, and makin’ fun of Missus Waggetts.”

“Oh, that’s all right,” said the captain. “Tell Mrs. Waggetts to come here.”

“You tell worse men than yourself to do your dirty work,” replied the sexton. “Do you think I’m a powder monkey that I should fetch and carry Missus Waggetts for you? Fetch her yourself, or send old fat-sides there,” he added, jerking his thumb at the bo’sun, “or that dear old white-haired admiral

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wot’s lost his yellow ear-flaps. As for me, I’m a-goin’ to the Court House, and if you don’t know what for, you’ll soon learn—you and old fat-sides.” The bo’sun made a grab at him, but Mipps slipped through the crowded bar and was running up the highroad. bo’sun made a grab at him, but Mipps slipped through the crowded bar and was running up the highroad.

The captain now stepped into the bar. Order was at once restored. “Now, ma’am,” he said to Mrs. Waggetts, “while the bo’sun is seeing that your score is paid, give me a bottle of wine.”

“Port or claret, sir?” said the landlady.

“Neither,” said the captain. “I have a fancy to try a bottle of Alsatian. Yes, a white wine from Alsace Lorraine.”

But before the captain had time to smack his lips Mrs. Waggetts replied: “Oh, we don’t keep that, sir.”

“No?” queried the captain.

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“No, indeed, sir,” said the landlady. “You see there’s no call for it in these parts. And then the customs are so high we couldn’t afford to stock it for the few and far betweens as might ask for it. Why, for my own part, sir, though I’ve been in the business these—well, many years now, I’ve never even heard of it.”

“Really!” said the captain. “Well, it’s a good wine, ma’am. Now, bo’sun, pipe the men outside.”

“Won’t you try a bottle of claret, sir?” asked the landlady with persuasion.

“No,” said the captain, “later on, perhaps. I’ll see. By the way, is there any old barn about where I could quarter my men? I’m loath to billet them on the village.”

“No, I don’t know anywhere,” returned the landlady. “Do you, Mr. Rash? Perhaps you’ll loan the schoolhouse to the captain?”

“Yes, and give us a holiday for once in a way!” chimed in the potboy.

“It’s not to be thought of,” said the schoolmaster, walking out of the inn.

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“No one uses the church on weekdays, I suppose,” said the captain. “I daresay there’s room for them there, in the vestry or the tower perhaps, or even in the crypt.”

“Them drunken ruffians in the church!” cried out young Jerk, pulling a horrified face, and indicating the rough sailors who were now outside the inn. “You’d better watch out what you’re up to, or you’ll have the vicar on your track.”

“I’ll tell you where you’ll end, my lad,” said the captain, turning on him sharply.

“Where, sir?” said young Jerk, looking really interested.

“If not upon the scaffold, uncommon near it, I’ll be bound,” the captain replied.

“I hope so indeed,” thought Hangman Jerk, “and I hopes it’ll be a-fixing the noose around your bull neck.” But he kept this thought to himself, for he

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suddenly remembered that the captain could be rather too playful for his liking; so he watched the sailors shouldering their bundles, falling into line, and eventually swinging out of the old Ship Inn, followed by the captain.

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Chapter 6

Doctor Syn Takes Cold

You can imagine that the coming of the King’s men caused some stir in Dymchurch; for after leaving the Ship Inn they were marched round the village and drawn up in from of the Court House. Here they waited while the captain knocked upon the front door and asked for the squire. “Sir Anthony Cobtree is out riding,” said the butler. But at that instant a clattering of hoofs was heard upon the highway and the squire himself came along at an easy trot and drew rein before the house. “My faith!” he cried,

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looking from the butler to the captain, and then at the line of naked cutlasses. “Have the French landed at last?”

“Captain Howard Collyer of the King’s Admiralty, sir,” said the captain, saluting, “and if you are the squire, very much at your service.”

The jolly squire returned the salute, touching his hat with his riding whip. “Indeed, Captain?” he said, dismounting. “And I would prefer to be your friend than your foe so long as you have these sturdy fellows at your back. Is it the renewed activity of the French navy that we have to thank for your presence here, or the coast defence?”

“I should like a word with you alone,” said the captain.

“Certainly,” returned the squire, throwing the reins to a groom and leading the way to the house.

They crossed the large hall, and the squire, opening a door at the far end, invited the captain to enter the library.

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There in the recess of the old mullioned window sat Doctor Syn, deep in a dusty tome that he had taken from the bookcase.

“Ah, Doctor,” said the squire, “they didn’t tell me you were here. No further need to fear the French fleet. The King’s Admiralty has had the kind grace to furnish us with an officer’s complement. Captain Collyer—Doctor Syn, our vicar.”

“Not the Collyer who sank the Lion d’Or at the mouth of the St. Lawrence River, I suppose?” he said, shaking hands.

“The same,” returned the captain, highly delighted that the achievement of his life had been heard of by the parson. “Captain Howard Collyer then, commanding the Resistance, a brigantine of twenty-two guns. Indeed, sir, the French Government kicked up such a devil of a row over that little affair that I lost my command. So now, instead of sinking battleships, the Admiralty keeps

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me busy nosing out smugglers; a poor enough game for a man who has done big

things at sea, but it has its excitements.”

“So I should imagine,” said the cleric.

“And what have you come here for?” asked the squire.

“To hang every smuggler on Romney Marsh,” said the captain.

“Do you believe in ghosts?” said the squire.

“What do you mean?” retorted the captain.

“What I say,” returned the squire. “Do you believe in ghost?”

“Well, I can’t say I do,” laughed the captain, “for I have never yet met one.”

“No more have I,” returned the squire. “But they say the Marsh is haunted at night. They’ve said so so long that people believe it. Whenever a traveller loses his way on the Marsh and disappears, folk say that the Marsh witches have taken him. When the harvests are bad, when the wool is poor, when the cattle are sickly, oh, it’s always the Marsh witches that are blamed. They set

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fire to haystacks, they kill the chickens, they blast the trees, they curdle the milk, and hold up travellers and rob them of their purses. If fact all the vices of the Marsh, really performed by Master Fox, or Master Careless, or Master Footpad, are all put down to the poor Marsh witches, who don’t exist except in the minds of the people. I know the Marshes as well as any man ever will, and I’ve never seen a witch, and it’s the very same with smugglers. The whole thing’s a fallacy. I’ve never caught ’em at it; and I keep a stern enough eye on my farms, I can tell you. Why, I’m a positive king, sir. Do you know that if a man working in the neighbourhood doesn’t please me, that I can shut every door of the Marsh against him? Why, these farmers are all scared stiff of me, sir. I’d like to see the man who went against the laws of Romney Marsh. I can tell you, sir, that I’d soon mark him down.”

“You are perhaps too confident, sir,” suggested the captain.

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“Not a bit of it, sir,” exclaimed the squire. “Mind you I don’t trust ’em, oh, Lord, no; I just know ’em to be honest, because I don’t give ’em the chance to be otherwise. Why, I have a groom in my stables awake all night in case I want to surprise a farm ten miles away. Smugglers? Pooh! Rubbish!”

“Then you consider that I am here on a wildgoose chase?” said the captain.

“Not even that,” said the squire; “for you will find no wild geese to chase. However, I don’t think that you need regret having been sent here, for we can give you really good entertainment; and I’ll bet my head that after you have stayed with us a week or so you’ll be sending in your papers to the Admiralty, and settling down on the Marsh as a good Kentish farmer.”

“I’m afraid not, sir,” laughed the captain.

“Oh, yes, you will,” went on the squire. “And I’ll be bound that we’ll have you bothering Doctor Syn to put the banns up for you and some country beauty. What do you say, Doctor?”

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“Well,” chuckled the cleric, entering into the joke, “if a man wants to marry and settle down, and live happily ever after, as the saying goes, why, then, Kent’s the place for him. It’s a great country, sir, especially south and east of the Medway; famous for everything that goes to make life worth living.”

“Yes, take him on the whole,” said the squire, “the King can boast of no greater jewel in the crown of England than the average man of Kent.”

“Well,” agreed the captain, “I’ve heard say that Kent has fine clover fields, and it’s evident to me that I’m a lucky devil and have fallen into one. But I must see to the billeting of my men. Perhaps you can advise me?” But the squire wouldn’t hear of business until the captain had cracked a bottle of wine with them and promised to lodge himself at the Court House, Doctor Syn readily placing the large brick-built vicarage barn at the disposal of the men.

So having settled all amicably, and promising to return within the hour for supper, the captain, piloted by Doctor Syn, and followed by the seamen,

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proceeded to inspect the barn; and it was not long before the sailors had converted it into as jolly an old hall as one could wish to see, with a great log-fire ablaze in the stone grate, and a pot of steaming victuals swinging from a hook above the flames.

“Are you all here?” said the captain to the bo’sun, before rejoining the Doctor outside the door.

“All except Bill Spiker and the mulatto, sir,” returned Job Mallet. “I sent ’em for rum. Here they are, if I mistake not.” And indeed up to the barn came two seamen carrying a barrel.

“Now,” said the captain to Doctor Syn, “I am ready to return to the Court House.”

But the cleric’s eyes were fixed on the men carrying the barrel, who were passing him. “Who’s that man?” he said to the captain, shivering violently, for a cold fog had risen with the night.

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“That’s Bill Spiker, the gunner,” said the captain. “Do you know him?”

“No—the other, the other,” exclaimed the Doctor, still watching the retreating figures who were now being received with shouts of welcome from the barn.

“Oh, that fellow’s a mulatto,” returned the captain; “useful for investigation work. An ugly enough looking rascal, isn’t he?”

“A very ugly rascal,” muttered the Doctor, walking rapidly from the barn in the direction of the Court House.

“You look cold,” remarked the captain as they stood outside the Court House door.

“Yes. It’s a cold night,” returned the Doctor. “Why, I declare my teeth are chattering.”

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