A Smuggler Tale of the Romney Marsh

“One moment,” said the captain; “this something that closed the shutters—a man?”

“Yes, like a man.”

“Like what man?”

“Well, sir, it was like one of them devils that I’d seen leaving the room that night. It also reminded me—yes, it reminded me of that gentleman there, a-standing at that door—that sexton; in fact, now I comes to think of it and look at him, I remembers dreaming a lot about him in the night.”

“Thank you kindly,” said Mr. Mipps, who was indeed listening to the narrative from the door, “but don’t trouble to drag me into it, mate. I gives you my word that we were all as merry as crickets till you King’s men come nigh

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the place, and as for talks of demons and such like, well, there’s always gossip of such, of course, but since you fellows come aboard, the talk’s been of nothing else; and murders, too. Why, we’d never heard of murders, except, of course, in church we’d heard as how there was such things. We was as happy and contented a pleasant-going little village as you could have wished, we was; but now, so help me God! you fellows have turned jour little spot into a regular witches’ kitchen, that you have. Two days you’ve been here, and two murders we’ve had—one a day—and if you stays here for a year, as you can calculate for yourself, we’ll have three hundred and sixty-five, at the present rate. Of course it’s good for my trade, so I says nothing. Go on murdering to your hearts’ content, for I can knock up one a day all night, but I ain’t a-goin’ to take any blame about it, and, wot’s more, I object to being dreamt about; so another night kindly leave me out of your adventures, ’cos I don’t like bein’ mixed up with such traffic.” we’ve had—one a day—and if you stays here for a year, as you can calculate for yourself, we’ll have three hundred and sixty-five, at the present rate. Of course it’s good for my trade, so I says nothing. Go on murdering to your hearts’ content, for I can knock up one a day all night, but I ain’t a-goin’ to take any blame about it, and, wot’s more, I object to being dreamt about; so another night kindly leave me out of your adventures, ’cos I don’t like bein’ mixed up with such traffic.”

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Saying which Mipps stepped across the corpse of Bill Spiker, and, producing his footrule, measured him up, and entered the same in a dirty notebook.

The captain then proceeded to the barn and soundly rated his still drowsy men; and putting the bo’sun in charge of the corpse, he asked Doctor Syn to join him for breakfast at the Ship. And as there was no schoolmaster, and consequently no school, Jerry Jerk had the extreme pleasure of waiting upon them.

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Chapter 22

A Curious Breakfast Party

During the meal Jerry took good stock of both men. The captain’s manner was sullen and grumpy. He was turning things over in his mind that he was incapable of solving—things altogether out of his ken. Doctor Syn, on the other hand, seemed eager to discuss all these curious events, but underlying his interesting, polished, quiet conversation there smouldered a nameless fear which now and then burst into flames of enthusiastic fury—fury against the captain’s apparent inactivity in taking measures to find and capture the mysterious mulatto. But he never went too far, never said anything that his tact

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could not smooth over; in fact, he was at great pains not to quarrel with the captain, like the squire had done, for the captain was evidently very sensitive within that rough exterior, as he had shown by not attempting to patch up his quarrel with the squire.

So Jerry watched them as they breakfasted in the sanded parlour of the Ship, keeping in the room all he could and dreading to be dismissed.

Presently the captain turned to him and inquired whether he had breakfasted. Jerry replied that he certainly had had a snack or two, but that broiled fish always did go down very pleasant with bread and butter and fresh milk, and accepted with alacrity the invitation from the captain to bring a chair and help himself.

The captain got up, filled a pipe and lit it, and the Doctor did the same; then both men pushed their plates to the centre of the table, leaning their elbows on the cleared space; and Jerry in the centre, for all the world like a judge of some

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quaint game of skill, watched the opponents as they drew deliberately at their pipes, sending preliminary battle clouds across the table before the real tussle began—aye, a fight of brains, each one desirous of ascertaining how much the other knew or guessed about these strange events, but each very fearful of betraying what he guessed. So Jerry watched them, feeling certain that a battle was imminent, wondering upon what side he would be called to fight, and what the end of it all would be; but with all his watching and wondering he didn’t forget to eat, and eat heartily, too, for Jerry’s maxim was, “Eat when you can, and only think when you’ve got to.”

The captain spoke first.

“Doctor Syn, you heard me say at that inquiry yesterday that I was no strategist, that I was only a fighter.”

“I did,” returned the cleric.

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“I know everything inside, outside, and around-about a ship, but I don’t know much else, and certainly nothing else thoroughly, so to speak. But I have seen other things in my time, for all that, just as any one who travels is bound to see things, and, just as any one else that travels, I have remembered a few things outside my business, just a few; the rest I’ve forgotten. Now you’re different from that, for you’re a scholar and have travelled widely, too, and a man who can use his book knowledge with what he comes in contact with in the world is the sort of man who might perhaps explain what’s bothering me at the present moment, for I am dense; you are not.”

“What is bothering you, Captain? Of course something to do with these murders that are uppermost in our minds?”

“Something, I dare say,” replied the captain slowly, weighing his every word, “but, on the other hand, maybe it’s nothing. I can’t connect the two things myself, and yet I’ve a feeling that I ought to be able to. I’ve tried,

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though, tried hard, been trying all through breakfast, and it worries me, because, as a man of action, thinking always does worry me sorely. You may laugh at what I am going to tell you; if you do I shan’t take offence, because it’s precisely what I should have done had any one told me about what I’m going to tell you, something that”—the captain hesitated, speaking as if he longed to keep silent; speaking as if afraid of being disbelieved—“something—well, I’ll tell you that it sounds ridiculous on the face of it, but something which—well, which I saw myself.”

“Tell me,” said the cleric, leaning farther forward over the table.

The captain sat up rigid in his chair, took his pipe from between his lips, and spoke as if repeating a lesson that he didn’t understand.

“Once in a Cuban town, in a little Cuban town—can’t remember the precise longitude and latitude—but that’s no matter, and I can’t even remember the

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name of the town or what I was doing there exactly, but that has no odds on the

story.”

“Go on,” said the cleric.

“Well, in this little Cuban town I saw an old priest die. He was as dead as this table, you understand, the doctor said so, and I knew it. Well, imagine my horror when half an hour after death this old man arose, entered the next hut, and deliberately, brutally, and carefully stabbed a sleeping child to death.”