A Smuggler Tale of the Romney Marsh

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be sure, for my friend the merchant had got a house well stored with very good things.

“At the end of a week sly dog comes round to say that the gods had decided to move the coffin, and that he had seen their orders carried out. So after giving him more money, much to my indignation, for I couldn’t bear to see my friend imposed upon, we left him and set off for the house. And where do you think that dirty fat priest had put that coffin?”

“Where?” queried the captain.

“Why, in the bed where I was supposed to sleep. Now this really did rouse the devil in me, and I determined to get even with that priest. But I had to think things over very carefully. You see if I objected to sleepin’ in the same bed as the coffin, my friend the smug-faced merchant, who had really been kindness itself to me, might think I thought myself superior to sleepin’ with his uncle, and that I knew would offend him, ’cos the Chinese seem to bear a most

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ridiculous respect towards their dead relations. So I decided that, come what might, I would certainly sleep there, and at the same time I hit upon a scheme for the undoin’ of that priest.

“Next morning I woke up after a very pleasant sleep alongside that coffin, and felt much refreshed, though o’ course I wasn’t goin’ to let ’em know that. When my friend asked me how I had slept I told him very badly, ’cos all through the night the old uncle in the coffin kept awakin’ up and askin’ if I would go and fetch the priest. So smug face sends round at once to sly dog for me to tell him all about it.

“‘Did the late lamented uncle of this bereaved man really converse with thee in the night, O Englishman?’ asked the priest, tryin’ to look very knowin’. I was longin’ to reply by givin’ him one in his fat mouth, but I pulled myself together and answered very respectfully:

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“‘Of a truth did the late lamented uncle of this bereaved one’—a-jerkin’ my thumb towards smug face—‘converse with my contemptible self in the small hours of the dawn previous to the inestimable crowing of the invaluable cock upon the temple roof. Of a truth did he converse with me, indeed, and say unto me’—I could speak their lingo very well in those days, I could—‘“Send for the wise and learned priest of the family and tell him that I have much to say unto him on matters of most heavenly importance, and command him to sleep upon this very spot where thou art now sleeping, O foreigner of the white face. Let him sleep there to-morrow night alone. Let none other be in the house, for it is to the priest alone that I can confide my troubles. Urge also my faithful nephew to pay large sums of money to the priest so that he may not fail to come to me in my sore and troubled hour.”’

“Well, o’ course they all thought it very wonderful, and, provided with more money by my friend, the priest went off to sleep the night with the coffin. Well,

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I had pretended to be tired that night and had retired to my sleepin’-room early, so they thought, for we were spendin’ that night with the friends of my friend. But no sooner had I fastened the entrance to my room than I had got out of the window, which looked out upon the city wall, and climbin’ along the parapet I safely reached the ground and set off at a good run to the empty house, gettin’ there well before the priest. Now I had told the merchant to be sure and see the priest safe at the house himself, for I feared that fright might keep the rascal away. The merchant promised to do this, for I believe that by this time he was losin’ confidence in the family confessor. As soon as I got into my old bedroom I opened the coffin, lifted out the corpse, strippin’ him of his funeral clothes, which I donned. Then I hid the corpse in a dark corner of the room behind a screen and got into the great coffin. Now the lids are not screwed down in China, but merely allowed to rest upon the coffin, so I left a very little chink so that I should not have any fear of suffocation. Presently I hears the priest arrive,

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and my friend bids him good-night and leaves him. Well, the fellow possessed more courage than I had credited him with, ’cos he comes promptly into the room, counts out his fresh money on the top of the coffin itself, and then curls himself up alongside it upon the mattress. Just as soon as I heard him beginnin’ to breathe heavy I pushed open the coffin lid, callin’ upon him by name in most sepulchral tones. He woke up, o’ course, and sits up on his side of the bed and looked at the coffin; and then he beheld me a-sittin’ up inside the coffin alookin’ at him, only, o’ course, he didn’t think it was me, but the dead uncle. Well, he was so frightened that I just had an easy walk over him. I jumped at him, I kicked him, I made him swear that he would return every penny of his false-gotten gains to the merchant, and that if the merchant refused he was to give it to the white stranger that sojourned there, and finally, after thrashing the stuffin’ out of him, I popped him bodily into the coffin, jammed the corpse from behind the screen in on top of him, and over ’em both I closed the lid. Then

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seein’ as how he was unconscious through the drubbin’ he had had, and the awful fright, I left him and went home to bed at the house of the friends of my friend, gettin’ in as I had got out—through the window. Well, next morning the sly dog turned up and said that the gods had visited him in the night and that the coffin was to be buried twelve feet deep in the merchant’s field, and that he was so overjoyed at having conversed so very pleasantly with the gods that he must insist on returning the gold to the merchant. This the good merchant, of course, refused to accept, so the priest was obliged, according as he had been commanded, to hand it to the white stranger wot sojourned, and with every gold piece out of that sly dog’s pocket, for although a sly dog he certainly was, he was also a cowardly dog, too, and didn’t dare to go against the will of that terrible late lamented uncle of the bereaved one wot was now, and still is, I expect, lying twelve foot down in the field of my inestimable smug-faced

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merchant who was my friend. And that’s the story of the funniest funeral I was ever at, and there ain’t many wot ever seed a funnier one, I should say.”

“I should think not,” said the captain, and filling their glasses once more they pledged each other, and the captain left the sexton to his hammering, and walked out over the Marsh. He had taken good stock of that coffin shop while Mr. Mipps had been chatting, and he was putting two and two together, and the result was four black marks against the sexton, for he knew him to be out of his own mouth an adventurer, and, when it came to the push, an unscrupulous one. Also he had confessed to having dealings with buccaneers, and the captain was quick enough to see that he must have been hand in glove with the ringleaders, probably a ringleader himself, a man of the stamp of England and Clegg. Then he had counted no less than thirteen coffins—finished coffins with closed lids —in the shop, and he knew that there were only two bodies awaiting burial in the place—the doctor, Sennacherib Pepper, and the sailor killed at the vicarage.