bind him to the mast.
“Give me your scalping-knife, and I’ll cut the mulatto’s mouth open.”
“I’ll do my own dirty work,” said Syn.
“I am so skilled at it,” answered the Redskin.
To the astonished and terrified crew, there seemed to be three quick
movements of the Indian’s ar ms, and three things fell behind him on the
deck. A tongue was cut out at the root, and two severed ears. “No talk.
No hear,” said the Indian grimly.
Mipps picked up the grisly objects and threw them overboard.
“Make for that coral reef. We’ll put him ashore there,” said Syn.
He cut the man’s bonds, and ordered a boat to be lowered. It was
Mipps and the Indian who went with him, while Syn kept the ship, facing
his coward crew.
“That’s the uncharted reef where the tide rises fathoms deep,” said
one of them.
“It will be the more merciful,” said Syn. “Water and sharks.”
They watched the marooning in silence, every man aboard. when the
boat was once more hoisted, and Mipps and Shuhshuhgah were aboard, the
crew pushed forward Pete, the Chinese cook, to be their spokesman. He
stammered out that they wished to put the ship back, so that they could
rescue the marooned man. In a blind rage, Clegg snatched a marine-spike
from Mipps, and broke the yellow dog’s back with it. Pete fell dead upon
the deck , and as Mipps and Shuhshuhgah tossed him overboard, the mad
captain, with drawn sword, drove the men to the rigging as he roared:
“Get up aloft, you dogs. Cram on the canvas. Every stitch. I’ll have no
muiny aboard my ship. NO, nor devils neither, other than myself.”
The ship leapt on through the lashing foam, while the sinister
wailing of the marooned man’s tongueless voice echoed the rigging, and
long after he had disappeared below the skyline, they all seemed to see
his tall, weird figure rising up into the sky and following the ship.
But Syn saw more. Whenever he looked into the waters, he had to shut his
eyes against the grinning face of yellow Pete.
Chapter 19
The Mulatto
From the South Seas and the coral reef, they sailed for weeks on end
towards their harbourage. Not only the crew, but Clegg kept to himself,
thought of nothing but the horror of that marooning. Safe on duty, clegg
kept to his cabin. He seemed dazed. On one occasion, he called Mipps and
whispered: “Look at my forearm, here above the writst. I was never
tattooed in all my life, and yet, there is the picture of a man walking
the plank with a shark beneath. How cam this symbol here?”
- 107 -
“I done it for you,” said Mipps—”that night at Santiago, after we’d
sacked the town. You and me was drinking, and I never see you drunk
before. You ordered me to do it with the help of Yellow Pete, the cook.”
“I can see Pete’s face looking up at me dead from the sea, always,”
whispered Syn. “It was a fault, this tattooing. A man can be identified
so easily by that, and I have suddenly no wish to be known as Clegg.
Nicholas is tattooed from head to foot. I have driven him round and
round the world, and he has fled because he could be so easily
identified. Now I am in like case, for I am followed by the dead hulk
of that mulatto. So long as I sail ships, so long will he be following
in the wake. If I give up my chase for Nicholas, perhaps that haunting
will give up chasing me. I always feel him f ollowing the ship, just as I
alwys see Yellow Pete’s face in the waters. ‘Tis bad enough to be
shadowed by a living man, as Nicholas has been; but to be followed by a
corpse is too much to endure. Where can I hide from it?”
“Dymchurch-under-the-Wall,” w hispered Mipps. “Go back there as parson
and thank God for a whole skin. Maybe I will go there one day too, but
now for your sake, sir, it’s beter if we separate. Shuhshuhgah and
myself have spoke of it. We can hide up your tracks. I take your sea chest an d stow it safe in Boston, where you can book passage for
England. You must get to Boston by way of the Redkins’ country. You and
the long -missing Shuhshuhgah, returning like the prodigals, after years
of preaching the ‘Oly Gospel to the savages.”
“And give up my vengeance?” asked Syn.
“You may as easily catch Black Nick there as on the high seas of the
world,” said Mipps. “Besides, he may be dead, same as he said his wife
was when he wrote and pleaded with you for mercy.”
“I’ll not believe she’s dead,” said Syn. “He is a proved liar. When
he sent me that leter some years ago, I knew it in my heart that he
lied. I think even yet, I’ll reckon with them both. Aye, perhaps at
Dymchurch.”
Many months later, Doctor Syn, with the Redskins’ help, rejoined
Mipps in Boston. By this time he had begun to think that Nicholas must
be dead.
“So, all that is left to me,” he said, “is Romney Marsh and quiet
years. But will the past rise up against me even there?”
“Not so far as the pirates is concerned,” rep lied Mipps. “And let me
tell you, sir, the Imogene ain’t the first ship to have gone to Davy
Jones’ Locker through of piece of carelessness in the powder magazine.”
“Have you done that again?” demanded Syn.
Mipps looked offended, “I’m a one -man servant, I am, sir, and dead
pirates tell no tales.”
“All of them?” asked Syn.
Mipps nodded. “Every man aboard. And no deaf mute this time swimming
about neither. A thorough job I made of it, believe me, sir.”
“God rest their souls!” said the parson piously.
“Amen,” replied Mipps with equal piety.
Doctor Syn sadly shook his head.
Mipps winked.
Chapter 20
The Return
Mervyn Ransom, master and owner of the brig City of London, trading
between New England and the Port of London, had a great liking for his
passenger, Doctor Syn. He respected this quiet scholar who had given up
so many years, in the service of Christianity amongst the Indian tribes.
The voyage was uneventful till they reached at last, the Channel. There
they ran into the greatest storm the south coast had seen for many a
year, and as they drove along towards the Kent coast, the captain of the
ship began to give up hope. This parson was first aloft to trim sails,
and had it not been for some uncanny knowledge of the coast, which came
back to him across the years, they would have run foul of Dungeness. And
then the fire broke out in the hold. The heat was unbearable, the waves
terrific. The ship was being driven on to Dymchurch Wall.
“‘Tis a short cut to my destination,” cried the parson. “There’s
nothing left but to jump for it.”
With a long cord lashed to his precious seachest and tied to his
wrist, Syn toppled his worldly belongings over the ship’s side, just as
the brig was heading for destruction. The chest landed on the sand
beneath the driving waves, and then Syn and the captain jumped after the
crew, and as they battled with the monster waves, the wind and waters
sang in Syn’s ear:
“Here’s to the feet what have walked the plank,
Yo-ho, for the dead man’s trottle,
And here’s to the corpses afloat in the tank,
And the dead man’s teeth in the bottle.”
THE END