Captain Black (Pemberton)/Chapter 1
CHAPTER I
THE HUNCHBACK OF DOLPHIN'S COVE
I do not know that I could begin to tell you of Captain Black's treasure upon any better day than the one which brought the lame seaman to Dolphin's Cove in Cornwall. This filled me with so many doubts about the voyage that I was upon the point of regretting we had planned it at all.
We were to weigh anchor with the tide about ten o'clock that night. The old yacht, the Celsis, glorious in her shining brass and new white paint, then lay in the river below the very windows of the little house wherein I had spent so many happy months since the Nameless Ship brought me fame and fortune. I waited but for my friend Roderick Stewart and his madcap sister Mary: and when the train carried them from town, England would know me no more for many months. So you will imagine what I thought of it when old Nick Venning, the village constable, came stumbling up the steps from the harbour mole to tell me of three strange men at "The Falmouth Arms," and of what they had been doing and what they had been saying—to the great scandal and surprise of the simple folk round about.
"You'll niver have heard of such a thing, Master Mark," says he—I don't suppose old Nicholas would know me by any other name, though he has carried up many a letter addressed to Mark Strong, Esq.—"you'll never have heard of such a thing. Three of them are together at 'The Falmouth Arms,' and Tom Benson at his wits' end to save the mugs in the bar-parlour. Strange folk all, and overmuch of the tarry sort to my way of thinking. Would you ever guess, now, what they said to me? Do you think you could guess that?"
I was cleaning my rifles at the moment, and I had a splendid new .450 bore in my hand while I stood at the door and talked with the old fellow.
"No, really," said I, "I don't think I could guess it, Nick."
"That you never would, Master Mark, nor any proper gentleman neither. I had addressed but a civil word to them, when the leader, a lame man with a single eye, cried, 'Ahoy, old Thunder, and what monkey-house let you loose?' To me, sir, who have been constable of this parish off and on for more than forty years."
I would not let old Nick see me laughing, and so I turned my face from him to ask a question:
"Where do they hail from, Nick? Some ship in Falmouth, I suppose?"
"And a precious queer sort of ship, Master Mark, and a crew we can very well dispense with. If I judge by their songs they are rascally Americans everyone."
I looked up at this, interested perhaps for the first time.
"Their songs, Nick—oh, they carol in their cups, then?"
"Indeed and they do so—some nonsense about Boston town and pistols three and other silly stuff a grown man has no patience to speak about. It's my opinion they'll burn the inn down before nightfall. I should be wanting in my duty if I did not express that opinion."
"Then," said I shortly, "the opinion is expressed, Nick, and I am the witness. And if opinions will do them any good, which seems unlikely, observing their condition, I will put it down upon paper and you may sign it. Now, seriously, my good fellow, what do you want me to do?"
"Why, Master Mark, to step down to 'The Falmouth Arms' yourself and to tell me if I should be wise to send to the town for help or to leave it where it is. You are a gentleman, and will know what to make of it better than we poor folk who see so little company. Why, sir, you can hear them singing for yourself if you will come to the stairs' head with me. Did mortal man ever hear a song which spoke so surely of the devil as that?"
He took me by the lapel of the coat and led me across the terrace on the cliff-side to the head of the steep flight of wooden stairs by which you go down to the harbour of Dolphin's Cove. It was about three o'clock of an April afternoon, the sun shining aslant across the headland at the river's mouth and a warm glow upon the bright red roofs and stone facings of the cottages below. Looming large above this was the two-gabled building they called "The Falmouth Arms," and I could see a crowd of the meaner sort before its doors and perceive very plainly that something more than a common affair had called the people from the ships and the houses. But it was the talk of the song which impelled me chiefly; and although I would not have confessed all my thoughts to Nick Venning for a thousand guineas, they were wild thoughts none the less.
Well, we stood a little while upon the platform at the stairs' head, and, sure enough, the strangers, who had come to the cove, seemed in no mind to leave it. I heard a shout of laughter from the inn; then a great crash of glass or china, as though all host Benson's mugs had come tumbling down together; upon which a pewter pot came flying out of the window like a cannon shot, and immediately afterward a brawny, sun-tanned seaman showed himself at the door, and made a pass with a monstrous clasp-knife which scattered the honest folk and sent them running along the quay as though the devil had been at their heels.
"Now look at that, Master Mark; please to look at that!" cried Nick Venner at the sight. "In the daytime, too, and no excuse of what a man might do who had taken a glass with his supper. Did anyone ever hear of such behaviour in an honest township before? Upon my word, they deserve the lock-up if ever rogues did!"
I had it upon my tongue to suggest that they were unlikely people to submit to the lock-up quietly; but I did not tell him so, for the tarry seaman had gone into the inn again by this time, and I could hear him singing with as much music as a bull that bellows in a byre. Vainly I listened for any word of a song which would awaken those wild and whirlling thoughts Nick Venning had aroused with his talk of Boston town. But they were bawling a common chantey, such as seamen lift at the capstan; and presently the song died away altogether, and you might have been unaware that the rogues were in the town at all.
"Well," said I, "there is a truce, at any rate. Let's go down and have a look at them, Nick. A cat may look at a king, you know; and these fellows hardly have a regal appearance. Did they come in a boat, by the way, or walk across the cliff? You didn't tell me that, Nick."
I began to go down the stairs as I spoke, and he followed after me with less majesty than the law might have desired. I could see he had no stomach for the job at the inn, and I laughed at his perplexity. When he told me that the three men had come into the cove in a ship's launch, apparently of French build, and that they had put all sorts of questions to host Benson concerning the yacht and our voyage, he interested me more than he knew. But I said very little about it, and when we arrived at the inn I went in immediately and hailed old Tom as though nothing whatever were the matter.
"Good afternoon, Benson, and what's fresh to-day?" I asked him. Whimsically enough, he replied that) the three seamen in the kitchen parlour were fresh. "Though that's a manner of speaking," he added, "for a dirtier lot I never clapped eyes upon."
"Oh," said I, "then they are making themselves at home, are they? Have you learned where they hail from, Tom?"
He laughed gruffly, pulling at the stubbly beard on his chin, and seeming to think about it. "Most likely part of a ship's crew out of Falmouth, sir—come along for a bit of a spree, and having of it surely. Why, they broke two windows, to say nothing of dancing with the kitchen clock before they'd drunk the first round. I niver see such folk."
"Ah," said I, "faint hearts never won fair ladies—it's Martha, the cook, that's doing it, Tom. Who knows but what you'll have a marrying before nightfall? Well, stranger things might happen—and I'll just have a peep at them through the window if you don't think they'll see me."
"No fear of that, sir," said he; "they see nothing but the bottom of a mug." And with that he led me to the private parlour where a little glass window gave upon the kitchen, and I could see two of the men as plainly as though I sat beside them.
They were an odd contrast; one a great burly fellow, full six feet in height, with a face of leather and many a scar for its ornament—a full, round man, with a bully's countenance and a bully's manner of raising his voice and then listening to hear if he were contradicted; the other, a little fellow who had the air and nice deportment of a Frenchman—but a very dirty one and by no means a beauty. This "Froggy," as host Benson called him in a whisper, drank brandy out of an old-fashioned beer glass, while the tall man's fancy was for gin and porter, of which he drank prodigious draughts, shouting his questions between-whiles and hardly waiting for any one to answer them. The third of the trio I could not see, for a corner of the counter hid him from my sight; but plainly some deference was paid to him, both by the big and the little man; and I did not fail to remark that even the bully dropped his eyes when he happened to turn them in that direction.
"In 'seventy-eight it were, by —," the fellow bawled as I came in. "I tell you the ship put out from Savannah with a crew of forty-five, and she fired off Cape Lookout ten days afterward. I was bos'un and Dave Starlight second officer. Him and me stood by when all the boys went over, and sailed her into Chesapeake Bay, by thunder. There aren't a man, livin' or dead, of you lousy lot of Britishers as could do the same, not nohows, so help me. Show me the man as could do it, and I'll knock his — head off. Does he stand in this dive?—no, he don't, nor anywheres else that I can see. Then, why for deny it, mates, when argiment ain't in question?"
He banged his pot upon the table and looked round about him fiercely enough. To my surprise and also to my annoyance, he was answered almost immediately, not by one of his own fellows, but by Bill Eightbells, promoted to be third officer of the Celsis, and as smart a seaman as ever trod ship's deck. I had not seen Billy come into the room, and I was the more astonished when he pushed his way up to the counter and, calling for a glass of beer, turned upon the bully:
"Why, I denies it, then; and what now, matey?"
The big fellow seemed taken all aback at this, and began to lick his lips as cowards will when they are pressed.
"Oh, you denies it, do you? And who the hell may you be, matey?"
Billy took up his glass of beer and answered him over his shoulder:
"Same as you were asking for, and not to be put out by no thin-gutted Yankee whatsoever."
He finished his ale and went to turn away. At the same moment the bully snatched up a wooden stool and aimed such a blow at Billy's head that he would have been a dead man there and then had it gone home. Billy, however, was not so unready as he seemed. He had closed with the big man and tripped him up before you could count two—and then we heard a thud as the fellow's head struck the flags, and for some minutes he lay insensible.
"There," says Billy, who had not turned a hair, "sail that into Chesapeake Bay—by thunder," and he hitched up his breeches and was about to leave the place without more ado, when the little Frenchman, hitherto a silent spectator of the scene, suddenly intervened with a ferocity quite unnatural. No wild cat could have fought with tooth and claw more horribly. I swear he fixed his teeth in poor Billy's arm and almost made them meet, while you could see his hands tearing at the throat as a leopard may tear at the throat of a sheep. Poor Billy would have told no more yarns of what happened to him at "eight bells" but for an ally as fearful as his help was unexpected. He was no other than the third of the strangers, the man hidden from my eyes by the corner of the counter, but now suddenly revealed at the top of the brawl.
Let me try to describe this uncouth figure, for we are to meet him again under circumstances very different. Perhaps not more than four feet in height, he was a hunchback, and had but a single eye—one which shone red enough to have been the eye of Polyphemus if it had been in the middle of his forehead. Ridiculously short in the legs, his arms were as ridiculously long—and, but for its deformity, his face might have been that of a child. But what was the more extraordinary thing was his personal strength, for no sooner had he determined to intervene in his shipmate's quarrel than he lifted Billy Eightbells and the Frenchman in his arms together and just dashed them to the ground as though they had been two dogs fighting. And when this was done, he fell to kicking his own man round and round the room as one would kick a ball for sport, and at every kick he cried, "Land Ho! Land Ho!" for all the world like a man at a masthead who sights a distant shore.
This unexpected turn did much to reassure Tom Benson, who had begun to fear that blood would be shed in his house. Billy Eightbells was soon upon his legs again, laughing at the Frenchman in spite of his hurt; while as for the bully, he had recovered his wits by this time, and roared like a bull at his friend's predicament. For myself, I must confess that the affair seemed just a tavern brawl in which I had no interest whatever; and, contenting myself by telling Nick Venning to keep an eye upon the strangers, I followed our man Billy to the street and soon came up with him.
"Well, Billy," said I, "and so it was not at eight bells this time. Did he hurt you, man? Did he really bite you?"
Billy pulled at the black curl above his forehead as though it had been a bell-rope, and then rolled back his shirt from his brawny arm to show me the place. As sailors will be, he was proud of the little trickle of blood upon the flesh, and pleasured, I am sure, that I should see the full-rigged ship in sail which was tattooed just above the elbow.
"Why, sir," says he, wiping off the blood with his fingers, "I can't deny that I have felt the edge of his teeth, but, to be sure, I wouldn't go for to begrudge him a little cold meat. Tis a way they have in his country, I'm told, and likely for a hungry people who don't think overmuch of the galley fire. Put a bit of a ring about that and a pinch of gunpowder, and it would make a mighty fine picture of a wheel-house, you'll admit. Why, I mind Jim Kerrymore, of the Baltic, who tattooed hisself, aloft and alow, by letting of the skipper's retriever bite him properly and rubbing it in with gunpowder. That was a pretty fancy, same as this here will be when it's cooled a bit."
Billy's yarns always amused me; but I wanted to talk to him about the men, and so I went on with a question.
"Where did they come from, Billy—what wind blew them on this shore?" I asked. He scratched his head first and then shook it sagely.
"As rum a bit of a ship's launch as ever turned an honest sailor into a merman. They must have sailed it round from Falmouth Harbour, though why they came so far to wet their whistles, the Lord only knows, sir."
"Is the boat warped hereabouts, Billy?"
"Right yonder aginst the timber wharf, sir; you can see it if you step through the yard."
I said I would do so, and he led the way, putting questions concerning our own cruise as he went, and mighty anxious, I could see, to learn both the name of our destination (if he could) and the purport of our voyage. These, however, we had kept from the crew, for to speak of treasure is to speak of danger, and it was an early day to think of that.
"So Mr. Stewart comes aboard to-night, sir?" Billy remarked. I said that he did.
"And Miss Mary, axing your pardon, she'll be sailing with us likewise, I am told?"
"Yes, Billy; Miss Mary's coming"
He nodded his head.
"'Twill likely be a pleasure cruise entirely, then, sir?"
"Yes, I hope it will be that, Billy."
"And plenty of blankets to keep our noses from getting red, sir? That's what the men are saying."
"And right enough, too, Billy. We're going up to Greenland, so red would never match the colour of the shore. Now, show me the boat; or is that it lying there?"
He said that it was, and led me down to the little mole which juts out from the timber yard. Here a boat, in shape like a river skiff, but with plenty of freeboard and high in the bows, had been warped to a post. I perceived in a moment that it was unlike any ship's boat I had seen before, being entirely shaped of steel and apparently collapsible, the sections fitting one within the other. There were no oars in it, nor any sign of the way it had been propelled from Falmouth to Dolphin's Cove, but I observed that the stern was covered in by a light aluminium casing and I had more than a suspicion that electricity was the agent.
This, however, I could not prove, for hardly had I taken up my stand at the mole when I heard a shrill sound of whistling, very familiar to me, and almost immediately upon this a lank and stooping seaman, with as lantern-jawed a face as ever I clapped eyes upon, came across the yard and asked us in broken English what we were about.
And in that instant I knew how falsely I had answered Bill Eightbells, and how full of danger our voyage in the Celsis must be.