Sir John Constantine Part 6

Nat's gusts of pa.s.sion amused me, and why a man should want to write verses or fall in love was a mystery at which I arrived no nearer than to laugh. For this (strange as it may sound) I believe the visit to London was partly to blame. Nothing had come of it, except that the unhappy King Theodore had gained his release and improved upon it by dying, a few weeks later, in wretched lodgings in Soho; where, at my father's expense, the church of St. Anne's now bore a mural tablet to his memory with an epitaph obligingly contributed by the Hon. Horace Walpole, since Earl of Orford.

Near this place is interred THEODORE KING OF CORSICA who died in this parish Dec. 11, 1756 immediately after leaving The King's Bench Prison by the benefit of the Act of Insolvency in consequence of which he registered his kingdom of Corsica for the use of his creditors.

The grave, great teacher, to a level brings Heroes and beggars, galley slaves and kings; But Theodore this moral learned ere dead: Fate poured his lesson on his living head, Bestow'd a kingdom, and denied him bread.

My father, who copied this out for me, had announced in few words poor Theodore's fate, but without particular allusion to our adventure, which, as he made no movement to follow it up, or none that he confided, I came in time to regard humorously as an escapade of his, a holiday frolic, a piece of midsummer madness. The serious part was that he had undoubtedly paid away large sums of money, and for two years my Uncle Gervase had worn a distracted air which I set down to the family accounts. By degrees I came to conclude, with the rest of the world, that my father's brain was more than a little cracked, and sounded my uncle privately about this--delicately as I thought; but he met me with a fierce unexpected heat. "Your father,"

said he, "is the best man in the world, and I bid you wait to understand him better, taking my word that he has great designs for you." Sure enough, too, my father seemed to hint at this in the tenor of his conversation with me, which was ever of high politics and the government of states, or on some point which could be stretched to bear on these; but of any immediate design he forbore-- as it seemed, carefully--to speak. Thus I found myself at pause and let my youth wait upon his decision.

Yet I had sense enough to feel less than satisfied with myself, albeit sorer with Nat as I watched the dear lad go from me across the turf and out at the garden gate. Nor will I swear that my eyes did not smart a little. I was but a boy, and had set my heart on our travelling down to Cornwall together.

To Cornwall I rode down alone, a week later, and fell to work to idle my vacation away; fis.h.i.+ng a little, but oftener sailing my boat; sometimes alone, sometimes with Billy Priske for company.

Billy--whose duties as butler were what he called a _sine qua non_, p.r.o.nounced as "s.h.i.+ny Canaan" and meaning a sinecure--had spent some part of term time in netting me a trammel, of which he was inordinately proud, and with this we amused ourselves, sailing or rowing down to the river's mouth every evening at nightfall to set it, and, again, soon after daybreak, to haul it, and usually returning with good store of fish for breakfast--soles, dories, plaice, and the red mullet for which Helford is famous above all streams.

Now, during these lazy weeks I had not forgotten Eugenio's advertis.e.m.e.nt, which, on returning to my rooms that evening after Nat's rebuff, I had clipped from the newspaper and since kept in my pocket. For the fun of it, and to find out who this Eugenio might be--I had given over suspecting my father--my mind was made up to ride over to Falmouth on the 16th of July; but whether with or without a rose in my hat I had not determined. Therefore on the morning of the 15th, when Billy, after hauling the trammel, began to lay our plans for the morrow, I cut him short, telling him that to-morrow I should not fish.

"What's matter with 'ee to-all?" he asked, smas.h.i.+ng a spider-crab and picking it out piecemeal from the net. "Pretty fair catch to-day, id'n-a? spite of all the weed; an' no harm done by these varmints that a man can't put to rights afore evenin'."

I took the paddles without answering and pulled towards the river's mouth, while he sat and smoked his pipe over the business of clearing the net of weed. Around his feet on the bottom boards lay our morning's catch--half a dozen soles and twice the number of plaice, a brace of edible crabs, six or seven red mullet, besides a number of gurnard and wra.s.s worth no man's eating, an ugly-looking monkfish and a bream of wonderful rainbow hues. A fog lay over the sea, so dense that in places we could see but a few yards; but over it the tops of the tall cliffs stood out clear, and the sun was mounting. A faint breeze blew from the southward. All promised a hot still day.

The tide was making, too, and with wind and tide to help I pulled over the river bar and towards the creek where daily, after hauling the trammel, I bathed from the boat; a delectable corner in the eye of the morning suns.h.i.+ne, paved fathoms deep with round, white pebbles, one of which, from the gunwale, I selected to dive for.

The sun broke through the sea-fog around us while I stripped; it shone, as I balanced myself for the plunge, on the broad wings of a heron flapping out from the wood's blue shadow; it shone on the scales of the fish struggling and gasping under the thwarts.

Divine the river was, divine the morning, divine the moment--the last of my boyhood.

Souse I plunged and deep, with wide-open eyes, chose out and grasped my pebble, and rose to the surface holding it high as though it had been a gem. The sound of the splash was in my ears and the echo of my own laugh, but with it there mingled a cry from Billy Priske, and shaking the water out of my eyes I saw him erect in the stern-sheets and astare at a vision parting the fog--the vision of a tall fore-and-aft sail, golden-grey against the sunlight, and above the sail a foot or two of a stout pole-mast, and above the mast a gilded truck and weather-vane with a tail of scarlet bunting. So closely the fog hung about her that for a second I took her to be a cutter; and then a second sail crept through the curtain, and I recognized her for the _Gauntlet_ ketch, Port of Falmouth, Captain Jo Pomery, returned from six months' foreign. I announced her to Billy with a shout.

"As if a man couldn' tell that!" answered Billy, removing his cap and rubbing the back of his head. "What brings her in here, that's what I'm askin'."

"Belike," said I, scrambling over the gunwale, "the man has lost his bearings in this fog, and mistakes Helford for Falmouth entrance."

"Lost his bearin's! Jo Pomery lost his bearin's!" Billy regarded me between pity and reproach. "And him sailing her in from Blackhead close round the Manacles, in half a capful o' wind an' the tides lookin' fifty ways for Sunday! That's what he've a-done, for the weather lifted while we was hauling trammel--anyways east of south a man could see clear for three mile and more, an' not a vessel in sight there. There's maybe three men in the world besides Jo Pomery could ha' done it--the Lord knows how, unless 'tis by sense o' smell.

And he've a-lost his bearin's, says you!"

"Well then," I ventured, "perhaps he has a fancy to land part of his cargo duty-free."

"That's likelier," Billy a.s.sented. "I don't say 'tis the truth, mind you: for if 'tis truth, why should the man choose to fetch land by daylight? Fog? A man like Jo Pomery isn' one to mistake a little pride-o'-the-mornin' for proper thick weather--the more by token it's been liftin' this hour and more. But 'tis a likelier guess anyway, the _Gauntlet_ being from foreign. 'Lost his bearin's,' says you, and come, as you might say, slap through the Manacles; an' by accident, as you might say! Luck has a broad back, my son, but be careful how you dance 'pon it."

"Where does she come from?" I asked.

"Mediterranean; that's all I know. Four months and more she must ha'

took on this trip. Iss; sailed out o' Falmouth back-along in the tail-end o' February, and her cargo muskets and other combustibles."

"Muskets?"

"Muskets; and you may leave askin' me who wants muskets out there, for in the first place I don't know, an' a still tongue makes a wise head."

I had slipped on s.h.i.+rt and breeches. "We'll give him a hail, anyway," said I, "and if there's sport on hand he may happen to let us join it."

The ketch by this time was pus.h.i.+ng her nose past the spit of rock hiding our creek from seaward. As she came by with both large sails boomed out to starboard and sheets alternately sagging loose and tautening with a jerk, I caught sight of two of her crew in the bows, the one looking on while the other very deliberately unlashed the anchor, and aft by the wheel a third man, whom I made out to be Captain Pomery himself.

"_Gauntlet_ ahoy!" I shouted, standing on the thwart and making a trumpet of my hands.

Captain Pomery turned, cast a glance towards us over his left shoulder and lifted a hand. A moment later he called an order forward, and the two men left the anchor and ran to haul in sheets.

Here was a plain invitation to pull alongside. I seized a paddle, and was working the boat's nose round, to pursue, when another figure showed above the _Gauntlet's_ bulwarks: a tall figure in an orange-russet garment like a dressing-gown; a monk, to all appearance, for the sun played on his tonsured scalp as he leaned forward and watched our approach.

CHAPTER V.

THE SILENT MEN.

"Seamen, seamen, whence come ye?

_Pardonnez moy, je vous en prie_."

_Old Song_.

A monk he was too. A second and third look over my shoulder left me no doubt of it. He gravely handed us a rope as we overtook the ketch and ran alongside, and as gravely bowed when I leapt upon deck; but he gave us no other welcome.

His russet gown reached almost to his feet, which were bare; and he stood amid the strangest litter of a deck-cargo, consisting mainly-- or so at first glance it seemed to me--of pot-plants and rude agricultural implements: spades, flails, forks, mattocks, picks, hoes, dibbles, rakes, lashed in bundles; sieves, buckets, kegs, bins, milk-pails, seed-hods, troughs, mangers, a wired dovecote, and a score of hen-coops filled with poultry. Forward of the mainmast stood a cart with shafts, upright and lashed to the mast, that the headsails might work clear. The s.p.a.ce between the masts was occupied by enormous open hatchways through which came the lowing of oxen, and through these, peering down into the hold, I saw the backs of cattle and horses moving in its gloom, and the bodies of men stretched in the straw at their feet.

So much of the _Gauntlet's_ hugger-mugger I managed to discern before Captain Pomery left the helm and hurried forward to give us welcome on board.

"Mornin', Squire Prosper! Mornin', Billy! You know _me_, sir--Cap'n Jo Pomery--which is short for Job, and 'tis the luckiest chance, sir, you hailed me, for you'm nearabouts the first man I wanted to see.

Faith, now, and I wonder how your father (G.o.d bless him) will take it?"

"Why, what's the matter?" asked I, with a glance at the monk, who had drawn back a pace and stood, still silent, fingering his rosary.

"The matter? Good Lord! isn't _this_ matter enough?" Captain Jo waved an arm to include all the deck-cargo. "See them pot-plants, there, and what they'm teeled [1] in?"

"Drinking-troughs?" said I. "Or . . . is it coffins?"

"Coffins it is. I'd feel easier in mind if you could tell me what your father (G.o.d bless him) will say to it."

"But what has all this to do with my father?" I demanded, and, seeking Billy's eyes, found them as frankly full of amaze as my own.

"Not but what," continued Captain Jo, "they've behaved well, though dog-sick to a man from the time we left port. Look at 'em!"--he caught me by the arm and, drawing me to the hatchway, pointed down to the hold. "A round score and eight, and all well paid for as pa.s.sengers; but for the return journey I won't answer. It depends on your father, and that"--with a jerk of his thumb towards the tall monk--"I stippilated when I s.h.i.+pped 'em. 'Never you mind,' was the answer I got; 'take 'em to England to Sir John Constantine.'

And here they be!"

"But who on earth are they?" I cried, staring down into the gloom, where presently I made out that the men stretched in the straw at the horses' feet were monks all, and habited like the monk on the deck behind me. To him next I turned, to find his eyes, which were dark and quick, searching me curiously; and as I turned he made a step forward, put out a hand as if to touch me on the s.h.i.+rt-sleeve, and anon drew it back, yet still continued to regard me.

"You are a son, signor, of Sir John Constantine?" he asked, in soft Italian.

"I am his only son, sir," I answered him in the same language.

"Ah! You speak my tongue?" A gleam of joy pa.s.sed over his grave features. "And you are his son? So! I should have guessed it at once, for you bear great likeness to him."

"You know my father, sir?"