Doctor Syn, Russell Thorndyke [rainbow fish read aloud .TXT] 📗
- Author: Russell Thorndyke
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“Sir Antony Cobtree is out riding,” said the butler. But at that instant a clattering of hoofs was heard upon the highway and the squire himself came along at an easy trot and drew rein before the house. “My faith!” he cried, looking from the butler to the captain, and then at the line of naked cutlasses. “Have the French landed at last?”
“Captain Howard Coliyer of the King’s Admiralty, sir,” said the captain, saluting, “and if you are the squire, very much at your service.”
The jolly squire returned the salute, touching his hat with his riding whip. “Indeed, Captain?” he said, dismounting. “And I would prefer to be your friend than your foe so long as you have these sturdy fellows at your back. Is it the renewed activity of the French navy that we have to thank for your presence here, or the coast defence?”
“I should Hke a word with you alone/’ said the captain.
“Certainly,” returned the squire, throwing the reins to a groom and leading the way to the house.
They crossed the large hall, and the squire, opening a door at the far end, invited the captain to enter the library.
There in the recess of the old mullioned window sat Doctor Syn, deep in a dusty tome that he had taken from the bookcase.
“Ah, Doctor,” said the squire, “they didn’t tell me you were here. No further need to fear the French fleet. The King’s Admiralty has had the kind grace to furnish us with an officer’s complement. Captain Colly er—Doctor Syn, our vicar.”
“Not the Collyer who sank the Lion d^Or at the mouth of the St. Lawrence River, I suppose?” he said, shaking hands.
“The same,” returned the captain, highly delighted that the achievement of his life had been heard of by the parson. “Captain Howard Collyer then, commanding the Resistance, a brigantine of twenty-two guns. Indeed, sir, the French Government kicked up such a devil of a row over that little affair that I lost my command. So now, instead of sinking battleships, the Admiralty keeps me busy nosing out smugglers; a poor enough game for a man who has done big things at sea, but it has its excitements.”
“So I should imagine,” said the cleric.
“And what have you come here for?” asked the squire.
“To hang every smuggler on Romney Marsh,” said the captain.
“Do you believe in ghosts?” said the squire.
“AMiat do you mean?” retorted the captain.
“Miat I say,” returned the squire. “Do you beheve in ghosts?”
“Well, I can’t say I do,” laughed the captain, “for I have never yet met one.”
“No more have I,” returned the squire. “But they say the Marsh is haunted at night. They’ve said so so long that people believe it. WTienever a traveller loses his way on the Marsh and disappears, folk say that the Marsh witches have taken him. When the harvests are bad, when the wool is poor, when the cattle are sicklv, oh, it’s alwavs the Marsh witches that are blamed. They set fire to haystacks, they kill the chickens, they blast the trees, they curdle the milk, and hold up travellers and rob them of their purses. In fact all the vices of the Marsh, really performed by Master Fox, or ]Iaster Careless, or Master Footpad, are all put down to the poor Marsh witches, who don’t exist except in the minds of the people. I know the Marshes as well as any man ever will, and I’ve never seen a witch, and it’s the very same with smugglers. The whole thing’s a fallacy. I’ve never caught ‘em at it; and I keep a stern enough eye on my farms, I can tell you. Why, I’m a positive king, sir. Do you know that if a man working in the neighbourhood doesn’t please me, that I can shut every door of the Marsh against him? Why, these farmers are all scared stiff of me, sir. I’d like to see the man who went against the laws of Romney Marsh. I can tell you, sir, that I’d soon mark him down.”
“You are perhaps too confident, sir,” suggested the captain.
“Not a bit of it, sir,” exclaimed the squire. “Mind you I don’t trust ‘em, oh, Lord, no; I just know ‘em to be honest, because I don’t give ‘em the chance to be otherwise. They never know when or where I’ll be turning up. Why, I have a groom in my stables awake all night in case I want to surprise a farm ten miles away. Smugglers? Pooh! Rubbish!”
“Then you consider that I am here on a wildgoose chase?” said the captain.
“Not even that,” said the squire; “for you will find no wild geese to chase. However, I don’t think that you need regret having been sent here, for we can give you really good entertainment; and I’ll bet my head that after you have stayed with us a week or so you’ll be sending in your papers to the Admiralty, and settling down on the Marsh as a good Kentish farmer.”
“I’m afraid not, sir,” laughed the captain.
“Oh, yes, you will,” went on the squire. “And I’ll be bound that we’ll have you bothering Doctor Syn to put the banns up for you and some country beauty. What do you say, Doctor?”
“Well,” chuckled the cleric, entering into the joke, “if a man wants to marry and settle down, and live happily ever after, as the saying goes, why, then, Kent’s the place for him. It’s a great country, sir, expecially south and east of the Med way; famous for everything that goes to make life worth living.”
“Yes, take him on the whole,” said the squire, “the King can boast of no greater jewel in the crown of England than the average man of Kent.”
“Well,” agreed the captain, “I’ve heard say that Kent has fine clover fields, and it’s evident to me that I’m a lucky devil and have fallen into one. But I must see to the billeting of my men. Perhaps you can advise me?” But the squire wouldn’t hear of business until the captain had cracked a bottle of wine with them and promised to lodge himself at the Court House, Doctor Syn readily placing the large brick-built vicarage barn at the disposal of the men.
So having settled all amicably, and promising to return within the hour for supper, the captain, piloted by Doctor Syn, and followed by the seamen, proceeded to inspect the barn; and it was not long before the sailors had converted it into as jolly an old hall as one could wish to see, with a great log-fire ablaze in the stone grate, and a pot of steaming victuals swinging from a hook above the flames.
“Are you all here?” said the captain to the bo’sun, before rejoining the Doctor outside the door.
“All except Bill Spiker and the mulatto, sir,” returned Job Mallet. “I sent ‘em for rum. Here they are, if I mistake not.” And indeed up to the barn came two seamen carrying a barrel.
“Now,” said the captain to Doctor Syn, “I am ready to return to the Court House.”
But the cleric’s eyes were fixed on the men carrying the barrel, who were passing him. “Who’s that man?” he said to the captain, shivering violently, for a cold fog had risen with the night.
“That’s Bill Spiker the gunner,” said the captain. “Do you know him?”
“No—the other, the other,” exclaimed the Doctor, still watching the retreating figures who were now being received with shouts of welcome from the barn.
“Oh, that fellow’s a mulatto,” returned the captain; “useful for investigation work. An ugly enough looking rascal, isn’t he?”
“A very ugly rascal,” muttered the Doctor, walking rapidly from the barn in the direction of the Court House.
“You look cold,” remarked the captain as they stood outside the Court House door.
“Yes. It’s a cold night,” returned the Doctor. “Why, I declare my teeth are chattering.”
THERE was one man who knew Romney Marsh as well as the squire. This was Sennacherib Pepper, and, what’s more, he knew the Marsh by night as well as by day, for he w^as the visiting physician to the Marsh farms, and his work called him to patients sometimes at night. He had seen curious things upon the Marsh from his own account, hinting darkly about the witches and devils that rode on fiery steeds through the mists. The villagers, of course, believed his yarns, but the squire poohpoohed them, and, as it was well known that Sennacherib Pepper was a hard drinker, some people put his stories down to the effects of wine. But although he gave no credence to his tales. Sir Antony rather enjoyed the physician, and he was a frequent visitor to the Court House. He had prevailed upon him to stay to supper this very night, introducing him to the captain as his dear friend Sennacherib Pepper, the worst master of physics and the most atrocious liar on Romney Marsh, for although Sennacherib was a very touchy old customer and was ever on the brink of losing his temper, Sir Antony could never resist a joke at his expense.
“Zounds, sir!” he retorted, “if I were presenting you to Sir Antony I should most certainly style him the worst business man upon the Marsh.”
“How do you make that out?” cried the squire.
“My dear sir,” went on Sennacherib to the captain, “his tenants rob him at every turn. Everybody but himself knows that half the wool from his farms finds its way over to Calais.”
“My dear Captain,” said Doctor Syn, who was warming himself at the fireplace, “our good friend Pepper is repeatedly coming into contact with the old gentleman himself upon the Marsh. Why, only last year he informed us that he met at least a score of his bodyguard riding in perfect style and most approved manner across from Ivychurch on fire-snorting steeds. And how many witches is it now that you have seen? A good round dozen, I’ll be sworn; and they were riding straddle-legs, a thing that we could hardly credit.”
“Well, let us hope,” said the physician, “that the presence of the Ejng’s men will frighten the devils away. I’ve seen ‘em, and I’ve no wish to see ‘em again.”
“You can set your mind quite at rest, sir,” returned the captain, “for if as you say their horses breathe fire, they will afford excellent targets on the flat Marsh. We’ll hail the King’s ship and see what ninety good guns can do for the devils.”
All through supper was this vein of humorous conversation kept up, until when the meal was finished and pipes alight, and Denis had retired to his room with a glum face to steer most sorely against his will upon a course of literature, the conversation gradually drifted into the Southern Seas, and the captain began telling stirring tales of Clegg the pirate, who had been hanged at Rye.
“I should like to have been at that hanging,” he cried, finishing a tale of horror, “for the fellow, as you have just heard, was a bloodthirsty scoundrel.”
“So we have always heard,” said Doctor Syn; “but don’t you think that some of his exploits may have been exaggerated?”
“Not a bit of it,” exclaimed the captain; “I believe everything I hear about that man, except that last blunder that put his neck into the noose at Rye.”
“That is his only exploit about w^hich there is any
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