And on this a general and forceful discussion ensued, which ended in a physical demonstration of their views on the part of Long John of Kenworth, and a square, heavy privateersman, during which Cap’n Dan hauled the flag out of the midst of the discussion, and began to bundle it back into the chest, which he did so clumsily that he disturbed a layer of underclothing which covered the lower contents, and, displayed to view that the chest was nearly two-thirds full of smashed and defaced gold and silver work of every description, from the gold hilts of swords and daggers, to the crumpled golden binding of some great Bible, showing burst jewel-sockets from which precious stones had been roughly prised.
At sight of all this new treasure, the value of which was plainly enormous, a great silence came upon the room, broken only by the scuffling and grunting of the two who were setting forth their arguments upon the floor of the taproom. So marked was this silence that even these two at last became aware of something fresh, and scrambled to their feet to participate. And they, also, joined in the general hush of astonished awe and avarice and, what cannot be denied, renewed and intense respect for this further proof of the desirable worth of the returned citizen of Geddley.
And the cap’n, realising in his half-drunken pride the magnitude of the sensation he bad created, and the supremeness of the homage that he had won, shut down the lid of the chest and locked it with the two keys, which he afterwards returned to the snuffbox, bedding them well down into the snuff, and shutting the box with a loud snap, after he had once more refreshed his nose sufficiently.
“Be you not goin’ to turn out t’other, cap’n?” asked Long John of Kenworth, in a marvellously courteous voice—that is, considering the man.
“Non,” said Captain Dan, with that brevity of courtesy so admired in the wealthy; for it is likely enough that the wealth contained in those two great chests was sufficient to have bought up the whole of the port of Geddley, and a good slice of the country round about it, lock, stock, and barrel, as the saying goes.
Now, when the captain had so wittily described his intention, he pulled out a small powder-flask from his side pocket, and proceeded, in a considerable silence, to recharge the fired pistol, which he did with a quite peculiar dexterity, speaking of immense practice, and this despite his half-drunken condition. When he had finished ramming down a couple of soft-lead bullets upon the charge of powder, he primed the lock, replaced the flask, and announced his intention of turning in—i.e., going to bed—which he achieved with remarkable speed by dragging the two chests together in the middle of the tap-room, and using them as a couch, with his rolled-up coat as a pillow; and so in a moment he composed himself with a grunt, his loaded pistols stuffed in under the coat, and his great right hand resting on the butts.
And so he seemed to be instantly asleep. Yet it is a curious thing that once when Long John stepped over towards him, after a bout of whispering with several of the men in the room, Cap’n Dan opened one bleary eye, and, without undue haste, thrust out one of his big pistols in an indifferent manner at the body of Long John, whereat that gentleman stepped back without even attempting to enter into any argument on the score of intention.
After this little episode, the cap’n once more returned to his peculiar mode of slumbering; but there was no longer any whispering on the part of Long John of Kenworth and his mates. Instead, a quite uncomfortable silence obtained an unwonted permission in the taproom broken presently by the departing feet of this man and that man, until the place was empty, save for the fat landlord, who leaned against the great beer-tub and regarded the sleeping captain in a meditative and puzzled fashion.
The landlord’s pondering was interrupted disagreeably; for slowly one of the sleeping captain’s eyes opened, and a curiously disturbing look was fixed upon the fat landlord for the space of perhaps a full minute. Then Captain Dan extended a great hand towards the landlord, and in the hand was one of his big, brass-bound pistols, the muzzle towards Master Drinquobier. For a little space the captain directed the pistol thus, whilst the landlord shrivelled visibly in a queer, speechless fashion.
“Tenons de la verge d’une ancre!” said Captain Dan, even as he had said it once before that evening.
He tapped the pistol with his other hand to emphasise the remark, and sat on the bigger chest, still looking at the landlord.
“So,” he said at last, speaking in English, “you’re thinkin’ to go halves with Long John o’ Kenworth, ye gowk Tunbelly. You ’m waitin’ now, beer-hog, to give them the signal; to enter when I’m gone over, ye soft; an’ think to fool Dan easyways; an’ I knowin’ what ye meant, an’ they only without in enter-porch, ye fat fool! Out with you, smartly! Out, I say!”
And therewith he flung the loaded pistol at the landlord’s head; but he dodged, quite cleverly, for so fat a man, and the weapon exploded against the wall with a great crash of sound; whilst the landlord ran heavily for the door, tore it open, and fell headlong out into the passageway, whilst within the empty taproom the captain sat on the chest and shook with a kind of grim laughter.
Presently he rose from the chest, after he had heard the landlord go scrambling away in clumsy fright upon his hands and knees. He stood a few minutes, listening intently; then, seeming to hear something, he ran with surprising nimbleness to the door, pushed it silently to, and set down the socket-bar across from side to side, so that the door would have to be broken down before anyone could enter. Then he bent forward to listen, and in a little while heard the faint sound of bare feet without in the passage; and soon a soft, gentle fumbling at the door.
“Depasser!” he shouted, roaring with a kind of half-laughter, half-anger. Then, in English: “You’ve overrun your reckoning, my lads! Get below and turn in!”
And, with the word, he turned unconcernedly from the door and went back to his rough couch, and presently was sleeping unemotionally, whilst without the door the men, who had come with some hope of surprising him, departed with muffled but considerable fluency, and an unabated avarice.
And thus, and in this manner exactly, was the home-coming of Captain Dan, pirate (presumably), and now (certainly) a most desirable citizen of the port of Geddley.
Captain Dan waked early, and rolled off his uncomfortable bed. He walked across to the shelf where the brandy kegs were stored, and helped himself to a generous tot; after which he went over to the door, unbarred it and opened it, and bellowed the landlord’s name, calling him also old Tunbelly and beer-hog, and cursing him between whiles in both French and English, until he came tumbling clown the creaking stair in a very fluster of dismay.
Breakfast, was Cap’n Dan’s demand. Breakfast, and speedily and plentifully, and if the maids were not up yet, then it was time they turned out, and old Tunbelly could prepare the meal himself and serve it to him in the taproom, upon one of his big chests. Meanwhile, he applied himself methodically to the brandy keg, varying his occupation with occasional bellows through the quiet of the inn for the meal he had ordered.
It came presently, and he squatted sideways upon the narrow chest and set to work. As he ate, he asked the landlord questions about this and that woman of the port, who—when he had gone off to sea all these twenty years gone—had been saucy maids, but now were mostly mothers of families, if he could believe all the fat Drinquobier told him.
“Eh,” said Cap’n Dan, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, “there was some saucy ones among the lot when I was a younker. An’ how’s young Nancy Drigg doin’?”
“She be Nancy Garbitt these thirteen year, Cap’n Dan, sir,” said the landlord.
Whereat the, captain ceased his eating a moment to hark the better.
“Eh?” he said, in a curious voice at last. “Marriedthat top-o’-my-thumb Jimmy Garbitt? Dieu, but I’ll cut the throat of him this same day! The sacred man-sprat! The blandered bunch o’ shakin’s!”
“He’m dead these yere two years, cap’n,” said Drinquobier, staring hard at Captain Dan with half-frightened and wholly curious eyes.
“I heerd oncst ’s ye as sweet-ways on Nancy. No offence! No offence, cap’n! Seven, Jimmy left be’ind, an’ all on ’em maids at that.”
“What!” cried Captain Dan, with a sudden strange anger, and threw his brandy mug at the landlord’s head.
But afterwards he was silent for a time, neither eating nor speaking, only frowning away to himself.
“An’ Nancy Drigg herself!” he asked, at length. “How ’m she lookin’ these days, ye old Tunbelly? Seven on ’em! Seven on ’em, an’ to that blundering bunch o’ shakin’s! Why don’t ye answer, you bilge-guzzlin’ beer-cask! Open your face, ye— ye—”
“Fair, cap’n, sir; fair an’ bonny like, Cap’n Dan,” old Drinquobier interjected, with frightened haste; his frontal appendage quivering like a vast jelly, until the form shook on which he sat.
“Ah!” said the captain, and was quiet again; but a minute afterwards he made it pointedly clear to the landlord that he needed a timber-sled to be outside of the inn, speedily. “An’ half a dozen of thy loafer lads, Tunbelly, do ye hear! An’ smart, or I’ll put more than beer betwixt thy wind and water, ye old cut-throat, that must set a respectable townsman to sleep with his pistols to hand all the long night in this inn of yours lest ye an’ your louts do him a mischief! Smartly, ye beer-swiller, wi’ yon sled, an’ smartly does it, or I’ll be knowin’ the why!”
And evidently smartly did do it, as we say; for in a very few minutes Captain Dan was superintending, pistol in hand, the transferring of his two great chests to the sled, by the hands of a dozen brawny longshore men who had been fished out of various handy sleeping places by the fearful landlord.
Cap’n Dan sat himself down upon his chests, and signalled to the horse-boy to drive on. But, as he started to move, the fat landlord discovered, somewhere in his monstrous body, the remnant of a one-time courage, and came forward towards the sled, crying out that he would be paid for liquor, bed, and board.
At this Cap’n Dan raised one of his pistols; evidently with the full intention of ending, once and for all, the entire agitation of the landlord’s avaricious soul. But, suddenly thinking better of it, he drew out a couple of guineas, which he hove in among the little crowd of shore-boys, shouting to them to get their fill of good beer to the hatchways, and the change might go to pay his debts to Drinquobier. He did this knowing full well that no change would the landlord ever see out of those two guineas; and so sat back, roaring with laughter, and shouting to the horse-boy to “Crack on sail an’ blow the sticks out o’ her!” Which resulted in the lad laying his cudgel repeatedly and forcibly across the hindquarters of the animal, which again resulted in the beast changing its walk to a kind of absurd amble, which in its turn resulted in the sled bounding and bumping along down the atrociously paved street dignified by the name of the High Street Alley, so that the last the group around the doorway of the Tunbelly saw was the broad, heavy figure of Cap’n Dan jolting and rolling on the top of his great chests, and trying to take aim at the horse-boy with one of his big brass-bound pistols, the while he bellowed to the lad to shorten sail, and likewise to be damned as before.
And so they went, rattling and hanging round the corner, out of sight; the clatter and crashing of the heavy sled punctuated twice by the reports of the captain’s pistols. After which he was content to hold on, and curse the boy, horse, sled, the landlord of the Tunbelly, and the road, all with equal violence, until, in a minute, the lad once more got the horse controlled to a walk, and was cursing back pluckily at the cap’n for loosing off his pistols at him. And this way they came presently to a little house in the lower end of the alley, where the boy stopped the sled and his cursing all in the same moment, and pointed with his horse-cudgel to the door of the little house, meaning that they had come to the place.
At this Cap’n Dan got down lumberingly from the top of his big chests; and suddenly, before the boy knew his intention, he had caught him by the collar of his rough jacket, and hoist him bodily from the ground. Whereupon the lad, full as ever of his strange pluck, set-to to curse him again—so well as he might, being half strangled—and to striking at him with the horse-cudgel.
Immediately the captain plucked the cudgel from him, and then, setting the lad’s feet to the road again, he hauled forth a great handful of gold pieces, which he crammed forcibly down the back of the boy’s neck, shaking with queer, noiseless laughter the while.
“A good plucked ’un! Dieu, a good plucked ’un!” he said; and loosed the lad suddenly, applying one of his big sea-boots with indelicate dexterity, to intimate that he had no further need of his services.
Whereupon the lad, who had ceased now to curse, ran off down the alley a little way, and commenced to shake himself, until all the gold had come through; after which he gathered it up, and, calling to his horse, mounted the sled, and away so fast as the brute would go.
Meanwhile, Cap’n Dan was pounding at the door of the house, and shouting lustily the name of Nancy Drigg, outside the door of Nancy Garbitt; until presently a startled feminine face came out of a lattice above, and seeing him, she screamed out, “Dan! Dan!” and withdrew hurriedly from sight.
“What do you want?” she, asked presently, from within the room, and not showing herself.
“Open!” shouted the cap’n; “afore I has the door down. I’m coom to board wi’ ye, Nance. Open, I say!”
And he commenced to kick at the door with his great sea-boots.
“Husht now, Dan! You ’m the drink in you, or you’d no think to shame a lone woman this fashion. Husht now, an’ I’ll coom down and let ’ee in.”
Whereupon the cap’n ceased from his kicking, and turned round to survey the various heads that had been thrust from the casements of the alley about, to discover the cause of the disturbance.
“Bon quart! Bon quart!” he called, at first good-humouredly; but, changing his tone as he saw they still continued to stare at him, “Bon quart! Bon quart!” he roared angrily; and aimed with one of his discharged pistols at the head of the nearest.
The flint snapped harmlessly, and the head dodged back; but the captain hauled a fresh weapon from the skirts of his long coat, and, seeing that he was still spied upon from a window higher up, he let drive in sound earnest, and very near ended the life of the onlooker; after which the alley might have held only the dead for all the living that displayed themselves to his view. He turned again, and commenced to kick upon the door, shouting. And in the same instant it was opened by Nancy, hurriedly wrapped about with her quilt.
“Husht now! Husht now, Dan, an’ coom in sober-like,” she said, “or ’tis only the outside of the door I’ll have to ’ee.”
The captain stepped inside, and turned on her.
“Nice wumman ye, Nancy Drigg, to splice that blandered bunch o’ shakin’s, Jimmy Garbitt. An’ seven ye’ve had to him; an’ not a man in the lot—an’ little wonder; ye that could not wait for y’r own man to come home wi’ the fortune I promised ye, but must marry a top-o’-my-thumb. Shame on ye for a poor-sperreted wench; an’ me this moment wi’ the half o’ oor silver penny to my knife chain that we broke all them years gone; an’ never a throat I cut but I ses, ‘There be another gold piece to my Nancy!’ An’ you go spliced to that—”
“Husht, Dan!” said Nancy at last, not loudly but with surprising firmness. “You be proper an’ decent wi’ me, Dan, an’ good care I’ll take of ’ee, an’ put up wi’ ’ee so well as I may, for owd sake’s sake. Put no word at poor Jimmy, an’ nowt to trouble my maids, or out ye go to the sharks o’ Geddley, an’ clean they’ll pluck ye, as well ye know.”
“An’ well they fear me, an’ well can I mind my own!” said the captain warmly, yet unmistakably more civil in his manner; for he felt that if Nancy Garbitt would take him in, then, at least, he need fear no traitors in the camp, as the saying goes.
“I’m troubled wi’ a sick pain in th’ heart, Nancy, an’ can’t last long,” he said, after little pause. “Will I pay ye a gold piece every week-ending, or will I pay ye
nothin’ an’ you have the will of me when I go below?”
“I’ll trade on no man’s death, Dan; an’ least on yours,” said Nancy. “Pay me the guinea-piece each week, an’ well I’ll’ do by ’ee, as you know, Dan. An’ do ’ee be easy with drinkin’ an’ ill-livin’, an’ many a year you ’m boun’ to live yet.”
And so it was arranged:
“An’ you keep the seven brats out of my course!” said the cap’n.
“Dan!” said Nancy.
“Pardieu, Nance! No ill to it! No ill to it!” apologised Cap’n Dan. “You ’m pretty lookin’ yet, wi’ the sperret that’s in ye, Nance,” he concluded.
At which compliment Nancy’s eyes softened a little, so that it was like enough that she still had in a corner of her heart a gentle feeling towards this uncouth sea-dog of a man who had been her lover in her youth.
And this way came, and settled, and presently died, Captain Dan; and with his death there arose the seven-year mystery of the treasure, which to this day maybe read in the “Records of the Parish of Geddley; by John Stockman, 1797.”
And regarding the length of life still coming to him, Cap’n Dan was right; for he lived no more than some eighteen or nineteen months—date uncertain—after the arrangement mentioned above. And these are the concluding details of his life.
For some months he lived quietly enough with Nancy Garbitt, paying her regularly, and amenable to her tongue, even in his most fantastic fits of humour, whether bred of drink or of his state of health. Eventually, however, his little room was broken into one dark night whilst he slept. But the captain proved conclusively that he was well able to defend both life and fortune; for he used his pistols and, later, his cutlass to such effect that when the raiders drew off there lay three dead and one wounded on the floor of his room, whose groans so irritated Cap’n Dan that he went over to him, and, picking up one of the overturned lanterns from the floor, passed his cutlass twice or thrice through him to quieten him, remarking as he did so: “I knew I’d ha’ to fix ’ee, Tunbelly, afore I was done wi’ ye.” (For he recognised the landlord’s corporation, despite the masks which he and all the robbers had worn.) “An’ here’s luck—an’ you’re sure goin’ easy.”
The House on the Borderland and Other Mysterious Places Page 53