Twelve o’clock having struck from the neighbouring church tower, the sham ghost rose and moved slowly in the direction of the young lieutenant. The latter, nothing daunted, and never suspecting a trick on the part of his friends; promptly fired a pistol at it; whereupon it slowly extended one hand in the moonlight, with a bullet between the finger and thumb, as though the projectile had been arrested in mid-air. Promptly was the other pistol seized and fired, with the same result; whereupon, drawing his sword, the young man rushed forward, and, lunging violently, ran his friend through the body, killing him on the spot. The remorse of the intended victim and of the abettors of the real victim may, perhaps, be imagined.
In the following case, however, the punishment of a somewhat similar practical joke was accomplished by means more strange and terrible. The facts can, no doubt, at the present day, be easily verified upon the spot where they took place.
In the county of Forfar, Scotland, by the mouth of the Tay, near Broughty Ferry, stands the village of Monifieth. Monifieth parish comprises, beside the village which gives it its name, the villages of Banhill and Drumsturdymoor and the larger part of the post town of Broughty Ferry. Monifieth village proper contains some thousand or more inhabitants, but was a smaller place at the time at which the event below recorded took place.
The parish schools now standing at Monifieth were erected in 1822, and took the place of the old building in which, towards the end of the last century, Mr. William Craighead presided as schoolmaster. This was the Mr. William Craighead whose popular handbook of arithmetic was, some time after the occurrence’s here set down, in such great request for school purposes. Mr. Craighead was, at the time referred to, a young man, and one of much livelier tendencies than, no doubt, many of the sober bodies of Monifieth considered strictly consistent with the dignity of a parish schoolmaster. Practical jokes of a pronounced character were frequently played at Monifieth, and popular suspicion was not always wrong in ascribing them to Craighead.
The custom of the “lich-wake,” corresponding largely with the surviving Irish custom of waking the dead, had not then died out in Scotland, and in Monifieth was frequently practised. Scholars tell us that these ceremonies were of Saxon origin, the name being derived from the Saxon words lic, a corpse, and waeccan, to sit awake.
Now, it chanced that upon the death of a substantial farmer in the neighbourhood, a large number of his late acquaintances were invited to the lich-wake, and among them were Craighead and Andrew Saunders, an intimate companion of his, and his confederate in more than one youthful frolic. The similarity in the personal appearance of this Andrew Saunders and that of the dead farmer had more than once been noticed, and this suggested to Craighead a practical joke of rather a grim nature, which, after consultation between the two friends, was ultimately agreed upon.
A shroud was to be procured, and Saunders was to don it; then, after means had been found to attract the company temporarily into another room, the corpse was to be removed to an outhouse, and Saunders was to take its place. Then, when all had returned and the opportunity seemed fitting, Craighead was to sneeze twice, and, at the signal, the supposed corpse was to rise, and the fun was to consist in the enjoyment by the jokers of the terror which their friends would exhibit.
The evening came, and all the preliminaries to this piece of humour were successfully gone through. A chest was suddenly discovered in another part of the house, standing in its wrong place, in the middle of a room, and apparently so heavy that nobody could move it. The whole company adjourned to the room where this chest was in order to try, one after another, to lift or move it, and the whole company failed; which was not very surprising, considering that it had been carefully screwed to the floor. After a time the lid was burst open and the difficulty discovered, and general opinion at once pointed to the perpetrator of the joke as that daft hempie, Wullie Craighead, without, however, a suspicion that the ruse had any intention beyond its own perpetration.
Everybody returned to the watching room, where, during their absence Andrew Saunders had emerged from another passage, and, after dragging the corpse to his own lurking place, had taken its place on the bed, shrouded.
Craighead made his way round about to where the corpse lay upon the floor of the side passage, and, first carefully reconnoitring to make perfectly sure of not being watched, conveyed it to an outhouse. There was straw in this outhouse, and this Craighead disposed suitably, and stretched the body upon it. Returning, he found the key had been carelessly left in the padlock, so, after locking the door, he pocketed this key in case of inquisitiveness on the part of anybody coming near the spot.
This done, he strolled innocently back into the death-chamber.
There was Saunders in the bed, acting the part of the corpse admirably, and quite unsuspected by the assembly. The assembly, indeed, was devoting itself, with great singleness of purpose, to whisky, and paying small attention to the occasion of the ceremony. Perfect decorum and quietness, however, as was customary, prevailed.
“It’s a sad okeeshun, a verra sad okeeshun,” said the miller, reaching for the bottle, “and its proper contemplation calls for a speeshal steemulus,” and he took it.
“It’s no sae sad as’t micht be,” said another, “wi’ neither wife nor bairns to greet.”
They forgot the dead man’s little sister, who was hidden in her little bedroom, exhausted with weeping.
“Thankee, Mr. Christie; I’ll just trouble you for the spiritual stimulus,” said Craighead, addressing the miller. “I was reading the other day,” he added for the information of the company in general, “a rather singular account of a supposed temporary revivification of a corpse. Corpse got up in bed and reached for whisky.”
“It’s a sad, a verra sad okeeshun,” repeated the miller, gazing sternly at Craighead as he handed him the liquor, “and ill-suited for sic gowk-tales.”
“Matter of speecial interest, it seemed to me,” replied the schoolmaster; “interesting just now, particularly, and — tichow! tichow!” he sneezed twice with violence.
No sign or movement from the bed.
This was strange. He must have heard. Craighead concluded that the sneezes had sounded too genuine and unintentional. He determined to repeat them presently, less naturally and more expressively.
The guests continued looking at one another.
Presently Craighead sneezed again twice, looking toward the bed as he did so.
No sign, no sound, no movement there.
What could be wrong? Surely, surely, his friend could not have fallen asleep in such a situation as that, in a shroud, lying in the bed from which the corpse he was personating had just been dragged? It was impossible. Yet, there he lay, motionless calm, and pale, like the body itself. Craighead felt indefinably uncomfortable and uneasy as he looked at him. Why didn’t he get up?
“Ye’ve sair fits o’ sneezin’ the nicht, neebor,” remarked the miller, looking at Craighead curiously.
Still gazing at his friend in the bed, Craighead indistinctly murmured something about having a cold.
Then he felt cold, indeed, with a cold perspiration. Surely Andrew was not so pale as that when he last left him in the passage, nor his lips so white? Perhaps he was ill.
Forgetting the plot entirely, be crossed hurriedly to the bed, and laid his hand on his friend’s shoulder. Then, suddenly turning paler than the other, he thrust his hand beneath the breast of the shroud.
His companions looked at him and at one another in astonishment. Wullie Craighead, with all his gaiety, had the name of a sober man; but here he was tearing the bed-clothes off a dead body and crying like one demented.
“Bring some water, quick, quick! or whisky, or anything! He’s dying, man, I tell ye, or dead! It’s Saunders; it’s Andy Saunders!”
And there, sure enough, as he tore the shroud away, were seen beneath it the everyday clothes of Andrew Saunders.
“What deil’s riggs are ye at noo, Wullie Craighead?” and every man started
to his feet and made for the bed.
And there, in his well-known suit of hodden, with the rags of the torn shroud hanging about his neck and shoulders, lay Andrew Saunders, dead!
For some time no word could be got from William Craighead as he sat on the bed dazed and stupid. Then, in response to repeated demands, he explained the ghastly joke in a few words. Meantime the doctor had arrived, and pronounced no doubt of Saunders’s death.
Then arose an inquiry as to where the other body had been concealed, and Craighead, whose stupefaction had given way to wild remorse and self-reproach, accompanied the miller to the outhouse to bring it in.
A stable lantern was lit, and the padlock, which worked rather stiffly, was unlocked with difficulty by means of the key which Craighead had retained.
They entered the outhouse, and there found — nothing but straw! The body had gone!
The outhouse had no window and no other outlet whatever beside the door, which they had found securely padlocked. Craighead was certain that this, and no other outhouse, was the one in which the body had been placed; and, indeed, none of the others were provided with a similar lock. And in the corner he recognised the disposition of the straw, which lay just as he had spread it to receive the body.
Entirely overwhelmed, he wandered aimlessly about the premises. The rest of the party made a thorough search, but without discovering a trace of the missing body, and every man most solemnly declared that he knew nothing whatever of the removal.
Presently, in turning into a door of the house, Craighead met the little sister. She had heard vaguely something of what he had done, and fled from him faintly screaming. Crazed and maddened, he rushed from the place.
All that night he wandered over the country side, he knew not where. Rain fell upon his bare head and drenched him through, but he knew it not.
Day broke, the sun rose and declined, and still William Craighead wandered over the adjacent country demented — searching for a corpse, he told them that addressed him; looking for a dead man in his shroud.
Four days and nights he roamed the neighbourhood, an object of pity and fear to the inhabitants, without rest and without sleep. Then a party went after him, and after telling him their news, fetched him with them quietly, and William Craighead returned to his school and his regular duties, and lived ever after a saddened and sober life.
For the body had been found in a field among the brooks of Tealing, six miles or more from Monifieth, lying unruffled and apparently undisturbed in its shroud, just as it had lain upon the bed; and it was carried away and decently buried. But how it came where it was found no man ever knew.
THE STRANGE EXPERIENCE OF MR. ROBERT BRUCE
ROBERT BRUCE was born at Torbay, in Devon, of humble parents, in the year 1798. Although his parentage was poor, he was said to be descended from a very old Scotch family. This may or may not have been the fact, in view of the well-known anxiety of everybody of the name of Bruce to claim connection with the family of the great Robert. In any case, the Robert Bruce we have now to deal with showed an early inclination for a seafaring life, and adopted it. His natural intelligence stood him in good stead, and Bruce’s promotion was rapid; so rapid, indeed, that he was barely thirty years of age when he became first mate of a barque trading between Liverpool and St. John’s, New Brunswick, Canada, of which ship he was subsequently captain. It is with his experiences on one of his voyages as mate, in the year 1828, that this narrative deals.
The vessel had by some means got rather northward of its proper course, and now, being six weeks on its voyage, was somewhere (roughly speaking) about latitude 50 north and longitude 47 west; that is to say, somewhere off the north-east coast of Newfoundland. Much broken ice had been encountered, and in the morning both captain and mate took an observation with a view of working out the exact position of the ship.
The observation having been taken, Bruce descended to his cabin in order to make the reckoning. Now Bruce’s cabin was at the foot of and directly facing the companion ladder, the captain’s cabin adjoining it, the door, however, being at right angles to that of the mate’s cabin, so that in descending or ascending the steps to leave or to reach the latter, the door of the captain’s cabin must be passed.
The mate experienced some considerable difficulty with his figures, the result always varying unaccountably largely from the dead reckoning. At length, looking up and seeing through the door, as he supposed, the back of the captain as he leant over a small table in his cabin, Bruce said:
“I can’t make it anything but 49.30 latitude by 48.17 longitude. Can’t be right, can it? What do you make it, sir?”
There was no reply.
Supposing the other to be deep in his calculations, the mate rose, and looking in at the captain’s door, where the figure was still bending over the table and apparently writing upon the slate which the captain used for reckoning, he began again to address it, when it rose and turned slowly round, and, gazing sternly at him, disclosed the face and form of a perfect stranger.
Bruce was not naturally a timid man, but the appearance of a silent stranger on board an isolated ship of which he knew every living occupant, so alarmed him that he immediately ran upon deck and sought the captain.
“Who is the stranger in your cabin?”
“A stranger in my cabin? I don’t understand you. What stranger?”
“I don’t know, except that as I passed the door just now a perfect stranger was standing there writing on a slate. I took him for yourself at first, but when he turned and looked me full in the face he — he — well he was a stranger.”
“But the thing’s impossible; we’re six weeks out. Where’s a stranger to come from?” asked the captain, who began to suspect his mate’s sobriety or sanity. “Why didn’t you speak to him?”
“To tell the truth, sir, I was too much scared. I scarcely know why, but I was; and I’d rather not go back to the cabin alone, and that’s a fact.”
The captain immediately strode across the deck, followed by the mate. They descended the companion-ladder, looked into the captain’s cabin, and there found — nobody.
“Now, Mr. Bruce,” said the captain, “where’s your stranger?”
Bruce was dumbfounded. Since leaving the ladder he had never taken his eyes off the companion which surmounted it, and it was impossible for anybody to leave the cabin by any other way. He could only repeat what he had previously said, alluding, of course, to the incident of the slate.
The slate was lying upon the table. The captain picked it up, and there, in a clear and distinct, but very peculiar and strongly characterised hand-writing, were the words, “Steer to the north-west.”
“Mr. Bruce,” said the captain, “are you playing the fool?”
“I can only say, sir, that I know nothing about what is written on that slate beyond what I have told you.”
“Mr. Bruce,” said the captain, looking at him searchingly; “take the pencil and write those words again, below the place where they are already written.”
The mate did so, and handed the slate to the captain. The closest scrutiny failed to detect the smallest resemblance between the handwritings.
“Mr. Bruce,” said the captain, with a look less of suspicion and more of perplexity, “this is a rum go.”
“I think so, too, sir,” replied the mate.
The captain determined to make every possible investigation. The slate was put carefully by, and another procured. Then every man in the ship was sent for in turn, and every one who could write was made to write the words, “Steer to the north-west” on the new slate, until it was covered with the most extraordinarily diverse set of scrawls ever seen, and the crew were lost in astonishment at the captain’s new copy-book freak. But still no man’s handwriting resembled, in the least degree, that upon the captain’s slate.
Then all hands were assembled on deck, and the captain explained that he had reason to believe that a stranger was hidden somewhere on board. He expressed his intentio
n of making a thorough inquiry, but said that if any man knew of a stowaway and would say so at once, neither should be punished, which would not be the case if he were first put to the trouble of a search.
Nobody came forward. The search was, therefore, begun. From one end of the ship to the other, every corner was ransacked, every inch of space was examined, but no human creature was discovered. The mate’s story had got about, and every man, out of sheer curiosity, searched his best, but to no purpose.
Then said the captain, “Mr. Bruce, I mean to get to the bottom of this thing. Now, before I go any further, I want you to tell me, on your honour as a man, whether you still seriously believe what you have told me. Will you bear the responsibility, whatever it brings, of asserting that you saw that man in my cabin, writing on my slate?”
“That,” said the mate, “I certainly will, sir.”
“Very good then, Mr. Bruce,” the captain replied, “I shall steer north-west, and see what comes of it.”
The head of the barque was, therefore, put round the necessary number of points, and the vessel proceeded in that direction, with an extra look-out aloft.
Much ice was seen, and soon after three o’clock in the afternoon a large berg was sighted toward the north. A close scrutiny presently revealed the fact that there was a dismantled ship firmly wedged against this berg.
As near an approach was made as was judged safe, when unmistakeable signals of distress were perceived being made from the castaway vessel. Boats were lowered, and after some difficulty the first two boatloads of people were taken off and brought on board the barque. They were an English ship, and had been lost in the ice, they explained, having been frozen up for the last month. Their timbers were stove, their decks were swept, and their water and provisions were nearly exhausted. They had seen no other ship, and had quite given up all hope, being, they were persuaded, entirely out of the regular track of shipping.
Delphi Complete Works of Arthur Morrison Page 149