The Firm of Girdlestone

by Arthur Conan Doyle

  CHAPTER XXX.

  AT THE "COCK AND COWSLIP."

  Tom Dimsdale's duties were far from light. Not only was he expected tosupervise the clerks' accounts and to treat with the wholesale dealers,but he was also supposed to spend a great part of his time in the docks,overlooking the loading of the outgoing ships and checking the cargo ofthe incoming ones. This latter portion of his work was welcome astaking him some hours a day from the close counting-house, and allowinghim to get a sniff of the sea air--if, indeed, a sniff is to be had onthe inland side of Woolwich. There was a pleasing life and bustle, too,in the broad, brown river, with its never-ending panorama of vessels ofevery size and shape which ebb and flow in the great artery of nationallife.

  So interesting was this liquid highway to Tom's practical mind, that hewould often stand at the head of the wharf when his work was done andsmoke a meditative pipe. It was a quiet spot, which had once been busyenough, but was now superseded by new quays and more convenientlanding-places. All over it were scattered great rusty anchors,colossal iron chains, deserted melancholy boilers, and other debriswhich are found in such places, and which might seem to the fanciful tobe the shells and skeletons of strange monsters washed up there by thetide. To whom do these things belong? Who has an interest in them?Of what use are they? It appeared to Tom sometimes as if the originalowners and their heirs must have all died away, and left these grimrelics behind them to any one who might have the charity to remove them.

  From this coign of vantage a long reach of the river was visible, andTom sitting there would watch the fleets of passing vessels, and let hisimagination wander away to the broad oceans which they had traversed,and the fair lands under bluer skies and warmer suns from which they hadsailed. Here is a tiny steam-tug panting and toiling in front of amajestic three-master with her great black hulk towering out of thewater and her masts shooting up until the topmast rigging looks like thedelicate web of some Titanic spider. She is from Canton, with tea, andcoffee, and spices, and all good things from the land of small feet andalmond eyes. Here, too, is a Messagerie boat, the French ensigndrooping daintily over her stern, and her steam whistle screeching awarning to some obstinate lighters, crawling with their burden of coalto a grimy collier whose steam-winch is whizzing away like a corncrakeof the deep. That floating palace is an Orient boat from Australia.See how, as the darkness falls, a long row of yellow eyes glimmer outfrom her sides as the light streams through her countless portholes.And there is the Rotterdam packet-boat coming slowly up, very glad toget back into safe waters again, for she has had a wildish time in theNorth Sea. A coasting brig has evidently had a wilder time still, forher main-topmast is cracked across, and her rigging is full of thelittle human mites who crawl about, and reef, and splice, and mend.

  An old acquaintance of ours was out in that same gale, and is even nowmaking his way into the shelter of the Albert docks. This was noneother than the redoubtable Captain Hamilton Miggs, whose ship willpersistently keep afloat, to the astonishment of the gallant captainhimself, and of every one else who knows anything of her sea-goingqualities. Again and again she had been on the point of foundering; andagain and again some change in the weather or the steady pumping of thecrew had prevented her from fulfilling her destiny. So surprised wasthe skipper at these repeated interpositions of Providence that he hadquite made up his superstitious mind that the ship never would go down,and now devoted himself with a whole heart to his old occupation ofdrinking himself into delirium tremens and physicking himself out of itagain.

  The _Black Eagle_ had a fair cargo aboard, and Miggs was proportionatelyjubilant. The drunken old sea-dog had taken a fancy to Tom's frank faceand honest eyes, and greeted him with effusion when he came aboard nextmorning.

  "Knock me asunder, but you look rosy, man!" he cried. "It's easy to seethat you have not been lying off Fernando Po, or getting the land mistinto your lungs in the Gaboon."

  "You look well yourself, captain," said Tom.

  "Tolerable, tolerable. Just a touch of the jumps at times."

  "We can begin getting our cargo out, I suppose? I have a list here tocheck it. Will you have the hatches off at once?"

  "No work for me," said Captain Hamilton Miggs with decision."Here, Sandy--Sandy McPherson, start the cargo, will ye, and stir yourgreat Scotch bones. I've done enough in bringing this sieve of a shipall the way from Africa, without working when I am in dock."

  McPherson was the first mate, a tall, yellow-bearded Aberdonian."I'll see t'it," he said shortly. "You can gang ashore or where youwull."

  "The _Cock and Cowslip_," said the captain, "I say, you--MasterDimsdale--when you're done come up an' have a glass o' wine with me.I'm only a plain sailor man, but I'm damned if my heart ain't in theright place. You too, McPherson--you'll come up and show Mr. Dimsdalethe way. _Cock and Cowslip_, corner o' Sextant Court." The two havingaccepted his invitation, the captain shuffled off across the gangway andon to terra firma.

  All day Tom stood at the hatchway of the _Black Eagle_, checking thecargo as it was hoisted out of her, while McPherson and his motleyassistants, dock labourers, seamen, and black Kroomen from the coast,worked and toiled in the depths below. The engine rattled and snorted,and the great chain clanked as it was lowered into the hold.

  "Make fast there!" cries the mate.

  "Aye, aye, sir!"

  "All right?"

  "All right, sir."

  "Hoist away!"

  And clank, clank went the chain again, and whir-r-r the engine, and upwould come a pair of oil casks, as though the crane were some giantforceps which was plucking out the great wooden teeth of the vessel.It seemed to Tom, as he stood looking down, note-book in hand, that someof the actual malarious air of the coast had been carried home in thehold, so foul and close were the smells evolved from it. Greatcockchafers crawled about over the packages, and occasionally a ratwould scamper over the barrels, such a rat as is only to be found inships which hail from the tropics. On one occasion too, as a tusk ofivory was being hoisted out, there was a sudden cry of alarm among theworkers, and a long, yellow snake crawled out of the cavity of the trunkand writhed away into the darkness. It is no uncommon thing to find thedeadly creatures hibernating in the hollow of the tusks until the coldEnglish air arouses them from their torpor, to the cost occasionally ofsome unhappy stevedore or labourer.

  All day Tom stood amid grease and steam, bustle and blasphemy, checkingoff the cargo, and looking to its conveyance to the warehouses. At oneo'clock there was a break of an hour for dinner, and then the work wenton until six, when all hands struck and went off to their homes or tothe public-house according to inclination. Tom and the mate, bothfairly tired by their day's work, prepared to accept the captain'sinvitation, and to meet him up in his quarters. The mate dived downinto his cabin, and soon reappeared with his face shining and his longhair combed into some sort of order.

  "I've been performing my ablutions," he said, rolling out the last wordwith great emphasis and pomposity, for, like many Scotchmen, he had thegreatest possible reverence for a sonorous polysyllable. Indeed, inMcPherson, this national foible was pushed to excess, for, howeverinappropriate the word, he never hesitated to drag it into hisconversation if he thought it would aid in the general effect.

  "The captain," he continued, "has been far from salubrious this voyage.He's aye complainin' o' his bodily infirmities."

  "Hypochondriacal, perhaps," Tom remarked.

  The Scotchman looked at his companion with a great accession of respect."My certie!" he cried. "That's the best I've heard since a word thatJimmy M'Gee, of the _Corisco_, said the voyage afore last. Would youkindly arteeculate it again."

  "Hypochondriacal," said Tom laughing heartily.

  "Hypo-chon-driacal," the mate repeated slowly. "I shouldn't think JimmyM'Gee kens that, or he'd ha' communicated it to me. I shall certainlyutilize it, and am obleeged to you for namin' it."

  "Don't mention it," said Tom. "I'll let you have as many long
words asyou like, if you are a collector of them. But what is the matter withthe captain?"

  "It's aye the drink," the mate said gravely. "I can tak' my modicummysel' and enjoy it, but that's no the same as for a man to lock himselfup in his cabin, and drink rum steady on from four bells in the mornin'watch to eight bells in the evenin'. And then the cussin', and prayin',and swearin' as he sets up is just awfu'. It's what might weel bedescribed as pandemoniacal."

  "Is he often like that, then?" Tom asked.

  "Often! Why, he's never anything else, sir. And yet he's a good seamantoo, and however fu' he may be, he keeps some form o' reckoning, andnever vera far oot either. He's an ambeequosity to me, sir, for if Itook a tithe o' the amount I'd be clean daft."

  "He must be dangerous when he is like that?" Tom remarked.

  "He is that. He emptied a sax-shooter down the deck last bout he had,and nigh perforated the carpenter. Another time he scoots after thecook--chased him with a handspike in his hand right up the rigging tothe cross-trees. If the cook hadn't slid down the backstay of the mast,he'd ha' been obeetuarised."

  Tom could not refrain from laughing at the last expression. "That's anew word," he said.

  "Ha!" his companion cried with great satisfaction, "it is, is it?Then we are quits now on the hypochondriacal." He was so pleased thathe chuckled to himself for some minutes in the depths of his tawnybeard. "Yes," he continued at last, "he is dangerous to us at times,and he is dangerous to you. This is atween oorsels, as man to man, andis said withoot prejudice, but he do go on when he is in they fits abootthe firm, and aboot insurances, and rotten ships, and ither such things,which is all vera well when sequestrated amang gentlemen like oorsels,but sounds awfu' bad when it fa's on the ignorant tympanums of commonseamen."

  "It's scandalous," Tom said gravely, "that he should spread such reportsabout his employer. Our ships are old, and some of them, in my opinion,hardly safe, but that's a very different thing from implying, as youhint, that Mr. Girdlestone wishes them to go down."

  "We'll no argue aboot that," said the canny Scot. "Muster Girdlestonekens on which side his bread is buttered. He may wish 'em to sink or hemay wish 'em to swim. That's no for us to judge. You'll hear him speako't to-night as like as not, for he's aye on it when he's half over.Here we are, sir. The corner edifice wi' the red blinds in the window."

  During this conversation the two had been threading their way throughthe intricate and dirty lanes which lead up from the water side to theoutskirts of Stepney. It was quite dark by the time that they reached along thoroughfare, lined by numerous shops, with great gas flaresoutside them. Many of these belonged to dealers in marine stores, andthe numerous suits of oil-skin, hung up for exhibition, swung to and froin the uncertain light, like rows of attenuated pirates. At everycorner was a great public-house with glittering windows, and a crowd ofslatternly women and jersey-clad men elbowing each other at the door.At the largest and most imposing of these gin-palaces the mate andDimsdale now pulled up.

  "Come in this way," said McPherson, who had evidently paid many a visitthere before. Pushing open a swinging door, he made his way into thecrowded bar, where the reek of bad spirits and the smell of squalidhumanity seemed to Tom to be even more horrible than the effluvium ofthe grease-laden hold.

  "Captain Miggs in?" asked McPherson of a rubicund, white-apronedpersonage behind the bar.

  "Yes, sir. He's in his room, sir, and expectin' you. There's a gentwith him, sir, but he told me to send you up. This way, sir."

  They were pushing their way through the crowd to reach the door whichled behind the bar, when Tom's attention was arrested by theconversation of a very seedy-looking individual who was leaning with hiselbows upon the zinc-covered counter.

  "You take my tip," he said to an elderly man beside him. "You stick tothe beer. The sperits in here is clean poison, and it's a sin and ashame as they should be let sell such stuff to Christian men.See here--see my sleeve!" He showed the threadbare cuff of his coat,which was corroded away in one part, as by a powerful acid. "I give yemy word I done that by wiping my lips wi' it two or three times afterdrinkin' at this bar. That was afore I found out that the whisky wassolid vitriol. If thread and cotton can't stand it, how's the linin' ofa poor cove's stomach, I'd like to know?"

  "I wonder," thought Tom to himself, "if one of these poor devils goeshome and murders his wife, who ought to be hung for it? Is it he, orthat smug-faced villain behind the bar, who, for the sake of the gain ofa few greasy coppers, gives him the poison that maddens him?" He wasstill pondering over this knotty point when they were ushered into thecaptain's room.

  That worthy was leaning back in a rocking-chair with his feet perchedupon the mantelpiece and a large glass of rum arid water within reach ofhis great leathery hand. Opposite him, in a similar chair and with asimilar glass, was no less an individual than our old acquaintance, VonBaumser. As a mercantile clerk in the London office of a Hamburg firmthe German was thrown into contact with the shippers of the Africanfleet, and had contracted a special alliance with the bibulous Miggs,who was a social soul in his hours of relaxation.

  "Come in, my hearties, come in!" he cried huskily. "Take a seat, Mr.Dimsdale. And you, Sandy, can't you bring yourself to your berthwithout being asked? You should know your moorings by this time.This is my friend, Mr. Von Baumser from Eckermann's office."

  "And dis, I think, is Mr. Dimsdale," said the German, shaking hands withTom. "I have heard my very goot vriend, Major Clutterbuck, speak ofyour name, sir."

  "Ah, the old major," Tom answered. "Of course, I remember him well."

  "He is not so very old either," said Von Baumser, in a somewhat surlyvoice. "He has been took by a very charming and entirely pleasantwoman, and they are about to be married before three months, the one tothe other. Let me tell you, sir, I, who have lived with him so long,dat I have met no man for whom I have greater respect than for themajor, however much they give him pills at a club or other suchsnobberies."

  "Fill your glasses," Miggs broke in, pushing over the bottle of rum."There are weeds in that box--never paid duty, either the one or theother. By the Lord, Sandy, a couple of days ago we hardly hoped ever tobe yarning here."

  "It was rather beyond our prognostication, sir," said the mate, taking apull at his rum.

  "It was that! A nasty sea on, Mr. Dimsdale, sir, and the old ship sofull o' water that she could not rise to it. They were making a cleanbreach over us, and we lost nigh everything we could lose."

  "I suppose you'll have her thoroughly repaired now?" Tom remarked.

  Both the skipper and the mate laughed heartily at the observation."That wouldn't do, Sandy, would it?" said Miggs, shaking his head."We couldn't afford to have our screw cut down like that."

  "Cut down! You don't mean to say you are paid in proportion to therottenness of the ships?"

  "There ain't no use makin' a secret of it among friends," said Miggs."That's just how the land lies with us. A voyage or two back I spoke toMr. Girdlestone, and I says to him, says I, 'Give the ship anoverhauling,' says I. 'Well and good,' says he, 'but it will mean somuch off your wage,' says he, 'and the mate's wage as well.' I put itto him straight and strong, but he stuck at that. So Sandy and me, weput our heads together, and we 'greed It was better to take fifteenpound and the risk, than come down to twelve pound and safety."

  "It is scandalous!" cried Tom Dimsdale hotly. "I could not havebelieved it."

  "God bless ye! it's done every day, and will be while there is insurancemoney to be gained," said Miggs, blowing a blue cloud up to the ceiling."It's an easy thing to turn a few thousands a year while there are oldships to be bought, and offices which will insure them above theirvalue. There was D'Arcy Campbell, of the _Silvertown_--what a tradethat man did! He was smart--tarnation smart! Collisions was his line,and he worked 'em well. There warn't a skipper out of Liverpool ascould get run down as nat'ral as he could."

  "Get run down?"

  "Aye. He'd
go lolloping about in the Channel if there was any fog on,steering for the lights o' any steamers or headin' round for all the fogwhistles if it was too thick to see. Sooner or later, as sure as fate,he'd get cut down to the water's edge. Lor', it was a fine game!Half a 'yard o' print about his noble conduc' in the newspapers, andmaybe a leader about the British tar and unexpected emergencies.It once went the length o' a subscription. Ha! ha!" Miggs laughed untilhe choked.

  "And what became of this British star?" asked the German.

  "He's still about. He's in the passenger trade now."

  "Potztausand!" Von Baumser ejaculated. "I would not go as a passengerwith him for something."

  "There's many a way that it's done, sir," the mate added, filling up hisglass again, and passing the bottle to the captain. "There's loadin' acranky vessel wi' grain in bulk without usin' partition boards. If youget a little water in, as you are bound to do with a ship o' that kind,the grain will swell and swell until it bursts the seams open, and downye go. Then there's ignition o' coal gas aboard o' steamers. That's asafe game, for nobody can deny it. And there are accidents topropellers. If the shaft o' a propeller breaks in heavy weather it's abad look-out. I've known ships leave the docks with their propellershalf sawn through all round. Lor', there's no end o' the tricks o' thetrade."

  "I cannot believe, however," said Tom stoutly, "that Mr. Girdlestoneconnives at such things."

  "He's on the waitin' lay," the seaman answered. "He doesn't send 'emdown, but he just hangs on, and keeps his insurances up, and trusts inProvidence. He's had some good hauls that way, though not o' late.There was the _Belinda_ at Cape Palmas. That was five thousand, clear,if it was a penny. And the _Sockatoo_--that was a bad business!She was never heard of, nor her crew. Went down at sea, and left notrace."

  "The crew too!" Tom cried with horror. "But how about yourselves, ifwhat you say is true?"

  "We are paid for the risk," said both the seamen, shrugging theirshoulders.

  "But there are Government inspectors?"

  "Ha! ha! I dare say you've seen the way some o' them do their work!"said Miggs.

  Tom's mind was filled with consternation at what he had heard. If theAfrican merchant were capable of this, what might he not be capable of?Was his word to be depended on under any circumstances? And what sortof firm must this be, which turned so fair a side to the world and inwhich he had embarked his fortune? All these thoughts flashed throughhis mind as he listened to the gossip of the garrulous old sea dogs.A greater shock still, however, was in store for him.

  Von Baumser had been listening to the conversation with an amused lookupon his good-humoured face. "Ah!" said he, suddenly striking in,"I vill tell you something of your own firm which perhaps you do notknow. Have you heard dat Mr. Ezra Girdlestone is about to be married?"

  "To be married!"

  "Oh yes; I have heard It dis morning at Eckermann's office. I think itis the talk of the City."

  "Who's the gal?" Miggs asked, with languid interest.

  "I disremember her name," Von Baumser answered. "It is a girl the majorhas met--the young lady who has lived in the same house, and is vat theycall a warder."

  "Not--not his ward?" cried Tom, springing to his feet and turning aswhite as a sheet. "Not Miss Harston? You don't tell me that he isgoing to marry Miss Harston?"

  "Dat is the name. Miss Harston it is, sure enough."

  "It is a lie--an infamous lie!" Tom cried hotly.

  "So it may be," Von Baumser answered serenely. "I do but say vat I haveheard, and heard more than once on good authority."

  "If it is true there is villainy in it," cried Tom, with wild eyes,"the blackest villainy that ever was done upon earth. I'll go--I'll seehim to-night. By heavens, I shall know the truth!" He rushed furiouslydownstairs and through the bar. There was a cab near the door."Drive into London!" he cried; "69, Eccleston Square. I am on fire tobe there!" The cabman sprang on the box, and they rattled away as fastas the horse would go.

  This sudden exit caused, as may be imagined, considerable surprise inthe parlour of the _Cock and Cowslip_.

  "He's a vera tumultuous young man," the mate remarked. "He was off likea clipper in a hurricane."

  "I perceive," said Von Baumser, "dat he has left his hat behind him.I do now remember dat I have heard his name spoken with dat of dis veryyoung lady by my good vriend, the major."

  "Then he's jealous belike," said Hamilton Miggs, with a knowing shake ofthe head. "I've felt that way myself before now. I rounded on BillyBarlow, o' the _Flying Scud_, over that very thing, twelve months agocome Christmas. But I don't think it was the thing for this young chapto cut away and never say 'With your leave,' or 'By your leave,' or asmuch as 'Good night, gentlemen all.' It ain't what you call straight upan' down."

  "It's transcendental," said the mate severely; "that is what I call it."

  "Ah, my vriends," the German put in, "when a man is in love you mustmake excuses for him. I am very sure dat he did mean no offence."

  In spite of this assurance Captain Hamilton Miggs continued to be verysore upon the point. It was only by dint of many replenishings of hisglass and many arguments that his companions could restore him to hispristine good humour. Meanwhile, the truant was speeding through thenight with a fixed determination in his heart that he should have beforemorning such an understanding, one way or the other, as would neveragain leave room for a doubt.