Works of W. W. Jacobs

by Jacobs, W. W.

  The pawnbroker closed the door hastily behind them and bolted it securely. His friend’s jest about the devil under the counter occurred to him as he eyed it, and for the first time in his life, the lonely silence of the shop became oppressive. He half thought of opening the door again and calling them back, but by this time they were out of earshot, and he had a very strong idea that there might be somebody lurking in the fog outside.

  “Bah!” said he aloud, “thirty thousand pounds.”

  He turned the gas-jet on full — a man that had just made that sum could afford to burn a little gas — and, first satisfying himself by looking under the counter and round the shop, re-entered the sitting room.

  Despite his efforts, he could not get rid of the sense of loneliness and danger which possessed him. The clock had stopped, and the only sound audible was the snapping of the extinguished coals in the grate. He crossed over to the mantelpiece, and, taking out his watch, wound the clock up. Then he heard something else.

  With great care he laid the key softly on the mantelpiece and listened intently. The clock was now aggressively audible, so that he opened the case again, and putting his finger against the pendulum, stopped it. Then he drew his revolver and cocked it, and, with his set face turned towards the door, and his lips parted, waited.

  At first — nothing. Then all the noises which a lonely man hears in a house at night. The stairs creaked, something moved in the walls. He crossed noiselessly to the door and opened it. At the head of the staircase he fancied the darkness moved.

  “Who’s there?” he cried in a strong voice.

  Then he stepped back into the room and lit his lamp. “I’ll get to bed,” he said grimly; “I’ve got the horrors.”

  He left the gas burning, and with the lamp in his left hand and the pistol in his right slowly ascended the stairs. The first landing was clear. He opened the doors of each room, and, holding the lamp aloft, peered in. Then he mounted higher, and looked in the rooms, crammed from floor to ceiling with pledges, ticketed and placed on shelves. In one room he thought he saw something crouching in a corner. He entered boldly, and as he passed along one side of a row of shelves could have sworn that he heard a stealthy footfall on the other. He rushed back to the door, and hung listening over the shaky balusters. Nothing stirred, and, satisfied that he must have been mistaken, he gave up the search and went to his bedroom. He set the lamp down on the drawers, and turned to close the door, when he distinctly heard a noise in the shop below. He snatched up the lamp again and ran hastily downstairs, pausing halfway on the lowest flight as he saw a dark figure spreadeagled against the side door, standing on tiptoe to draw back the bolt.

  At the noise of his approach, it turned its head hastily, and revealed the face of the brown man; the bolt shot back, and at the same moment the Jew raised his pistol and fired twice.

  From beneath the little cloud of smoke, as it rose, he saw that the door stood open and that the figure had vanished. He ran hastily down to the door, and, with the pistol raised, stood listening, trying to peer through the fog.

  An unearthly stillness followed the deafening noise of the shots. The fog poured in at the doorway as he stood there hoping that the noise had reached the ears of some chance passer-by. He stood so for a few minutes, and then, closing the door again, resolutely turned back and went upstairs.

  His first proceeding upon entering his room was to carefully look beneath and behind the heavy, dusty pieces of furniture, and, satisfied that no foe lurked there, he closed the door and locked it. Then he opened the window gently, and listened. The court below was perfectly still. He closed the window, and, taking off his coat, barricaded the door with all the heaviest furniture in the room. With a feeling of perfect security, he complacently regarded his handiwork, and then, sitting on the edge of the bed, began to undress. He turned the lamp down a little, and reloading the empty chambers of his revolver, placed it by the side of the lamp on the drawers. Then, as he turned back the clothes, he fancied that something moved beneath them. As he paused, it dropped lightly from the other side of the bed to the floor.

  At first he sat, with knitted brows, trying to see what it was. He had only had a glimpse of it, but he certainly had an idea that it was alive. A rat perhaps. He got off the bed again with an oath, and, taking the lamp in his hand, peered cautiously about the floor. Twice he walked round the room in this fashion. Then he stooped down, and, raising the dirty bed hangings, peered beneath.

  He almost touched the wicked little head of the brown man’s devil, and with a stifled cry, sprang hastily backward. The lamp shattered against the corner of the drawers, and, falling in a shower of broken glass and oil about his stockinged feet, left him in darkness. He threw the fragment of glass stand which remained in his hand from him, and, quick as thought, gained the bed again, and crouched there, breathing heavily.

  He tried to think where he had put the matches, and remembered there were some on the widow-sill. The room was so dark that he could not see the foot of the bed, and in his fatuity he had barricaded himself in the room with the loathsome reptile which was to work the brown man’s vengeance.

  For some time he lay listening intently. Once or twice he fancied that he heard the rustle of the snake over the dingy carpet, and he wondered whether it would attempt to climb on to the bed. He stood up, and tried to get his revolver from the drawers. It was out of reach, and as the bed creaked beneath his weight, a faint hiss sounded from the floor, and he sat still again, hardly daring to breathe.

  The cold rawness of the room chilled him. He cautiously drew the bed-clothes towards him, and rolled himself up in them, leaving only his head and arms exposed. In this position he began to feel more secure, until the thought struck him that the snake might be inside them. He fought against this idea, and tried to force his nerves into steadiness. Then his fears suggested that two might have been placed in the bed. At this his fears got the upper hand, and it seemed to him that something stirred in the clothes. He drew his body from them slowly and stealthily, and taking them in his arms, flung them violently to the other end of the room. On his hands and knees he now travelled over the bare bed, feeling. There was nothing there.

  In this state of suspense and dread time seemed to stop. Several times he thought that the thing had got on the bed, and to stay there in suspense in the darkness was impossible. He felt it over again and again. At last, unable to endure it any longer, he resolved to obtain the matches, and stepped cautiously off the bed; but no sooner had his feet touched the floor than his courage forsook him, and he sprang hurriedly back to his refuge again.

  After that, in a spirit of dogged fatalism, he sat still and waited. To his disordered mind it seemed that footsteps were moving about the house, but they had no terrors for him. To grapple with a man for life and death would be play; to kill him, joy unspeakable. He sat still, listening. He heard rats in the walls and a babel of jeering voices on the stair-case. The whole blackness of the room with the devilish, writhing thing on the floor became invested with supernatural significance. Then, dimly at first, and hardly comprehending the joy of it, he saw the window. A little later he saw the outlines of the things in the room. The night had passed and he was alive!

  He raised his half-frozen body to its full height, and, expanding his chest, planted his feet firmly on the bed, stretching his long body to the utmost. He clenched his fist, and felt strong. The bed was unoccupied except by himself. He bent down and scrutinized the floor for his enemy, and set his teeth as he thought how he would tear it and mangle it. It was light enough, but first he would put on his boots. He leant over cautiously, and lifting one on to the bed, put it on. Then he bent down and took up the other, and, swift as lightning, something issued from it, and, coiling round his wrist, ran up the sleeve of his shirt.

  With starting eyeballs the Jew held his breath, and, stiffened into stone, waited helplessly. The tightness round his arm relaxed as the snake drew the whole of its body under the sleeve and wound round hi
s arm. He felt its head moving. It came wriggling across his chest, and with a mad cry, the wretched man clutched at the front of his shirt with both hands and strove to tear it off. He felt the snake in his hands, and for a moment hoped. Then the creature got its head free, and struck him smartly in the throat.

  The Jew’s hold relaxed, and the snake fell at his feet. He bent down and seized it, careless now that it bit his hand, and, with bloodshot eyes, dashed it repeatedly on the rail of the bed. Then he flung it to the floor, and, raising his heel, smashed its head to pulp.

  His fury passed, he strove to think, but his brain was in a whirl. He had heard of sucking the wound, but one puncture was in his throat, and he laughed discordantly. He had heard that death had been prevented by drinking heavily of spirits. He would do that first, and then obtain medical assistance.

  He ran to the door, and began to drag the furniture away. In his haste the revolver fell from the drawers to the floor. He looked at it steadily for a moment and then, taking it up, handled it wistfully. He began to think more clearly, although a numbing sensation was already stealing over him.

  “Thirty thousands pounds!” he said slowly, and tapped his cheek lightly with the cold barrel.

  Then he slipped it in his mouth, and, pulling the trigger, crashed heavily to the floor.

  THE END

  MANY CARGOES

  This story collection appeared in 1896. Jacobs was to truly make his mark on the short story as a genre, becoming popular enough to earn a comfortable living from the form – at a time when a mushrooming of new periodical publications meant that competition in this field was fierce.

  The stories in this volume demonstrate Jacobs’ mastery of the kind of jolly, quick-witted humour popular with late-Victorian readers, as well as his skilful use of working-class characters, an East End milieu and nautical themes. The volume also contains the supernatural tale ‘The Rival Beauties’, giving a taste of the macabre tales for which Jacobs would also become famous.

  One of the magazines that regularly carried Jacobs’ early stories

  CONTENTS

  A CHANGE OF TREATMENT

  A LOVE PASSAGE

  THE CAPTAIN’S EXPLOIT

  CONTRABAND OF WAR

  A BLACK AFFAIR

  IN BORROWED PLUMES

  THE BOATSWAIN’S WATCH

  LOW WATER

  IN MID-ATLANTIC

  AFTER THE INQUEST

  IN LIMEHOUSE REACH

  AN ELABORATE ELOPEMENT

  A BENEFIT PERFORMANCE

  A CASE OF DESERTION

  OUTSAILED

  MATED

  THE RIVAL BEAUTIES

  MRS. BUNKER’S CHAPERON

  A HARBOUR OF REFUGE

  A CHANGE OF TREATMENT

  Yes, I’ve sailed under some ‘cute skippers in my time,” said the night-watchman; “them that go down in big ships see the wonders o’ the deep, you know,” he added with a sudden chuckle, “but the one I’m going to tell you about ought never to have been trusted out without ‘is ma. A good many o’ my skippers had fads, but this one was the worst I ever sailed under.

  “It’s some few years ago now; I’d shipped on his barque, the John Elliott, as slow-going an old tub as ever I was aboard of, when I wasn’t in quite a fit an’ proper state to know what I was doing, an’ I hadn’t been in her two days afore I found out his ‘obby through overhearing a few remarks made by the second mate, who came up from dinner in a hurry to make ’em. ‘I don’t mind saws an’ knives hung round the cabin,’ he ses to the fust mate, ‘but when a chap has a ‘uman ‘and alongside ‘is plate, studying it while folks is at their food, it’s more than a Christian man can stand.’

  “‘That’s nothing,’ ses the fust mate, who had sailed with the barque afore. ‘He’s half crazy on doctoring. We nearly had a mutiny aboard once owing to his wanting to hold a post-mortem on a man what fell from the mast-head. Wanted to see what the poor feller died of.’

  “‘I call it unwholesome,’ ses the second mate very savage.’ He offered me a pill at breakfast the size of a small marble; quite put me off my feed, it did.’

  “Of course, the skipper’s fad soon got known for’ard. But I didn’t think much about it, till one day I seed old Dan’l Dennis sitting on a locker reading. Every now and then he’d shut the book, an’ look up, closing ‘is eyes, an’ moving his lips like a hen drinking, an’ then look down at the book again.

  “‘Why, Dan,’ I ses, ‘what’s up? you ain’t larning lessons at your time o’ life?’

  “‘Yes, I am,’ ses Dan very soft. ‘You might hear me say it, it’s this one about heart disease.’

  “He hands over the book, which was stuck full o’ all kinds o’ diseases, and winks at me ‘ard.

  “‘Picked it up on a book-stall,’ he ses; then he shut ‘is eyes an’ said his piece wonderful. It made me quite queer to listen to ‘im. ‘That’s how I feel,’ ses he, when he’d finished. ‘Just strength enough to get to bed. Lend a hand, Bill, an’ go an’ fetch the doctor.’

  “Then I see his little game, but I wasn’t going to run any risks, so I just mentioned, permiscous like, to the cook as old Dan seemed rather queer, an’ went back an’ tried to borrer the book, being always fond of reading. Old Dan pretended he was too ill to hear what I was saying, an’ afore I could take it away from him, the skipper comes hurrying down with a bag in his ‘and.

  “‘What’s the matter, my man?’ ses he, ‘what’s the matter?’

  “‘I’m all right, sir,’ ses old Dan, ‘cept that I’ve been swoonding away a little.’

  “‘Tell me exactly how you feel,’ ses the skipper, feeling his pulse.

  “Then old Dan said his piece over to him, an’ the skipper shook his head an’ looked very solemn.

  “‘How long have you been like this?’ he ses.

  “‘Four or five years, sir,’ ses Dan. ‘It ain’t nothing serious, sir, is it?’

  “‘You lie quite still,’ ses the skipper, putting a little trumpet thing to his chest an’ then listening. ‘Um! there’s serious mischief here I’m afraid, the prognotice is very bad.’

  “‘Prog what, sir?’ ses Dan, staring.

  “‘Prognotice,’ ses the skipper, at least I think that’s the word he said. ‘You keep perfectly still, an’ I’ll go an’ mix you up a draught, and tell the cook to get some strong beef-tea on.’

  “Well, the skipper ‘ad no sooner gone, than Cornish Harry, a great big lumbering chap o’ six feet two, goes up to old Dan, an’ he ses, ‘Gimme that book.’

  “‘Go away,’ says Dan, ‘don’t come worrying ‘ere; you ‘eard the skipper say how bad my prognotice was.’

  “‘You lend me the book,’ ses Harry, ketching hold of him, ‘or else I’ll bang you first, and split to the skipper arterwards. I believe I’m a bit consumptive. Anyway, I’m going to see.’

  “He dragged the book away from the old man, and began to study. There was so many complaints in it he was almost tempted to have something else instead of consumption, but he decided on that at last, an’ he got a cough what worried the fo’c’sle all night long, an’ the next day, when the skipper came down to see Dan, he could ‘ardly ‘ear hisself speak.

  “‘That’s a nasty cough you’ve got, my man,’ ses he, looking at Harry.

  “‘Oh, it’s nothing, sir,’ ses Harry, careless like. ‘I’ve ‘ad it for months now off and on. I think it’s perspiring so of a night does it.”

  “‘What?’ ses the skipper. ‘Do you perspire of a night?’

  “‘Dredful,’ ses Harry. ‘You could wring the clo’es out. I s’pose it’s healthy for me, ain’t it, sir?’

  “‘Undo your shirt,’ ses the skipper, going over to him, an’ sticking the trumpet agin him. ‘Now take a deep breath. Don’t cough.’

  “‘I can’t help it, sir,’ ses Harry, ‘it will come. Seems to tear me to pieces.’

  “‘You get to bed at once,” says the skipper, taking away the trumpet, an’ shaking his ‘ed. ‘It’s a
fortunate thing for you, my lad, you’re in skilled hands. With care, I believe I can pull you round. How does that medicine suit you, Dan?’

  “‘Beautiful, sir,’ says Dan. ‘It’s wonderful soothing, I slep’ like a new-born babe arter it.’

  “‘I’ll send you some more,’ ses the skipper. ‘You’re not to get up mind, either of you.’

  “‘All right, sir,’ ses the two in very faint voices, an’ the skipper went away arter telling us to be careful not to make a noise.

  “We all thought it a fine joke at first, but the airs them two chaps give themselves was something sickening. Being in bed all day, they was naturally wakeful of a night, and they used to call across the fo’c’sle inquiring arter each other’s healths, an’ waking us other chaps up. An’ they’d swop beef-tea an’ jellies with each other, an’ Dan ‘ud try an’ coax a little port wine out o’ Harry, which he ‘ad to make blood with, but Harry ‘ud say he hadn’t made enough that day, an’ he’d drink to the better health of old Dan’s prognotice, an’ smack his lips until it drove us a’most crazy to ‘ear him.

  “Arter these chaps had been ill two days, the other fellers began to put their heads together, being maddened by the smell o’ beef-tea an’ the like, an’ said they was going to be ill too, and both the invalids got into a fearful state of excitement.

  “‘You’ll only spoil it for all of us,’ ses Harry, ‘and you don’t know what to have without the book.’

  “‘It’s all very well doing your work as well as our own,’ ses one of the men. ‘It’s our turn now. It’s time you two got well.’

  “‘WELL? ses Harry, ‘well? Why you silly iggernerant chaps, we shan’t never get well, people with our complaints never do. You ought to know that.’

  “‘Well, I shall split, ‘ses one of them. “‘You do!’ ses Harry, ‘you do, an’ I’ll put a ‘ed on you that all the port wine and jellies in the world wouldn’t cure. ‘Sides, don’t you think the skipper knows what’s the matter with us?’