Poison Island

by Arthur Quiller-Couch

  Produced by Lionel Sear

  POISON ISLAND.

  By ARTHUR THOMAS QUILLER-COUCH (Q).

  CONTENTS.

  Chapter.

  I. HOW I FIRST MET WITH CAPTAIN COFFIN.

  II. I AM ENTERED AT COPENHAGEN ACADEMY.

  III. A STREET FIGHT, AND WHAT CAME OF IT.

  IV. CAPTAIN COFFIN STUDIES NAVIGATION.

  V. THE WHALEBOAT.

  VI. MY FIRST GLIMPSE OF THE CHART.

  VII. ENTER THE RETURNED PRISONER.

  VIII. THE HUNTED AND THE HUNTER.

  IX. CHAOS IN THE CAPTAINS LODGINGS.

  X. NEWS.

  XI. THE CRIME IN THE SUMMER-HOUSE.

  XII. THE BLOODSTAIN ON THE STILE.

  XIII. CLUES IN A TANGLE.

  XIV. HOW I BROKE OUT THE RED ENSIGN.

  XV. CAPTAIN BRANSCOME'S CONFESSION--THE MAN IN THE LANE.

  XVI. CAPTAIN BRANSCOME'S CONFESSION--THE FLAG AND THE CASHBOX.

  XVII. THE CHART OF MORTALLONE.

  XVIII. THE CONTENTS OF THE CORNER CUPBOARD.

  XIX. CAPTAIN COFFIN'S LOG.

  XX. CAPTAIN COFFIN'S LOG (CONTINUED).

  XXI. IN WHICH PLINNY SURPRISES EVERYONE.

  XXII. A STRANGE MAN IN THE GARDEN.

  XXIII. HOW WE SAILED TO THE ISLAND.

  XXIV. WE ANCHOR OFF THE ISLAND.

  XXV. I TAKE FRENCH LEAVE ASHORE.

  XXVI. THE WOMEN IN THE GRAVEYARD.

  XXVII. THE MAN IN BLACK.

  XXVIII. THE MASTER OF THE ISLAND.

  XXIX. A BOAT ON THE BEACH.

  XXX. THE SCREAM ON THE CLIFF.

  XXXI. AARON GLASS.

  XXXII. WE COME TO DR. BEAUREGARD'S HOUSE.

  XXXIII. WE FIND THE TREASURE.

  XXXIV. DOCTOR BEAUREGARD.

  CHAPTER I.

  HOW I FIRST MET WITH CAPTAIN COFFIN.

  It was in the dusk of a July evening of the year 1813 (July 27, to beprecise) that on my way back from the mail-coach office, Falmouth, toMr. Stimcoe's Academy for the Sons of Gentlemen, No. 7, DelamereTerrace, I first met Captain Coffin as he came, drunk and cursing, upthe Market Strand, with a rabble of children at his heels. I havereason to remember the date and hour of this encounter, not only forits remarkable consequences, but because it befell on the very dayand within an hour or two of my matriculation at Stimcoe's.That afternoon I had arrived at Falmouth by Royal Mail, in charge ofMiss Plinlimmon, my father's housekeeper; and now but ten minutes agoI had seen off that excellent lady and waved farewell to her--notwithout a sinking of the heart--on her return journey to MindenCottage, which was my home.

  My name is Harry Brooks, and my age on this remembered evening wasfourteen and something over. My father, Major James Brooks, late ofthe 4th (King's Own) Regiment, had married twice, and at the time ofhis retirement from active service was for the second time a widower.Blindness--contracted by exposure and long marches over the snows ofGalicia--had put an end to a career by no means undistinguished.In his last fight, at Corunna, he had not only earned a mention indespatches from his brigadier-general, Lord William Bentinck, but byhis alertness in handling his half-regiment at a critical moment, andrefusing its right to an outflanking line of French, had beenprivileged to win almost the last word of praise uttered by hisidolized commander. My father heard, and faced about, but his eyeswere already failing him; they missed the friendly smile with whichSir John Moore turned, and cantered off along the brigade, toencourage the 50th and 42nd regiments, and to receive, a few minuteslater, the fatal cannon-shot.

  Every one has heard what miseries the returning transports endured inthe bitter gale of January, 1809. The _Londonderry_, in which myfather sailed, did indeed escape wreck, but at the cost of a week'sbeating about the mouth of the Channel. He was, by rights, aninvalid, having taken a wound in the kneecap from a spent bullet, oneof the last fired in the battle; but in the common peril he bore ahand with the best. For three days and two nights he never shiftedhis clothing, which the gale alternately soaked and froze. It wasfrozen stiff as a board when the _Londonderry_ made the entrance ofPlymouth Sound; and he was borne ashore in a rheumatic fever.From this, and from his wound, the doctors restored him at length,but meanwhile his eyesight had perished.

  His misfortunes did not end here. My step-sister Isabel--a beautifulgirl of seventeen, the only child of his first marriage--had met himat Plymouth, nursed him to convalescence, and brought him home toMinden Cottage, to the garden which henceforward he tilled, but sawonly through memory. Since then she had married a young officer inthe 52nd Regiment, a Lieutenant Archibald Plinlimmon; but, herhusband having to depart at once for the Peninsula, she had remainedwith her father and tended him as before, until death took her--as ithad taken her mother--in childbirth. The babe did not survive her;and, to complete the sad story, her husband fell a few weeks laterbefore Badajoz, while assaulting the Picurina Gate with fifty axemenof the Light Division.

  Beneath these blows of fate my father did indeed bow his head, yetbravely. From the day Isabel died his shoulders took a sensiblestoop; but this was the sole evidence of the mortal wound he carried,unless you count that from the same day he put aside his "Aeneid,"and taught me no more from it, but spent his hours for the most partin meditation, often with a Bible open on his knee--although his eyescould not read it. Sally, our cook, told me one day that when thefoolish midwife came and laid the child in his arms, not telling himthat it was dead, he felt it over and broke forth in a terrible cry--his first and last protest.

  In me--the only child of his second marriage, as Isabel had been theonly child of his first--he appeared to have lost, and of a sudden,all interest. While Isabel lived there had been reason for this, orexcuse at least, for he had loved her mother passionately, whereasfrom mine he had separated within a day or two after marriage, havingmarried her only because he was obliged--or conceived himselfobliged--by honour. Into this story I shall not go. It was a sadone, and, strange to say, sadly creditable to both. I do notremember my mother. She died, having taken some pains to hide evenmy existence from her husband, who, nevertheless, conscientiouslytook up the burden. A man more strongly conscientious never lived;and his sudden neglect of me had nothing to do with caprice, butcame--as I am now assured--of some lesion of memory under the shockof my sister's death. As an unregenerate youngster I thought littleof it at the time, beyond rejoicing to be free of my daily lesson inVirgil.

  I can see my father now, seated within the summer-house by thefilbert-tree at the end of the orchard--his favourite haunt--orstanding in the doorway and drawing himself painfully erect, a giantof a man, to inhale the scent of his flowers or listen to his bees,or the voice of the stream which bounded our small domain. I see himframed there, his head almost touching the lintel, his hands grippingthe posts like a blind Samson's, all too strong for the flimsytrelliswork. He wore a brown holland suit in summer, in colderweather a fustian one of like colour, and at first glance you mightmistake him for a Quaker. His snow-white hair was gathered closebeside the temples, back from a face of ineffable simplicity andgoodness--the face of a man at peace with God and all the world, yetmarked with scars--scars of bygone passions, cross-hatched and almosteffaced by deeper scars of calamity. As Miss Plinlimmon wrote in heralbum--

  "Few men so deep as Major Brooks Have drained affliction's cup. Alas! if one may trust his looks, I fear he's breaking up!"

  This Miss Plinlimmon, a maiden aunt of the young officer who had beenslain at Badajoz, kept house for us after my sister's death. She wasa lady of good Welsh family, who after many years of genteel povertyhad come i
nto a legacy of seven thousand pounds from an East Indianuncle; and my father--a simple liver, content with his half-pay--hadmuch ado in his blindness to keep watch and war upon the luxuries sheuntiringly strove to smuggle upon him. For the rest, Miss Plinlimmonwore corkscrew curls, talked sentimentally, worshipped the manly form(in the abstract) with the manly virtues, and possessed (quiteunknown to herself) the heart of a lion.

  Upon this unsuspected courage, and upon the strength of her affectionfor me, she had drawn on the day when she stood up to my father--ofwhom, by the way, she was desperately afraid--and told him that hisneglect of me was a sin and a shame and a scandal. "And a goodeducation," she wound up feebly, "would render Harry so much more ofa companion to you."

  My father rubbed his head vaguely. "Yes, yes, you are right. I havebeen neglecting the boy. But pray end as honestly as you began, anddo not pretend to be consulting my future when you are reallypleading for his. To begin with, I don't want a companion; next, Ishould not immediately make a companion of Harry by sending him awayto school; and, lastly, you know as well as I, that long before hefinished his schooling I should be in my grave."

  "Well, then, consider what a classical education would do for Harry!I feel sure that had I--pardon the supposition--been born a man, andmade conversant with the best thoughts of the ancients--Socrates, forexample--"

  "What about him?" my father demanded.

  "So wise, as I have always been given to understand, yet in his ownage misunderstood, by his wife especially! And, to crown all, unlessI err, drowned in a butt of hemlock!"

  "Dear madam, pardon me; but how many of these accidents to Socratesare you ascribing to his classical education?"

  "But it comes out in so many ways," Miss Plinlimmon persisted; "andit does make such a difference! There's a _je ne sais quoi_.You can tell it even in the way they handle a knife and fork!"

  That evening, after supper, Miss Plinlimmon declined her customarygame of cards with me, on the pretence that she felt tired, and satfor a long while fumbling with a newspaper, which I recognized for aweek-old copy of the "Falmouth Packet." At length she rose abruptly,and, crossing over to the table where I sat playing dominoes (righthand against left), thrust the paper before me, and pointed with atrembling finger.

  "There, Harry! What would you say to that?"

  I brushed my dominoes aside, and read--

  "The Reverend Philip Stimcoe, B.A., (Oxon.), of Copenhagen Academy,7. Delamere Terrace, begs to inform the Nobility, Clergy, and Gentryof Falmouth and the neighbourhood that he has Vacancies for a limitednumber of Pupils of good Social Standing. Education classical, onthe lines of the best Public Schools, combined with Home Comfortsunder the personal supervision of Mrs. Stimcoe (niece of the lateHon. Sir Alexander O'Brien, R.N., Admiral of the White, and K.C.B.).Backward and delicate boys a speciality. Separate beds. Commodiousplayground in a climate unrivalled for pulmonary ailments. Greenwichtime kept."

  I did not criticise the advertisement. It sufficed me to read myrelease in it; and in the same instant I knew how lonely the last fewmonths had been, and felt myself an ingrate. I that had longedunspeakably, if but half consciously, for the world beyond MindenCottage--a world in which I could play the man--welcomed my libertyby laying my head on my arms and breaking into unmanly sobs.

  I will pass over a blissful week of preparation, including a journeyby van to Torpoint and by ferry across to Plymouth, where MissPlinlimmon bought me boots, shirts, collars, under-garments, avalise, a low-crowned beaver hat for Sunday wear, and for week-days acap shaped like a concertina; where I was measured for two suitsafter a pattern marked "Boy's Clarence, Gentlemanly," and where Iexpended two-and-sixpence of my pocket-money on a piraticaljack-knife and a book of patriotic songs--two articles indispensable,it seemed to me, to full-blooded manhood; and I will come to the daywhen the Royal Mail pulled up before Minden Cottage with a merryclash of bits and swingle-bars, and, the scarlet-coated guard havingreceived my box from Sally the cook, and hoisted it aboard in ajiffy, Miss Plinlimmon and I climbed up to a seat behind thecoachman. My father stood at the door, and shook hands with me atparting.

  "Good luck, lad," said he; "and remember our motto: _Nil nisi recte!_Good luck have thou with thine honour. And, by the way, here's halfa sovereign for you."

  "Cl'k!" from the coachman, shortening up his enormous bunch of reins;_ta-ra-ra!_ from the guard's horn close behind my ear; and we wereoff!

  Oh, believe me, there never was such a ride! As we swept by thesecond mile stone I stole a look at Miss Plinlimmon. She sat in anecstasy, with closed eyes. She was, as she put it, indulging inmental composition.

  Verses composed while Riding by the Royal Mail.

  "I've sailed at eve o'er Plymouth Sound (For me it was a rare excursion) Oblivious of the risk of being drown'd, Or even of a more temporary immersion.

  "I dream'd myself the Lady of the Lake, Or an Oriental one (within limits) on the Bosphorus; We left a trail of glory in our wake, Which the intelligent boatman ascribed to phosphorus.

  "Yet agreeable as I found it o'er the ocean To glide within my bounding shallop, I incline to think that for the poetry of motion One may even more confidently recommend the Tantivy Gallop."