The Watchers: A Novel

by A. E. W. Mason

  CHAPTER X

  IN WHICH I LEARN SOMETHING FROM AN ILL-PAINTED PICTURE

  I took my supper in the kitchen of the Palace Inn, with a strong reekof tobacco to season it, and a succession of gruesome stories to makeit palatable. The company was made up for the most part of fishermen,who talked always of wrecks upon the western islands and of dead mendrowned. But occasionally a different accent and a different anecdoteof some other corner of the world would make a variation; and doing mybest to pierce the haze of smoke, I recognised the speaker as PeterTortue, the Frenchman, or the man with the patch on his eye. GeorgeGlen was there too, tucked away in a corner by the fireplace, but hesaid very little. I paid, therefore, but a scanty attention, until,the talk having slid, as it will, from dead men to their funerals,some native began to descant upon the magnificence of Adam Mayle's.

  "Ay," said he, drawing a long breath, "there _was_ a funeral, and allaccording to orders dictated in writing by the dead man. He was to beburied by torchlight in the Abbey Grounds. I do remember that! Mortalheavy he was, and he needed a big coffin."

  "To be sure he would," chimed in another.

  "And he had it too," said a third; "a mortal big coffin. We carriedhim right from his house over the shoulder of the island, and downpast the Abbey pond to the graveyard. Five shillings each we had forcarrying him--five shillings counted out by torchlight on a gravestoneas soon as the grave was filled in. It was all written down before hedied."

  Then the first speaker took up the tale again.

  "A queer, strange man was Adam Mayle, and queer strange sights he hadseen. He would sit in that corner just where you be, Mr. Glen, andtell stories to turn a man cold. Crackers they used to call him onboard ship, so he told us--'Crackers.'"

  "Why Crackers?" asked George Glen.

  "'Cause he was that handy with a marlinspike. A queer man! And thatwas a queer notion of his about that stick"; and then he appealed tohis companions, who variously grunted their assent.

  "What about the stick?" asked Glen.

  "You may well ask, Mr. Glen. It was all written down. The stick was tobe buried with him in his coffin. It was an old heavy stick with agreat brass handle. Many's the time he has sat on the settle therewith that stick atween his knees. 'Twas a stick with a sword in't, butthe sword was broken. I remember how he loosened the handle once whilehe was talking just as you and I are now, and he held the stick upsidedown and the sword fell out on to the ground, just two or three inchesof steel broken off short. He picked it up pretty sharp and rammed itin again. Well, the stick was to be buried with him, so that if hewoke up when we were carrying him over the hill to the Abbey he mightknock on the lid of his coffin."

  "But I doubt if any one would ha' opened the lid if he had knocked,"said one, with a chuckle, and another nodded his head to thesentiment. "There was five shillings, you see," he explained, "oncethe ground was stamped down on top of him. It wasn't quite human toexpect a body to open the lid."

  "A queer notion--about that stick."

  And so the talk drifted away to other matters. The fishermen tooktheir leave one by one and tramped heavily to their homes. PeterTortue and his companion followed. George Glen alone remained, and hesat so quiet in his corner that I forgot his presence. Adam Mayle wasthe only occupant of the room for me. I could see him sitting on thesettle, with a long pipe between his lips when he was not holding amug there, his mulberry face dimly glowing through the puffs oftobacco, and his voice roaring out those wild stories of the Africancoast. That anxiety for a barbaric funeral seemed quite of a piecewith the man as my fancies sketched him. Well, he was lying in theAbbey grounds, and George Glen sat in his place.

  Mr. Glen came over to me from his corner, and I called for a jug ofrum punch, and invited him to share it, which he willingly did. He wasa little squabby man, but very broad, with a nervous twitting laugh,and in his manner he was extremely intimate and confidential. He couldhardly finish a sentence without plucking you by the sleeve, and everycommonplace he uttered was pointed with a wink. He knew that I hadbeen over at the house under Merchant's Rock, and he was clumsilyinquisitive about my business upon Tresco.

  "Why," said I, indifferently, "I take it that I am pretty much in thesame case with you, Mr. Glen."

  At that his jaw dropped a little, and he stared at me utterlydiscountenanced that I should be so plain with him.

  "As for me," said he in a little, "it is plain enough. And whenyou say"--and here he twitched my sleeve as he leaned across thetable--"'here's old George Glen, that battered about the world inships for fifty years, and has come to his moorings in a snug harborwhere rum's cheap, being smuggled or stole', says you--well, I am notdenying you may be right;" and here he winked prodigiously.

  "And that's just what I said," I returned; "for here have I batteredabout London, that's worse than the sea, and ages a man twice asfast----"

  Mr. Glen interrupted me with some astonishment, and, I thought, alittle alarm.

  "Why," says she, "this is no place for the likes of you--a crazytumbledown of a tavern. All very well for tarry sailor folk that'snever seen nothing better than forecastle. But you'll sicken of it ina week. Sure, you have not dropped your anchor here."

  "We'll call it a kedge, Mr. Glen," said I.

  "A kedge, you say," answered Mr. Glen, with a titter, "and a kedgewe'll make it. It's a handy thing to get on board in a hurry."

  He spoke with a wheedling politeness, but very likely a threatunderlay his words. I thought it wise to take no notice of them, but,rising from my seat, I wished him good night. And there theconversation would have ended but for a couple of pictures upon thewall which caught my eye.

  One was the ordinary picture which you may come upon in a hundredalehouses by the sea: the sailor leaving his cottage for a voyage, hiswife and children clinging about his knees, and in the distance animpossible ship unfurling her sails upon an impossible ocean. Thesecond, however, it was, which caught my attention. It was the pictureof a sailor's return. His wife and children danced before him, he wasclad in magnificent garments, and to prove the prosperity of hisvoyage he carried in his hand a number of gold watches and chains; andthe artist, whether it was that he had a sense of humour or that hemerely doubted his talents, instead of painting the watches, had cutholes in the canvas and inserted little discs of bright metal.

  "This is a new way of painting pictures, Mr. Glen," said I.

  Mr. Glen's taste in pictures was crude, and for these he expressed aquite sentimental admiration.

  "But," I objected, "the artist is guilty of a libel, for he makes thesailor out to be a sneak-thief."

  Mr. Glen became indignant.

  "Because he comes home with wealth untold?" he asked grandly.

  "No, but because he comes home with watches," said I.

  Whereupon Mr. Glen was at some pains to explain to me that the watcheswere merely symbolical.

  "And the picture's true," he added, and fell to pinching my arm."There's many a landsman laughs; but sailors, you says, says you,'comes home with watches in their 'ands more than they can 'old andsets up for gentle-folk,' says you."

  "Like old Adam Mayle, I adds," said I; and Mr. Glen dropped my arm andstood a little way off blinking at me.

  "You knew Adam?" he said, in a fierce sort of way.

  "No," I answered.

  "But you know of him?"

  "Yes," said I, slowly, "I know of him, but not as much as you do, Mr.Glen, who were quartermaster with him at Whydah on the ship _RoyalFortune_."

  I spoke at random, wondering how he would take the words, and they hadmore effect than I had even hoped for. His face turned all of amottled colour; he banged his fist upon the table and uttered ahorrible oath, calling upon God to slay him if he had ever set foot onthe deck of a ship named the _Royal Fortune_.

  "And when you says, says you," he added, sidling up to me, "Old Georgenever see'd a _Royal Fortune_, says you--why, you're saying what'sright
and fair, and I thanks you, sir. I thanks you with a truesailor's 'eart "; at which he would have wrung my hand. But I had nohand ready for him; I barely heard his words. Whydah--the Guineacoast--the ship _Royal Fortune!_ The truth came so suddenly upon methat I had not the wit to keep silence. I could have bitten off mytongue the next moment. As it was I caught most of the sentence back.But the beginning of it jumped from my mouth.

  "At last I know"--I began and stopped.

  "What?" said Mr. Glen, with his whole face distorted into aninsinuating grin. But he was standing very close to me and a littlebehind my back.

  "That my father thrashed me over twenty years ago," said I, clappingmy hand to my coat tails and springing away from him.

  "And you have never forgotten it," said he.

  "On the contrary," said I, "I have only just remembered it."

  Mr. Glen moved away from the table and walked towards the door. Thushe disclosed the table to me, and I laughed very contentedly. Mr. Glenimmediately turned. He had reached the door, and he stood in thedoorway biting shreds of skin from his thumb.

  "You are in good spirits," said he, rather surlily.

  "I was never in better," said I. "The motions of inanimate bodies areinvariably instructive."

  I was very willing he should think me half-witted. He went grumblingup the stairs; I turned me again to the picture of the sailor'sreturn. Whydah--the Guinea coast--the ship _Royal Fortune!_ It mayhave been in some part the man's eagerness to deny all knowledge ofthe ship; it was, no doubt, in some part the picture of those goldwatches, which awakened my memories. Watches of just such gold weredangling for sale on a pedler's stall when first I heard of the ship_Royal Fortune_. The whole scene came back to me most vividly--themarket-place of an old country town upon a fair day, the carts, thecrowds, the merry-go-rounds, the pedler's stall with the sham goldwatches, and close by the stall a ragged hawker singing a ballad ofthe _Royal Fortune_, and selling copies of the ballad--a ballad towhich was added the last confessions of four men hung for piracy atCape Coast Castle within the flood-marks. It was well over twentyyears since that day, but I remembered it now with a startlingdistinctness. There was a rough woodcut upon the title-page of theballad representing four men hanging in chains upon four gibbets. Ihad bought one that afternoon, and my father had taken it from me andthrashed me soundly for reading it. But I had read it! My memory wasquickened now to an almost supernatural clearness. I could almost turnover the pages in my mind and read it again. All four men--one of themwas named Ashplant, a second Moody--went to the gallows without anysign of penitence. There was a third so grossly stupid--yes, his namewas Hardy--so stupid that during his last moments he could think ofnothing more important than the executioner's tying his wrists behindhis back, and his last words were before they swung him off to theeffect that he had seen many men hanged, but none with their handstied in this way. The fourth--I could not recall his name, but heswore very heartily, saying that he would rather go to hell than toheaven, since he would find no pirates in heaven to keep him company,and that he would give Roberts a salute of thirteen guns at entrance.There was the story of a sea-fight, too, besides the ballad and theconfessions and it all cost no more than a penny. What a well-spentpenny! The fourth man's name, by-the-bye, was Sutton.

  But the sea-fight! It was fought not many miles from Whydah betweenHis Majesty's ship _Swallow_ and the _Royal Fortune_; for the _RoyalFortune_ was sailed by Captain Bartholomew Roberts, the famous piratewho was killed in this very encounter. How did George Glen or AdamMayle or Peter Tortue (for he alone of Glen's assistants was of an ageto have shipped on the _Royal Fortune_) escape? I did not care abutton. I had my thumb on George Glen, and was very well content.

  There was no doubt I had my thumb on the insinuating George. There wasAdam Mayle's fortune, in the first place; there was Adam's look whenGeorge Glen let slip the name of the ship when he first came toTresco; there was Glen's consternation this evening when I repeated itto him, and there was something more than his convincing than hisconsternation--a table-knife.

  He had come very close to me when I mentioned the _Royal Fortune_, andhe had stood a little behind me--against the table at which I hadeaten my supper. I had eaten that supper at the opposite side of thetable, and how should a table-knife have crawled across the table andbe now lying so handily on this nearer edge unless George had doubtsof my discretion? Yes, I had my thumb upon him and as I went upstairsto bed I wondered whether after all Helen would be justified of herconfidence in believing that I had been sent to Tresco to some goodend. Her face was very present to me that night. There was much in herwhich I could not understand. There was something, too, to troubleone, there were concealments, it almost seemed there was a trace ofeffrontery--such as Lieutenant Clutterbuck had spoken of; but to-nightI was conscious chiefly that she set her faith in me and myendeavours. Does the reed always break if you lean upon it? What if amiracle happened and the reed grew strong because some one--anyone--leaned upon it! I kept that trustful face of hers as I had seenit in the sunlight, long before my eyes in the darkness of the room.But it changed, as I knew and feared it would,--it changed to thatappalling face which had stared at me out of the dark. I tried todrive that picture of her from my thoughts.

  But I could not, until a door creaked gently. I sat up in my bed witha thought of that knife handy on the table edge to the grasp of GeorgeGlen. I heard a scuffle of shoeless feet draw towards my door, and Iremembered that I had no weapon--not even a knife. The feet stopped atmy door, and I seemed to hear the sound of breathing. The moon hadalready sunk, but the night was clear, and I watched the white doorand the white woodwork of the door frame. The door was in the wall onmy right; it was about midway between the head and the foot of my bed,and it opened inwards and down towards the foot; so that I shouldeasily see it opening. But suddenly I heard the stair boards creaking.Whoever it was then, had merely stopped to listen at my door. I fellback on my bed with a relief so great as to surprise me. I wassurprised, too, to find myself cold with sweat. I determined to buymyself a knife in the morning, for there was the girl over atMerchant's Point who looked to me. I had thus again a picture of herin the sunlight.

  And then I began to wonder at that stealthy descent of the stairs. Andwhy should any one wish to assure himself I slept? This was a questionto be looked into. I got out of bed very cautiously, as cautiouslyopened the door and peered out.

  There was a light burning in the kitchen--a small yellow light as of acandle, but I could hear no sound. I crept to the head of the stairswhich were steep and led directly to the very threshold of thekitchen. I lay down on the boards of the landing and stretching myhead down the stairs, looked into the room.

  George Glen had taken the sailor with the watches, down from the wall.He was seated with the candle at his elbow, and minutely examining thepicture. He looked up towards the stairs, I drew my face quickly back;but he was gazing in a complete abstraction, and biting his thumb,very much puzzled. I crept back to bed and in a little I heard himcome shuffling up the stairs. He had been examining that picture tofind a reason for my exclamation. It was a dull-witted thing to do andI could have laughed at him heartily, only I had already made amistake in taking him to be duller-witted than he was. For he wasquick enough, at all events, to entertain suspicions.