Part 13 (1/2)

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

”And he had it too,” said a third; ”a mortal big coffin. We carried him right from his house over the shoulder of the island, and down past the Abbey pond to the graveyard. Five s.h.i.+llings each we had for carrying him--five s.h.i.+llings counted out by torchlight on a gravestone as soon as the grave was filled in. It was all written down before he died.”

Then the first speaker took up the tale again.

”A queer, strange man was Adam Mayle, and queer strange sights he had seen. He would sit in that corner just where you be, Mr. Glen, and tell stories to turn a man cold. Crackers they used to call him on board s.h.i.+p, so he told us--'Crackers.'”

”Why Crackers?” asked George Glen.

”'Cause he was that handy with a marlinspike. A queer man! And that was a queer notion of his about that stick”; and then he appealed to his companions, who variously grunted their a.s.sent.

”What about the stick?” asked Glen.

”You may well ask, Mr. Glen. It was all written down. The stick was to be buried with him in his coffin. It was an old heavy stick with a great bra.s.s handle. Many's the time he has sat on the settle there with that stick atween his knees. 'Twas a stick with a sword in't, but the sword was broken. I remember how he loosened the handle once while he was talking just as you and I are now, and he held the stick upside down and the sword fell out on to the ground, just two or three inches of steel broken off short. He picked it up pretty sharp and rammed it in again. Well, the stick was to be buried with him, so that if he woke up when we were carrying him over the hill to the Abbey he might knock 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 the sentiment. ”There was five s.h.i.+llings, you see,” he explained, ”once the ground was stamped down on top of him. It wasn't quite human to expect a body to open the lid.”

”A queer notion--about that stick.”

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

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

”Why,” said I, indifferently, ”I take it that I am pretty much in the same case with you, Mr. Glen.”

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

”As for me,” said he in a little, ”it is plain enough. And when you say”--and here he twitched my sleeve as he leaned across the table--”'here's old George Glen, that battered about the world in s.h.i.+ps for fifty years, and has come to his moorings in a snug harbor where rum's cheap, being smuggled or stole', says you--well, I am not denying you may be right;” and here he winked prodigiously.

”And that's just what I said,” I returned; ”for here have I battered about London, that's worse than the sea, and ages a man twice as fast----”

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

”Why,” says she, ”this is no place for the likes of you--a crazy tumbledown of a tavern. All very well for tarry sailor folk that's never seen nothing better than forecastle. But you'll sicken of it in a 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 t.i.tter, ”and a kedge we'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 threat underlay his words. I thought it wise to take no notice of them, but, rising from my seat, I wished him good night. And there the conversation would have ended but for a couple of pictures upon the wall which caught my eye.

One was the ordinary picture which you may come upon in a hundred alehouses by the sea: the sailor leaving his cottage for a voyage, his wife and children clinging about his knees, and in the distance an impossible s.h.i.+p unfurling her sails upon an impossible ocean. The second, however, it was, which caught my attention. It was the picture of a sailor's return. His wife and children danced before him, he was clad in magnificent garments, and to prove the prosperity of his voyage he carried in his hand a number of gold watches and chains; and the artist, whether it was that he had a sense of humour or that he merely doubted his talents, instead of painting the watches, had cut holes 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 a quite sentimental admiration.

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

Mr. Glen became indignant.