a clean suction bore. It was you knew your job as well as grimy work, bent double under I know mine, you wouldn't the flooring and getting one's have let that happen." He hair singed by the candle flame. did know his job, too, but on Outside the great grey seas this occasion he was wrong. leapt on the forecastle head, and the shock of them sounded like subterranean explosions. We cut a hole and nothing came out. The iron ore was a soggy mass of red clay in the hold. But we had to try. When we passed the Scilly Islands the weather became a little milder. The water in the hold, when we began to go full speed, came up to twentytwo feet. That was about her draft. She wouldn't make any more. But the Old Man drove her across the Bristol Channel. The glass wasn't getting up any, and when we passed the forts at the entrance of Milford Haven and came opposite Pembroke, he selected an easy soft mud slope and the Fernfield slipped up the beach and came to rest. Safe for a while, anyway. He came down in a rage. The skipper met him ashore, and the two of them came out in a boat bobbing up and down like two corks. There was a bitter wind blowing off the Welsh hills. The boss clambered up the ladder, and began laying about him. We were to get out at once. What did we think we were, passengers on a cruise? This wasn't Glasgow, it was Milford Haven. Who ever heard of a cargo of iron ore coming into Milford Haven? Leak? Then why didn't we pump it out? The chances were we didn't know our connections after all these years in the damn ship. There was nothing the matter with the ship. She was a good ship, a damn sight better than the men in her. Get steam and go to Glasgow, and don't let him hear any more about bad weather. We didn't know what bad weather was, in his opinion. The captain went ashore and telegraphed to London. The superintendent was on his way to Cardiff in the Fishguard express at the time. A wire The incredible thing was that from the office caught him on when we pulled the ship off the train at Newport. Fish- the bank and anchored, she guard is north of Pembroke made no more water. The about twenty miles. Our boss minute that peppery little chap got out somewhere and took from Plymouth set foot on a local train to where the our deck she stopped. He Fernfield lay on the beach. made us take out every valve He was a small peppery West- in the suction line, and saw countryman, something like for himself they were clean. what Drake must have been, I That was another of his phrases, imagine, clever and difficult. "See for yourself." Convinced He was fond of meeting com- against his will we had our plaints from his chiefs and line clear, he turned his back skippers with the words, "If on us, and accused us of leaving a valve open and filling the ship. "She's dry as a bird-cage," he snapped. Get steam and get on out. I'm going ashore. I'm sick of the sight of people who don't know their work." With that flea in our ears, we went out into one of the wildest gales ever known in that stormy Irish Sea. It was two hundred miles to Glasgow, and we did half of it in two days. And off the Isle of Man the water began to gain on us in Number One Hold. It was almost as though the personality of that little man (who knew his business) had ceased to have any influence on the ship. The captain and the second mate (we had no third mate) were almost dead with being on their feet all the time. We pumped and pumped, but the water rose to twenty-two feet again. At last, when we raised the Mull of Cantyre, the gale blew itself out. We put on speed, and next day we tied up in the Queen's Dock at our old berth at the foot of Finisterre Street. And they began to take the ore out of Number One Hold at once. We were very weary and rather sick as well, for nobody enjoys being told he doesn't know his business. When the cargo was out, with our pumps going hard we moved into dry dock, and our boss appeared on the gangway. His derby hat was pushed back, his short trim beard twitched as he gave us the once-over. Now we would see who was VOL. CCXXIII.—NO. MCCCXLVII. His sharp blue eye right. But this touched Red sludge was running from a two-inch hole in the wellbottom. The drain plug had corroded and fallen out at sea. A two-inch jet of sea-water had been pouring into that ship. When we rode up the beach at Milford Haven a plug of stiff clay had worked in and stopped the leak for a while. Out at sea it had washed away, and we began to fill again. We let him find it, and went on with our work. He found it, but it did not fool him. He was contemptuous. "It might have been worse," he said crisply. "You've got a good job here." He was glancing through the main engine log-book. "A good job," he added, and you can't look after it. Suppose you'd had a real breakdown, where'd you have been? Let a little thing like that defeat you. I tell you, you chaps don't know when you're well off." Didn't we, though? If he'd seen us that night ashore in Glasgow, he'd have been surprised. We drank his health and that of the old ship that had carried us, faithfully, through so much. B 2 HEARSE HOUSE. BY DOUGLAS G. BROWNE. PROLOGUE. THE SHIP OF WAR. "Ho! by my shoul 'tis a Protestant wind." UPON Hearse House the rain was sousing. It drummed on the tiles, spouted from the gutters, and trickled in long beards of moisture down the plaster walls. But the upper room was snug enough, if somewhat stuffy. A fire of driftwood crackled and spat as stray raindrops found their way down the chimney, and on the table stood glasses and an earthenware jug half full of brandy which had paid no revenue. The room itself, oblong and of moderate size, was hung and littered with the miscellaneous flotsam and jetsam that Solomon Abney had garnered in the course of a varied and unedifying career. It had a window at either end -one looking upon the High Street, the other across the churchyard to the estuary and the open sea; and before this last, which was newly flung open, admitting some muchneeded air, three men were grouped together. Old Solomon, a small spyglass at his red-rimmed and very cunning eye, was muttering his exasperation. "Blister their innards! who are they? Blast and scarify -Lilliburlero. their souls! A man can't see for this rain, od rot it!" The little man who leaned forward by his side, a prim, neat, middle-aged figure in black, with woollen stockings and plain shoes, a plain threecornered hat upon his bag wig, was biting his lip and drumming nervously upon the window ledge. The third watcher, who craned his head over the others, a brown and muscular hand on either of their shoulders, was a very tall man, clothed with some elegance in brown and silver. His hat was silverlaced, and he wore riding-boots and a sword. On his lean saturnine face, in which black eyes glowed from under a thatch of brow, dark passions had etched deeply their ominous and ineradicable lines. And something more was now writ plainly there-anxiety. ing waters that steamed and wavered through the sheets of rain; and in the bay beyond, a three-masted ship, canvas furled but for her fore and main topsails, floated motionless where she had dropped her anchor. She was perhaps a mile distant. Her wet yellow side shone suddenly like gold in the sun. Along it a broad black streak raked from bow to counter, and from the lateen yard on her mizzen an ensign drooped. The tall man, with an oath, pulled his smaller companion from the window. "What, in God's name, is she doing here?" he cried. But the other seemed already to have recovered from momentary doubts. "You forget my forget my pressed men," said he. "I had forgot them myself for the instant. And it gave me a jolt, I admit. But you can be easy, Sir Bevil. I'll lay you a guinea to a nutmeg she's put in for a jail delivery. It can be naught else. And if I push 'em aboard, she'll be away when the tide turns." "I wonder," Sir Bevil said, frowning-"I wonder. I don't like it. It's too pat. Well, get you down to the quay, Hanaper. This tarpaulin will be ashore in half an hour. There's nothing he can smell there, eh? Or anywhere?" "Lord, no," Mr Hanaper replied easily; "all's as snug as a whistle." As he reached for his cloak, which lay flung over a chest, he added, "It's a cursed coincidence, as you say; but those jail-birds are his game, I'll be bound. Then it will be up anchor and away. I know these old salts-always in a fever to be gone, full of rum and ancient saws about wind and tide, and as blind to all else as so many bats. Like a pack of children with their toys. Trust me to smoke 'em." Wrapping his cloak about him, he cast a final glance through the window. Her topsails are down yet," said he," and high water's at seven." The time was then about four o'clock in the afternoon. 66 Sir Bevil, from his great height, still frowned down at him. "I don't like it," he repeated; "and, whether or no, I must be sure. I'll slip away after you to Mr Cressey's, and expect you there. Come at once when you're rid of this business. If anything's in the wind, you're clever enough to snuff it. But don't be too damned clever, man, or take every sea captain for a fool!" Mr Hanaper, who had the conceit of a small man, smiled complacently. Walking to a corner by the open window, he pulled up a trap in the floor, disclosing the top rungs of a ladder. "Your servant, Sir Bevil," he said, and began to descend backwards, in the awkward crab-like manner necessitated by almost vertical steps. As his head sank below the floor level, the baronet lowered the trap and returned to the window, where old Solomon still peered through his glass our his talk with marine phraseat the distant ship. For a brief space there was silence in the room. Only the fire hissed and crackled, and the rain still thudded down. But its fall was thinning now. To seaward all was blue and gold, and in the wake of the squall the evening sunlight was again flooding the dyked marshes by the river mouth. Far away the man of war gleamed and sparkled like a burnished toy. From below came the sound of a door closing. Mr Hana per appeared in the churchyard, threading his way among the tombstones, and looking, with his long black cloak and his skinny legs, very like a large crow. The path he followed was, in fact, a short cut from the High Street to his office on the quay; and, unless he was actually seen to leave Hearse House, a contingency against which he usually took precautions, it might be supposed that he came from a friendly call at the parsonage next door, or from some ordinary business in the town. ology. "All snugged down and as safe as St Helens. Safer, by goles!" he added with an evil chuckle. "There aren't no sperrits at St Helens. Leastways, they're drowned 'uns, not hanged. There's few men in Shayle-let alone the women, blister 'em!-who'd poke a nose inside this crib. A hearse below and a ghost aloft sends all the Paul Prys a-crossing their fingers if they but pass the door of nights. Harnted houses is good for trade, your honour." His honour looked at the leering old creature with unconcealed distaste. Specially I One poor hisself is Like old "But they don't scare old Sol," that reprobate continued ; "nor sperrits neither. Rot 'em, I likes 'em! likes 'em hanged. sperrit as hanged company to me. times, it is, your honour. Fiftytwo I seed a-dangling in their chains, all in a row at Cape Coast Castle. Fifty-two bonny boys, split me if they weren't, spinning in the sun like joints o' mutton, and the parrots flying round their heads and the monkeys chattering to 'em like humans. But they didn't answer, not they!” As his black figure vanished through a wicket in the churchyard wall. Sir Bevil spoke abruptly, startling old Solomon, who turned a wary and bloodshot eye towards him, "All's safe here!" the baro- the window; and thennet asked curtly. "Aye, aye, sir!" Solomon's voice was an obsequious wheeze, He felt it due to a frankly piratical episode in a lifetime of assorted wickedness to flay "Faugh, you rat!" Sir Bevil said, with something like a shudder. He turned again to "There's her boat!" he cried. A dark speck had left the warship's side, and was moving swiftly with the flood towards the mouth of the river. |