It was nigh midnight when they made Mr. Hartright's wharf at the foot of Beaver Street. There Barnaby and the boatmen assisted the young lady ashore, and our hero and she walked up through the now silent and deserted street to Mr. Hartright's house.
You may conceive of the wonder and amazement of our hero's dear step-father when aroused by Barnaby's continued knocking at the street door, and clad in a dressing-gown and carrying a lighted candle in his hand, he unlocked and unbarred the door, and so saw who it was had aroused him at such an hour of the night, and beheld the young and beautiful lady whom Barnaby had brought home with him.
The first thought of the good man was that the Belle Helen had come into port; nor did Barnaby undeceive him as he led the way into the house, but waited until they were all safe and sound together before he should unfold his strange and wonderful story.
"This was left for you by two foreign sailors this afternoon, Barnaby," the good man said, as he led the way through the hall, holding up the candle at the same time, so that Barnaby might see an object that stood against the wainscoting by the door of the dining-room.
It was with difficulty that our hero could believe his eyes when he beheld one of the treasure-chests that Sir John Malyoe had fetched with such particularity from Jamaica.
He bade his step-father hold the light nigher, and then, his mother having come down-stairs by this time, he flung back the lid and displayed to the dazzled sight of all the great treasure therein contained.
You are to suppose that there was no sleep for any of them that night, for what with Barnaby's narrative of his adventures, and what with the thousand questions asked of him, it was broad daylight before he had finished the half of all that he had to relate.
The next day but one brought the Belle Helen herself into port, with the terrible news not only of having been attacked at night by pirates, but also that Sir John Malyoe was dead. For whether it was the sudden fright that overset him, or whether it was the strain of passion that burst some blood-vessel upon his brain, it is certain that when the pirates quitted the Belle Helen, carrying with them the young lady and Barnaby and the travelling-trunks, they left Sir John Malyoe lying in a fit upon the floor, frothing at the mouth and black in the face, as though he had been choked. It was in this condition that he was raised and taken to his berth, where, the next morning about two o'clock, he died, without once having opened his eyes or spoken a single word.
As for the villain man-servant, no one ever saw him afterwards; though whether he jumped overboard, or whether the pirates who so attacked the ship had carried him away bodily, who shall say?
Mr. Hartright had been extremely perplexed as to the ownership of the chest of treasure that had been left by those men for Barnaby, but the news of the death of Sir John Malyoe made the matter very easy for him to decide. For surely if that treasure did not belong to Barnaby, there could be no doubt but that it belonged to his wife—she being Sir John Malyoe's legal heir. Thus it was that he satisfied himself, and thus that great fortune (in actual computation amounting to upward of sixty-three thousand pounds) fell to Barnaby True, the grandson of that famous pirate William Brand.
As for the other case of treasure, it was never heard of again, nor could Barnaby decide whether it was divided as booty among the pirates, or whether they had carried it away with them to some strange and foreign land, there to share it among themselves.
It is thus we reach the conclusion of our history, with only this to observe, that whether that strange appearance of Captain Brand was indeed a ghostly and spiritual visitation, or whether he was present on those two occasions in flesh and blood, he was, as has been said, never heard of again.
At the time of the beginning of the events about to be narrated—which the reader is to be informed occurred between the years 1740 and 1742— there stood upon the high and rugged crest of Pick-a-Neck-a-Sock Point (or Pig and Sow Point, as it had come to be called) the wooden ruins of a disused church, known throughout those parts as the Old Free Grace Meeting-house.
This humble edifice had been erected by a peculiar religious sect calling themselves the Free Grace Believers, the radical tenet of whose creed was a denial of the existence of such a place as Hell, and an affirmation of the universal mercy of God, to the intent that all souls should enjoy eternal happiness in the life to come.
For this dangerous heresy the Free Grace Believers were expelled from the Massachusetts Colony, and, after sundry peregrinations, settled at last in the Providence Plantations, upon Pick-a-Neck-a-Sock Point, coadjacent to the town of New Hope. There they built themselves a small cluster of huts, and a church wherein to worship; and there for a while they dwelt, earning a precarious livelihood from the ungenerous soil upon which they had established themselves.
As may be supposed, the presence of so strange a people was entertained with no great degree of complaisance by the vicinage, and at last an old deed granting Pick-a-Neck-a-Sock to Captain Isaiah Applebody was revived by the heirs of that renowned Indian-fighter, whereupon the Free Grace Believers were warned to leave their bleak and rocky refuge for some other abiding-place. Accordingly, driven forth into the world again, they embarked in the snow1 "Good Companion," of Bristol, for the Province of Pennsylvania, and were afterwards heard of no more in those parts. Their vacated houses crumbled away into ruins, and their church tottered to decay.
1 [ A two-masted square-rigged vessel.]
So at the beginning of these events, upon the narrative of which the author now invites the reader to embark together with himself.
At the period of this narrative the settlement of New Hope had grown into a very considerable seaport town, doing an extremely handsome trade with the West Indies in cornmeal and dried codfish for sugar, molasses, and rum.
Among the more important citizens of this now wealthy and elegant community, the most notable was Colonel William Belford—a magnate at once distinguished and honored in the civil and military affairs of the colony. This gentleman was an illegitimate son of the Earl of Clandennie by the daughter of a surgeon of the Sixty-seventh Regiment of Scots, and he had inherited a very considerable fortune upon the death of his father, from which he now enjoyed a comfortable competency.
Our Colonel made no little virtue of the circumstances of his exalted birth. He was wont to address his father's memory with a sobriety that lent to the fact of his illegitimacy a portentous air of seriousness, and he made no secret of the fact that he was the friend and the confidential correspondent of the present Earl of Clandennie. In his intercourse with the several Colonial governors he assumed an attitude of authority that only his lineage could have supported him in maintaining, and, possessing a large and commanding presence, he bore himself with a continent reserve that never failed to inspire with awe those whom he saw fit to favor with his conversation.
This noble and distinguished gentleman possessed in a brother an exact and perfect opposite to himself. Captain Obadiah Belford was a West Indian, an inhabitant of Kingston in the island of Jamaica. He was a cursing, swearing, hard-drinking renegado from virtue; an acknowledged dealer in negro slaves, and reputed to have been a buccaneer, if not an out-and-out pirate, such as then infested those tropical latitudes in prodigious numbers. He was not unknown in New Hope, which he had visited upon several occasions for a week or so at a time. During each period he lodged with his brother, whose household he scandalized by such freaks as smoking his pipe of tobacco in the parlor, offering questionable pleasantries to the female servants, and cursing and swearing in the hallways with a fecundity and an ingenuity that would have put the most godless sailor about the docks to the blush.
Accordingly, it may then be supposed into what a dismay it threw Colonel Belford when one fine day he received a letter from Captain Obadiah, in which our West Indian desperado informed his brother that he proposed quitting those torrid latitudes in which he had lived for so long a time, and that he intended thenceforth to make his home in New Hope.
Addressing Colonel Belford as "My dear Billy," he called upon that gentleman to rejoice at this determination, and informed him that he proposed in future to live "as decent a limb of grace as ever broke loose from hell," and added that he was going to fetch as a present for his niece Belinda a "dam pirty little black girl" to carry her prayer-book to church for her.
Accordingly, one fine morning, in pursuance of this promise, our West Indian suddenly appeared at New Hope with a prodigious quantity of chests and travelling-cases, and with so vociferous an acclamation that all the town knew of his arrival within a half-hour of that event.
When, however, he presented himself before Colonel Belford, it was to meet with a welcome so frigid and an address so reserved that a douche of cold water could not have quenched his verbosity more entirely. For our great man had no notion to submit to the continued infliction of the West Indian's presence. Accordingly, after the first words of greeting had passed, he addressed Captain Obadiah in a strain somewhat after this fashion:
"Indeed, I protest, my dear brother Obadiah, it is with the heartiest regrets in the world that I find myself obliged to confess that I cannot offer you a home with myself and my family. It is not alone that your manners displease me—though, as an elder to a younger, I may say to you that we of these more northern latitudes do not entertain the same tastes in such particulars as doubtless obtain in the West Indies—but the habits of my household are of such a nature that I could not hope to form them to your liking. I can, however, offer as my advice that you may find lodgings at the Blue Lion Tavern, which doubtless will be of a sort exactly to fit your inclinations. I have made inquiries, and I am sure you will find the very best apartments to be obtained at that excellent hostelry placed at your disposal."
To this astounding address our West Indian could, for a moment, make no other immediate reply than to open his eyes and to glare upon Colonel Belford, so that, what with his tall, lean person, his long neck, his stooping shoulders, and his yellow face stained upon one side an indigo blue by some premature explosion of gunpowder—what with all this and a prodigious hooked beak of a nose, he exactly resembled some hungry predatory bird of prey meditating a pounce upon an unsuspecting victim. At last, finding his voice, and rapping the ferrule of his ivory-headed cane upon the floor to emphasize his declamation, he cried out: "What! What! What! Is this the way to offer a welcome to a brother new returned to your house? Why, —— ——! who are you? Am not I your brother, who could buy you out twice over and have enough left to live in velvet? Why! Why!—Very well, then, have it your own way; but if I don't grind your face into the mud and roll you into the dirt my name is not Obadiah Belford!" Thereupon, striving to say more but finding no fit words for the occasion, he swung upon his heel and incontinently departed, banging the door behind him like a clap of thunder, and cursing and swearing so prodigiously as he strode away down the street that an infernal from the pit could scarcely have exceeded the fury of his maledictions.
However, he so far followed Colonel Belford's advice that he took up his lodgings at the Blue Lion Tavern, where, in a little while, he had gathered about him a court of all such as chose to take advantage of his extravagant bounty.
Indeed, he poured out his money with incredible profusion, declaring, with many ingenious and self-consuming oaths, that he could match fortunes with the best two men in New Hope, and then have enough left to buy up his brother from his hair to his boot-leathers. He made no secret of the rebuff he had sustained from Colonel Belford, for his grievance clung to him like hot pitch—itching the more he meddled with it. Sometimes his fury was such that he could scarcely contain himself. Upon such occasions, cursing and swearing like an infernal, he would call Heaven to witness that he would live in New Hope if for no other reason than to bring shame to his brother, and he would declare again and again, with incredible variety of expletives, that he would grind his brother's face into the dirt for him.
Accordingly he set himself assiduously at work to tease and torment the good man with every petty and malicious trick his malevolence could invent. He would shout opprobrious words after the other in the streets, to the entertainment of all who heard him; he would parade up and down before Colonel Belford's house singing obstreperous and unseemly songs at the top of his voice; he would even rattle the ferrule of his cane against the palings of the fence, or throw a stone at Madam Belford's cat in the wantonness of his malice.
Meantime he had purchased a considerable tract of land, embracing Pig and Sow Point, and including the Old Free Grace Meeting-House. Here, he declared, it was his intention to erect a house for himself that should put his brother's wooden shed to shame. Accordingly he presently began the erection of that edifice, so considerable in size and occupying so commanding a situation that it was the admiration of all those parts, and was known to fame as Belford's Palace. This magnificent residence was built entirely of brick, and Captain Obadiah made it a boast that the material therefor was brought all the way around from New York in flats. In the erection of this elegant structure all the carpenters and masons in the vicinage were employed, so that it grew up with an amazing rapidity. Meantime, upon the site of the building, rum and Hollands were kept upon draught for all comers, so that the place was made the common resort and the scene for the orgies of all such of the common people as possessed a taste for strong waters, many coming from so far away as Newport to enjoy our Captain's prodigality.
Meantime he himself strutted about the streets in his red coat trimmed with gilt braid, his hat cocked upon one side of his bony head, pleasing himself with the belief that he was the object of universal admiration, and swelling with a vast and consummate self-satisfaction as he boasted, with strident voice and extravagant enunciation, of the magnificence of the palace he was building.
At the same time, having, as he said, shingles to spare, he patched and repaired the Old Free Grace Meeting-House, so that its gray and hoary exterior, while rejuvenated as to the roof and walls, presented in a little while an appearance as of a sudden eruption of bright yellow shingles upon its aged hide. Nor would our Captain offer any other explanation for so odd a freak of fancy than to say that it pleased him to do as he chose with his own.
At last, the great house having been completed, and he himself having entered into it and furnished it to his satisfaction, our Captain presently began entertaining his friends therein with a profuseness of expenditure and an excess of extravagance that were the continued admiration of the whole colony. In more part the guests whom Captain Obadiah thus received with so lavish an indulgence were officers or government officials from the garrisons of Newport or of Boston, with whom, by some means or other, he had scraped an acquaintance. At times these gay gentlemen would fairly take possession of the town, parading up and down the street under conduct of their host, staring ladies out of countenance with the utmost coolness and effrontery, and offering loud and critical remarks concerning all that they beheld about them, expressing their opinions with the greatest freedom and jocularity.
Nor were the orgies at Belford's Palace limited to such extravagances as gaming and dicing and drinking, for sometimes the community would be scandalized by the presence of gayly dressed and high-colored ladies, who came, no one knew whence, to enjoy the convivialities at the great house on the hill, and concerning whom it pleased the respectable folk of New Hope to entertain the gravest suspicion.
At first these things raised such a smoke that nothing else was to be seen, but by-and-by other strange and singular circumstances began to be spoken of—at first among the common people, and then by others. It began to be whispered and then to be said that the Old Free Grace Meeting-House out on the Point was haunted by the Devil.
The first information concerning this dreadful obsession arose from a fisherman, who, coming into the harbor of a nightfall after a stormy day, had, as he affirmed, beheld the old meeting-house all of a blaze of light. Some time after, a tinker, making a short-cut from Stapleton by way of the old Indian road, had a view of a similar but a much more remarkable manifestation. This time, as the itinerant most solemnly declared, the meeting-house was not only seen all alight, but a bell was ringing as a signal somewhere off across the darkness of the water, where, as he protested, there suddenly appeared a red star, that, blazing like a meteor with a surpassing brightness for a few seconds, was presently swallowed up into inky darkness again. Upon another occasion a fiddler, returning home after midnight from Sprowle's Neck, seeing the church alight, had, with a temerity inflamed by rum, approached to a nearer distance, whence, lying in the grass, he had, he said, at the stroke of midnight, beheld a multitude of figures emerge from the building, crying most dolorously, and then had heard a voice, as of a lost spirit, calling aloud, "Six-and-twenty, all told!" whereat the light in the church was instantly extinguished into an impenetrable darkness.
It was said that when Captain Obadiah himself was first apprised of the suspicions entertained of the demoniacal possession of the old meeting-house, he had fixed upon his venturesome informant so threatening and ominous a gaze that the other could move neither hand nor foot under the malignant fury of his observation. Then, at last, clearing his countenance of its terrors, he had burst into a great, loud laugh, crying out: "Well, what then? Why not? You must know that the Devil and I have been very good friends in times past. I saw a deal of him in the West Indies, and I must tell you that I built up the old meeting-house again so that he and I could talk together now and then about old times without having a lot of ——, dried, codfish-eating, rum-drinking Yankee bacon-chewers to listen to every word we had to say to each other. If you must know, it was only last night that the ghost of Jezebel and I danced a fandango together in the graveyard up yonder, while the Devil himself sat cross-legged on old Daniel Root's tombstone and blew on a dry, dusty shank-bone by way of a flute. And now" (here he swore a terrific oath) "you know the worst that is to be known, with only this to say: if ever a man sets foot upon Pig and Sow Point again after nightfall to interfere with the Devil's sport and mine, hell suffer for it as sure as fire can burn or brimstone can scorch. So put that in your pipe and smoke it."
These terrible words, however extravagant, were, to be sure, in the nature of a direct confirmation of the very worst suspicion that could have been entertained concerning this dolorous affair. But if any further doubt lingered as to the significance of such malevolent rumors, Captain Obadiah himself soon put an end to the same.
The Reverend Josiah Pettibones was used of a Saturday to take supper at Colonel Belford's elegant residence. It was upon such an occasion and the reverend gentleman and his honored host were smoking a pipe of tobacco together in the library, when there fell a loud and importunate knocking at the house door, and presently the servant came ushering no less a personage than Captain Obadiah himself. After directing a most cunning, mischievous look at his brother, Captain Obadiah addressed himself directly to the Reverend Mr. Pettibones, folding his hands with a most indescribable air of mock humility. "Sir," says he—"Reverend sir, you see before you a humble and penitent sinner, who has fallen so desperately deep into iniquities that he knows not whether even so profound piety as yours can elevate him out of the pit in which he finds himself. Sir, it has got about the town that the Devil has taken possession of my old meeting-house, and, alas! I have to confess—that it is the truth." Here our Captain hung his head down upon his breast as though overwhelmed with the terrible communication he had made.
"What is this that I hear?" cried the reverend gentleman. "Can I believe my ears?"
"Believe your ears!" exclaimed Colonel Belford. "To be sure you cannot believe your ears. Do you not see that this is a preposterous lie, and that he is telling it to you to tease and to mortify me?"
At this Captain Obadiah favored his brother with a look of exaggerated and sanctimonious humility. "Alas, brother," he cried out, "for accusing me so unjustly! Fie upon you! Would you check a penitent in his confession? But you must know that it is to this gentleman that I address myself, and not to you." Then directing his discourse once more to the Reverend Mr. Pettibones, he resumed his address thus: "Sir, you must know that while I was in the West Indies I embarked, among other things, in one of those ventures against the Spanish Main of which you may have heard."
"Do you mean piracy?" asked the Reverend Pettibones; and Captain Obadiah nodded his head.
"'Tis a lie!" cried Colonel Belford, smacking his hand upon the table. "He never possessed spirit enough for anything so dangerous as piracy or more mischievous than slave-trading."
"Sir," quoth Captain Obadiah to the reverend gentleman, "again I say 'tis to you I address my confession. Well, sir, one day we sighted a Spanish caravel very rich ladened with a prodigious quantity of plate, but were without so much as a capful of wind to fetch us up with her. 'I would,' says I, 'offer the Devil my soul for a bit of a breeze to bring us alongside.' 'Done,' says a voice beside me, and—alas that I must confess it!—there I saw a man with a very dark countenance, whom I had never before beheld aboard of our ship. 'Sign this,' says he, 'and the breeze is yours!' 'What is it upon the pen?' says I. "'Tis blood,' says he. Alas, sir! what was a poor wretch so tempted as I to do?"
"And did you sign?" asked Mr. Pettibones, all agog to hear the conclusion of so strange a narration.
"Woe is me, sir, that I should have done so!" quoth Captain Obadiah, rolling his eyes until little but the whites of them were to be seen.
"And did you catch the Spanish ship?"
"That we did, sir, and stripped her as clean as a whistle."
"'Tis all a prodigious lie!" cried Colonel Belford, in a fury. "Sir, can you sit so complacently and be made a fool of by so extravagant a fable?"
"Indeed it is unbelievable," said Mr. Pettibones.
At this faint reply, Captain Obadiah burst out laughing; then renewing his narrative—"Indeed, sir," he declared, "you may believe me or not, as you please. Nevertheless, I may tell you that, having so obtained my prize, and having time to think coolly over the bargain I had made, I says to myself, says I: 'Obediah Belford! Obadiah Belford, here is a pretty pickle you are in. 'Tis time you quit these parts and lived decent, or else you are damned to all eternity.' And so I came hither to New Hope, reverend sir, hoping to end my days in quiet. Alas, sir! would you believe it? scarce had I finished my fine new house up at the Point when hither comes that evil being to whom I had sold my sorrowful soul. 'Obadiah,' says he, 'Obadiah Belford, I have a mind to live in New Hope also,' 'Where?' says I. 'Well,' says he, 'you may patch up the old meetinghouse; 'twill serve my turn for a while.' 'Well,' thinks I to myself, 'there can be no harm in that,' And so I did as he bade me— and would not you do as much for one who had served you as well? Alas, your reverence! there he is now, and I cannot get rid of him, and 'tis over the whole town that he has the meeting-house in possession."
"Tis an incredible story!" cried the Reverend Pettibones.
"'Tis a lie from beginning to end!" cried the Colonel.
"And now how shall I get myself out of my pickle?" asked Captain Obadiah.
"Sir," said Mr. Pettibones, "if what you tell me is true, 'tis beyond my poor powers to aid you."
"Alas!" cried Captain Obadiah. "Alas! alas! Then, indeed, I'm damned!" And therewith flinging his arms into the air as though in the extremity of despair, he turned and incontinently departed, rushing forth out of the house as though stung by ten thousand furies.
It was the most prodigious piece of gossip that ever fell in the way of the Reverend Josiah, and for a fortnight he carried it with him wherever he went. "'Twas the most unbelievable tale I ever heard," he would cry. "And yet where there is so much smoke there must be some fire. As for the poor wretch, if ever I saw a lost soul I beheld him standing before me there in Colonel Belford's library." And then he would conclude: "Yes, yes, 'tis incredible and past all belief. But if it be true in ever so little a part, why, then there is justice in this—that the Devil should take possession of the sanctuary of that very heresy that would not only have denied him the power that every other Christian belief assigns to him, but would have destroyed that infernal habitation that hath been his dwelling-place for all eternity."
As for Captain Belford, if he desired privacy for himself upon Pig and Sow Point, he had taken the very best means to prevent the curious from spying upon him there after nightfall.
Lieutenant Thomas Goodhouse was the Collector of Customs in the town of New Hope. He was a character of no little notoriety in those parts, enjoying the reputation of being able to consume more pineapple rum with less effect upon his balance than any other man in the community. He possessed the voice of a stentor, a short, thick-set, broad-shouldered person, a face congested to a violent carnation, and red hair of such a color as to add infinitely to the consuming fire of his countenance.
The Custom Office was a little white frame building with green shutters, and overhanging the water as though to topple into the tide. Here at any time of the day betwixt the hours of ten in the morning and of five in the afternoon the Collector was to be found at his desk smoking his pipe of tobacco, the while a thin, phthisical clerk bent with unrelaxing assiduity over a multitude of account-books and papers accumulated before him.
For his post of Collectorship of the Royal Customs, Lieutenant Goodhouse was especially indebted to the patronage of Colonel Belford. The worthy Collector had, some years before, come to that gentleman with a written recommendation from the Earl of Clandennie of a very unusual sort. It was the Lieutenant's good-fortune to save the life of the Honorable Frederick Dunburne, second son of the Earl—a wild, rakish, undisciplined youth, much given to such mischievous enterprises as the twisting off of door-knockers, the beating of the watch, and the carrying away of tavern signs.
Having been a very famous swimmer at Eton, the Honorable Frederick undertook while at the Cowes to swim a certain considerable distance for a wager. In the midst of this enterprise he was suddenly seized with a cramp, and would inevitably have drowned had not the Lieutenant, who happened in a boat close at hand, leaped overboard and rescued the young gentleman from the watery grave in which he was about to be engulfed, thus restoring him once more to the arms of his grateful family.
For this fortunate act of rescue the Earl of Clandennie presented to his son's preserver a gold snuffbox filled with guineas, and inscribed with the following legend:
"To Lieutenant Thomas Goodhouse, who, under the Ruling of Beneficent Providence, was the Happy Preserver of a Beautiful and Precious Life of Virtuous Precocity, this Box is presented by the Father of Him whom He saved as a grateful acknowledgment of His Services.
Thomas Monkhouse Dunburne, Viscount of Dunburne and Earl of Clandennie.
August 17, 1752."
Having thus satisfied the immediate demands of his gratitude, it is very possible that the Earl of Clandennie did not choose to assume so great a responsibility as the future of his son's preserver entailed. Nevertheless, feeling that something should be done for him, he obtained for Lieutenant Goodhouse a passage to the Americas, and wrote him a strong letter of recommendation to Colonel Belford. That gentleman, desiring to please the legitimate head of his family, used his influence so successfully that the Lieutenant was presently granted the position of Collector of Customs in the place of Captain Maull, who had lately deceased.
The Lieutenant, somewhat to the surprise of his patrons, filled his new official position as Collector not only with vigor, but with a not unbecoming dignity. He possessed an infinite appreciation of the responsibilities of his office, and he was more jealous to collect every farthing of the royal duties than he would have been had those moneys been gathered for his own emolument.
Under the old Collectorship of Captain Maull, it was no unusual thing for a barraco of superfine Hollands, a bolt of silk cloth, or a keg of brandy to find its way into the house of some influential merchant or Colonial dignitary. But in no such manner was Lieutenant Goodhouse derelict in his duties. He would have sacrificed his dearest friendship or his most precious attachment rather than fail in his duties to the Crown. In the intermission of his duties it might please him to relax into the softer humors of conviviality, but at ten o'clock in the morning, whatever his condition of sobriety, he assumed at once all the sterner panoply of a Collector of the Royal Customs.
Thus he set his virtues against his vices, and struck an even balance between them. When most unsteady upon his legs he most asserted his integrity, declaring that not a gill or a thread came into his port without paying its duty, and calling Heaven to witness that it had been his hand that had saved the life of a noble young gentleman. Thereupon, perhaps, drawing forth the gleaming token of his prowess—the gold snuffbox—from his breeches-pocket, and holding it tight in his brown and hairy fist, he would first offer his interlocutor a pinch of rappee, and would then call upon him to read the inscription engraved upon the lid of the case, demanding to know whether it mattered a fig if a man did drink a drop too much now and then, provided he collected every farthing of the royal revenues, and had been the means of saving the son of the Earl of Clandennie.
Never for an instant upon such an occasion would he permit his precious box to quit his possession. It was to him an emblem of those virtues that no one knew but himself, wherefore the more he misdoubted his own virtuousness the more valuable did the token of that rectitude become in his eyes. "Yes, you may look at it," he would say, "but damme if you shall handle it. I would not," he would cry, "let the Devil himself take it out of my hands."
The talk concerning the impious possession of the Old Free Grace Meeting-House was at its height when the official consciousness of the Collector, who was just then laboring under his constitutional infirmity, became suddenly seized with an irrepressible alarm. He declared that he smoked something worse than the Devil upon Pig and Sow Point, and protested that it was his opinion that Captain Obadiah was doing a bit of free-trade upon his own account, and that dutiable goods were being smuggled in at night under cover of these incredible stories. He registered a vow, sealing it with the most solemn protestations, and with a multiplicity of ingenious oaths that only a mind stimulated by the heat of intoxication could have invented, that he would make it his business, upon the first occasion that offered, to go down to Pig and Sow Point and to discover for himself whether it was the Devil or smugglers that had taken possession of the Old Free Grace Meeting-House. Thereupon, hauling out his precious snuffbox and rapping upon the lid, he offered a pinch around. Then calling attention to the inscription, he demanded to know whether a man who had behaved so well upon that occasion had need to be afraid of a whole churchful of devils. "I would," he cried, "offer the Devil a pinch, as I have offered it to you. Then I would bid him read this and tell me whether he dared to say that black was the white of my eye."
Nor were those words a vain boast upon the Collector's part, for, before a week had passed, it being reported that there had been a renewal of manifestations at the old church, the Collector, finding nobody with sufficient courage to accompany him, himself entered into a small boat and rowed down alone to Pig and Sow Point to investigate, for his own satisfaction, those appearances that so agitated the community.
It was dusk when the Collector departed upon that memorable and solitary expedition, and it was entirely dark before he had reached its conclusion. He had taken with him a bottle of Extra Reserve rum to drive, as he declared, the chill out of his bones. Accordingly it seemed to him to be a surprisingly brief interval before he found himself floating in his boat under the impenetrable shadow of the rocky promontory. The profound and infinite gloom of night overhung him with a portentous darkness, melting only into a liquid obscurity as it touched and dissolved into the stretch of waters across the bay. But above, on the high and rugged shoulder of the Point, the Collector, with dulled and swimming vision, beheld a row of dim and lurid lights, whereupon, collecting his faculties, he opined that the radiance he beheld was emitted from the windows of the Old Free Grace Meeting-House.
Having made fast his boat with a drunken gravity, the Collector walked directly, though with uncertain steps, up the steep and rugged path towards that mysterious illumination. Now and then he stumbled over the stones and cobbles that lay in his way, but he never quite lost his balance, neither did he for a moment remit his drunken gravity. So with a befuddled and obstinate perseverance he reached at last to the conclusion of his adventure and of his fate.
The old meeting-house was two stories in height, the lower story having been formerly used by the Free Grace Believers as a place wherein to celebrate certain obscure mysteries appertaining to their belief. The upper story, devoted to the more ordinary worship of their Sunday meetings, was reached by a tall, steep flight of steps that led from the ground to a covered porch which sheltered the doorway.
The Collector paused only long enough to observe that the shutters of the lower story were tight shut and barred, and that the dull and lurid light shone from the windows above. Then he directly mounted the steps with a courage and a perfect assurance that can only be entirely enjoyed by one in his peculiar condition of inebriety.
He paused to knock at the door, and it appeared to him that his knuckles had hardly fallen upon the panel before the valve was flung suddenly open. An indescribable and heavy odor fell upon him and for the moment overpowered his senses, and he found himself standing face to face with a figure prodigiously and portentously tall.
Even at this unexpected apparition the Collector lost possession of no part of his courage. Rather he stiffened himself to a more stubborn and obstinate resolution. Steadying himself for his address, "I know very well," quoth he, "who you are. You are the Divil, I dare say, but damme if you shall do business here without paying your duties to King George. I may drink a drop too much," he cried, "but I collect my duties—every farthing of 'em." Then drawing forth his snuffbox, he thrust it under the nose of the being to whom he spake. "Take a pinch and read that," he roared, "but don't handle it, for I wouldn't take all hell to let it out of my hand."
The being whom he addressed had stood for all this while as though bereft of speech and of movement, but at these last words he appeared to find his voice, for he gave forth a strident bellow of so dreadful and terrible a sort that the Collector, brave as he found himself, stepped back a pace or two before it. The next instant he was struck upon the wrist as though by a bolt of lightning, and the snuffbox, describing a yellow circle against the light of the door, disappeared into the darkness of the night beyond. Ere he could recover himself another blow smote him upon the breast, and he fell headlong from the platform, as through infinite space.
The next day the Collector did not present himself at the office at his accustomed hour, and the morning wore along without his appearing at his desk. By noon serious alarm began to take possession of the community, and about two o'clock, the tide being then set out pretty strong, Mr. Tompkins, the consumptive clerk, and two sailors from the Sarah Goodrich, then lying at Mr. Hoppins's wharf, went down in a yawl-boat to learn, if possible, what had befallen him. They coasted along the Point for above a half-hour before they discovered any vestige of the missing Collector. Then at last they saw him lying at a little distance upon a cobbled strip of beach, where, judging from his position and from the way he had composed himself to rest, he appeared to have been overcome by liquor.
At this place Mr. Tompkins put ashore, and making the best of his way over the slippery stones exposed at low water, came at last to where his chief was lying. The Collector was reposing with one arm over his eyes, as though to shelter them from the sun, but as soon as Mr. Tompkins had approached close enough to see his countenance, he uttered a great cry that was like a scream. For, by the blue and livid lips parted at the corners to show the yellow teeth, from the waxy whiteness of the fat and hairy hands—in short, from the appearance of the whole figure, he was aware in an instant that the Collector was dead.
His cry brought the two sailors running. They, with the utmost coolness imaginable, turned the Collector over, but discovered no marks of violence upon him, till of a sudden one of them called attention to the fact that his neck was broke. Upon this the other opined that he had fallen among the rocks and twisted his neck.
The two mariners then made an investigation of his pockets, the clerk standing by the while paralyzed with horror, his face the color of dough, his scalp creeping, and his hands and fingers twitching as though with the palsy. For there was something indescribably dreadful in the spectacle of those living hands searching into the dead's pockets, and he would freely have given a week's pay if he had never embarked upon the expedition for the recovery of his chief.
In the Collector's pockets they found a twist of tobacco, a red bandanna handkerchief of violent color, a purse meagrely filled with copper coins and silver pieces, a silver watch still ticking with a loud and insistent iteration, a piece of tarred string, and a clasp-knife.
The snuffbox which the Lieutenant had regarded with such prodigious pride as the one emblem of his otherwise dubious virtue was gone.
The Honorable Frederick Dunburne, second son of the Earl of Clandennie, having won some six hundred pounds at écarté at a single sitting at Pintzennelli's, embarked with his two friends, Captain Blessington and Lord George Fitzhope, to conclude the night with a round of final dissipation in the more remote parts of London. Accordingly they embarked at York Stairs for the Three Cranes, ripe for any mischief. Upon the water the three young gentlemen amused themselves by shouting and singing, pausing only now and then to discharge a broadside of raillery at the occupants of some other and passing boat.
All went very well for a while, some of those in the passing boats laughing and railing in return, others shouting out angry replies. At last they fell in with a broad-beamed, flat-nosed, Dutch-appearing yawl-boat, pulling heavily up against the stream, and loaded with a crew of half-drunken sailors just come into port. In reply to the challenge of our young gentlemen, a man in the stern of the other boat, who appeared to be the captain of the crew—a fellow, as Dunburne could indefinitely perceive by the dim light of the lanthorn and the faint illumination of the misty half-moon, possessing a great, coarse red face and a bullet head surmounted by a mildewed and mangy fur cap— bawled out, in reply, that if they would only put their boat near enough for a minute or two he would give them a bellyful of something that would make them quiet for the rest of the night. He added that he would ask for nothing better than to have the opportunity of beating Dunburne's head to a pudding, and that he would give a crown to have the three of them within arm's-reach for a minute.
Upon this Captain Blessington swore that he should be immediately accommodated, and therewith delivered an order to that effect to the watermen. These obeyed so promptly that almost before Dunburne was aware of what had happened the two boats were side by side, with hardly a foot of space between the gunwales. Dunburne beheld one of the watermen of his own boat knock down one of the crew of the other with the blade of an oar, and then he himself was clutched by the collar in the grasp of the man with the fur cap. Him Dunburne struck twice in the face, and in the moonlight he saw that he had started the blood to running down from his assailant's nose. But his blows produced no other effect than to call forth a volley of the most horrible oaths that ever greeted his ears. Thereupon the boats drifted so far apart that our young gentleman was haled over the gunwale and soused in the cold water of the river. The next moment some one struck him upon the head with a belaying-pin or a billet of wood, a blow so crushing that the darkness seemed to split asunder with a prodigious flaming of lights and a myriad of circling stars, which presently disappeared into the profound and utter darkness of insensibility. How long this swoon continued our young gentleman could never tell, but when he regained so much of his consciousness as to be aware of the things about him, he beheld himself to be confined in a room, the walls whereof were yellow and greasy with dirt, he himself having been laid upon a bed so foul and so displeasing to his taste that he could not but regret the swoon from which he had emerged into consciousness. Looking down at his person, he beheld that his clothes had all been taken away from him, and that he was now clad in a shirt with only one sleeve, and a pair of breeches so tattered that they barely covered his nakedness. While he lay thus, dismally depressed by so sad a pickle as that into which he found himself plunged, he was strongly and painfully aware of an uproarious babble of loud and drunken voices and a continual clinking of glasses, which appeared to sound as from a tap-room beneath, these commingled now and then with oaths and scraps of discordant song bellowed out above the hubbub. His wounded head beat with tremendous and straining painfulness, as though it would burst asunder, and he was possessed by a burning thirst that seemed to consume his very vitals. He called aloud, and in reply a fat, one-eyed woman came, fetching him something to drink in a cup. This he swallowed with avidity, and thereupon (the liquor perhaps having been drugged) he dropped off into unconsciousness once more.
When at last he emerged for a second time into the light of reason, it was to find himself aboard a brig—the Prophet Daniel, he discovered her name to be—bound for Baltimore, in the Americas, and then pitching and plunging upon a westerly running stern-sea, and before a strong wind that drove the vessel with enormous velocity upon its course for those remote and unknown countries for which it was bound. The land was still in sight both astern and abeam, but before him lay the boundless and tremendously infinite stretch of the ocean. Dunburne found himself still to be clad in the one-armed shirt and tattered breeches that had adorned him in the house of the crimp in which he had first awakened. Now, however, an old tattered hat with only a part of the crown had been added to his costume. As though to complete the sad disorder of his appearance, he discovered, upon passing his hand over his countenance, that his beard and hair had started a bristling growth, and that the lump on his crown—which was even yet as big as a walnut— was still patched with pieces of dirty sticking-plaster. Indeed, had he but known it, he presented as miserable an appearance as the most miserable of those wretches who were daily ravished from the slums and streets of the great cities to be shipped to the Americas. Nor was he a long time in discovering that he was now one of the several such indentured servants who, upon the conclusion of their voyage, were to be sold for their passage in the plantations of Maryland.
Having learned so much of his miserable fate, and being now able to make shift to walk (though with weak and stumbling steps), our young gentleman lost no time in seeking the Captain, to whom he endeavored to explain the several accidents that had befallen him, acknowledging that he was the second son of the Earl of Clandennie, and declaring that if he, the Captain, would put the Prophet Daniel back into some English port again, his lordship would make it well worth his while to lose so much time for the sake of one so dear as a second son. To this address the Captain, supposing him either to be drunk or disordered in his mind, made no other reply than to knock him incontinently down upon the deck, bidding him return forward where he belonged.
Thereafter poor Dunburne found himself enjoying the reputation of a harmless madman. The name of the Earl of Rags was bestowed upon him, and the miserable companions of his wretched plight were never tired of tempting him to recount his adventures, for the sake of entertaining themselves by teasing that which they supposed to be his hapless mania.
Nor is it easy to conceive of all the torments that those miserable, obscene wretches were able to inflict upon him. Under the teasing sting of his companions' malevolent pleasantries, there were times when Dunburne might, as he confessed to himself, have committed a murder with the greatest satisfaction in the world. However, he was endowed with no small command of self-restraint, so that he was still able to curb his passions within the bounds of reason and of policy. He was, fortunately, a complete master of the French and Italian languages, so that when the fury of his irritation would become too excessive for him to control, he would ease his spirits by castigating his tormentors with a consuming verbosity in those foreign tongues, which, had his companions understood a single word of that which he uttered, would have earned for him a beating that would have landed him within an inch of his life. However, they attributed all that he said to the irrational gibbering of a maniac.
About midway of their voyage the Prophet Daniel encountered a tremendous storm, which drove her so far out of the Captain's reckoning that when land was sighted, in the afternoon of a tempestuous day in the latter part of August, the first mate, who had been for some years in the New England trade, opined that it was the coast of Rhode Island, and that if the Captain chose to do so he might run into New Hope Harbor and lie there until the southeaster had blown itself out. This advice the Captain immediately put into execution, so that by nightfall they had dropped anchor in the comparative quiet of that excellent harbor.
Dunburne was a most excellent and practised swimmer. That evening, when the dusk had pretty well fallen, he jumped overboard, dived under the brig, and came up on the other side. Thus leaving all hands aboard looking for him or for his dead body at the starboard side of the Prophet Daniel, he himself swam slowly away to the larboard. Now partly under water, now floating on his back, he directed his course towards a point of land about a mile away, whereon, as he had observed before the dark had settled down, there stood an old wooden building resembling a church, and a great brick house with tall, lean chimneys at a little farther distance inland.
The intemperate cold of the water of those parts of America was so much more excessive than Dunburne had been used to swim in that when he dragged himself out upon the rocky, bowlder-strewn beach he lay for a considerable time more dead than alive. His limbs appeared to possess hardly any vitality, so benumbed were they by the icy chill that had entered into the very marrow of his bones. Nor did he for a long while recover from this excessive rigor; his limbs still continued at intervals to twitch and shudder as with a convulsion, nor could he at such times at all control their trembling. At last, however, with a huge sigh, he aroused himself to some perception of his surroundings, which he acknowledged were of as dispiriting a sort as he could well have conceived of. His recovering senses were distracted by a ceaseless watery din, for the breaking waves, rushing with a prodigious swiftness from the harbor to the shore before the driving wind, fell with uproarious crashing into white foam among the rocks. Above this watery tumult spread the wet gloom of the night, full of the blackness and pelting chill of a fine slanting rain.
Through this shroud of mist and gloom Dunburne at last distinguished a faint light, blurred by the sheets of rain and darkness, and shining as though from a considerable distance. Cheered by this nearer presence of human life, our young gentleman presently gathered his benumbed powers together, arose, and after a while began slowly and feebly to climb a stony hill that lay between the rocky beach and that faint but encouraging illumination.
So, sorely buffeted by the tempest, he at last reached the black, square form of that structure from which the light shone. The building he perceived to be a little wooden church of two stories in height. The shutters of the lower story were tight fastened, as though bolted from within. Those above were open, and from them issued the light that had guided him in his approach from the beach. A tall flight of wooden steps, wet in the rain, reached to a small, enclosed porch or vestibule, whence a door, now tight shut, gave ingress into the second story of the church.
Thence, as Dunburne stood without, he could now distinguish the dull muttering of a man's voice, which he opined might be that of the preacher. Our young gentleman, as may be supposed, was in a wretched plight. He was ragged and unshaven; his only clothing was the miserable shirt and bepatched breeches that had served him as shelter throughout the long voyage. These abominable garments were now wet to the skin, and so displeasing was his appearance that he was forced to acknowledge to himself that he did not possess enough of humility to avow so great a misery to the light and to the eyes of strangers. Accordingly, finding some shelter afforded by the vestibule of the church, he crouched there in a corner, huddling his rags about him, and finding a certain poor warmth in thus hiding away from the buffeting of the chill and penetrating wind. As he so crouched he presently became aware of the sound of many voices, dull and groaning, coming from within the edifice, and then—now and again—the clanking as of a multitude of chains. Then of a sudden, and unexpectedly, the door near him was flung wide open, and a faint glow of reddish light fell across the passage. Instantly the figure of a man came forth, and following him came, not a congregation, as Dunburne might have supposed, but a most dolorous company of nearly, or quite, naked men and women, outlined blackly, as they emerged, against the dull illumination from behind. These wretched beings, sighing and groaning most piteously, with a monotonous wailing of many voices, were chained by the wrist, two and two together, and as they passed by close to Dunburne, his nostrils were overpowered by a heavy and fetid odor that came partly from within the building, partly from the wretched creatures that passed him by.
As the last of these miserable beings came forth from the bowels of that dreadful place, a loud voice, so near to Dunburne as to startle his ears with its sudden exclamation, cried out, "Six-and-twenty, all told," and thereat instantly the dull light from within was quenched into darkness.
In the gloom and the silence that followed, Dunburne could hear for a while nothing but the dash of the rain upon the roof and the ceaseless drip and trickle of the water running from the eaves into the puddles beneath the building.
Then, as he stood, still marvelling at what he had seen, there suddenly came a loud and startling crash, as of a trap-door let fall into its place. A faint circle of light shone within the darkness of the building, as though from a lantern carried in a man's hands. There was a sound of jingling, as of keys, of approaching footsteps, and of voices talking together, and presently there came out into the vestibule the dark figures of two men, one of them carrying a ship's lantern. One of these figures closed and locked the door behind him, and then both were about to turn away without having observed Dunburne, when, of a sudden, a circle from the roof of the lantern lit up his pale and melancholy face, and he instantly became aware that his presence had been discovered.
The next moment the lantern was flung up almost into his eyes, and in the light he saw the sharp, round rim of a pistol-barrel directed immediately against his forehead.
In that moment our young gentleman's life hung as a hair in the balance. In the intense instant of expectancy his brain appeared to expand as a bubble, and his ears tingled and hummed as though a cloud of flies were buzzing therein. Then suddenly a voice smote like a blow upon the silence—"Who are you, and what d'ye want?"
"Indeed," said Dunburne, "I do not know."
"What do you do here?"
"Nor do I know that, either."
He who held the lantern lifted it so that the illumination fell still more fully upon Dunburne's face and person. Then his interlocutor demanded, "How did you come here?"
Upon the moment Dunburne determined to answer so much of the truth as the question required. "'Twas by no fault of my own," he cried. "I was knocked on the head and kidnapped in England, with the design of being sold in Baltimore. The vessel that fetched me put into the harbor over yonder to wait for good weather, and I jumped overboard and swam ashore, to stumble into the cursed pickle in which I now find myself."
"Have you, then, an education? To be sure, you talk so."
"Indeed I have," said Dunburne—"a decent enough education to fit me for a gentleman, if the opportunity offered. But what of that?" he exclaimed, desperately. "I might as well have no more learning than a beggar under the bush, for all the good it does me." The other once more flashed the light of his lantern over our young gentleman's miserable and barefoot figure. "I had a mind," says he, "to blow your brains out against the wall. I have a notion now, however, to turn you to some use instead, so I'll just spare your life for a little while, till I see how you behave."
He spoke with so much more of jocularity than he had heretofore used that Dunburne recovered in great part his dawning assurance. "I am infinitely obliged to you," he cried, "for sparing my brains; but I protest I doubt if you will ever find so good an opportunity again to murder me as you have just enjoyed."
This speech seemed to tickle the other prodigiously, for he burst into a loud and boisterous laugh, under cover of which he thrust his pistol back into his coat-pocket again. "Come with me, and I'll fit you with victuals and decent clothes, of both of which you appear to stand in no little need," he said. Thereupon, and without another word, he turned and quitted the place, accompanied by his companion, who for all this time had uttered not a single sound. A little way from the church these two parted company, with only a brief word spoken between them.
Dunburne's interlocutor, with our young gentleman following close behind him, led the way in silence for a considerable distance through the long, wet grass and the tempestuous darkness, until at last, still in unbroken silence, they reached the confines of an enclosure, and presently stood before a large and imposing house built of brick.
Dunburne's mysterious guide, still carrying the lantern, conducted him directly up a broad flight of steps, and opening the door, ushered him into a hallway of no inconsiderable pretensions. Thence he led the way to a dining-room beyond, where our young gentleman observed a long mahogany table, and a sideboard of carved mahogany illuminated by three or four candles. In answer to the call of his conductor, a negro servant appeared, whom the master of the house ordered to fetch some bread and cheese and a bottle of rum for his wretched guest. While the servant was gone to execute the commission the master seated himself at his ease and favored Dunburne with a long and most minute regard. Then he suddenly asked our young gentleman what was his name.
Upon the instant Dunburne did not offer a reply to this interrogation. He had been so miserably abused when he had told the truth upon the voyage that he knew not now whether to confess or deny his identity. He possessed no great aptitude at lying, so that it was with no little hesitation that he determined to maintain his incognito. Having reached this conclusion, he answered his host that his name was Tom Robinson. The other, however, appeared to notice neither his hesitation nor the name which he had seen fit to assume. Instead, he appeared to be lost in a reverie, which he broke only to bid our young gentleman to sit down and tell the story of the several adventures that had befallen him. He advised him to leave nothing untold, however shameful it might be. "Be assured," said he, "that no matter what crimes you may have committed, the more intolerable your wickedness, the better you will please me for the purpose I have in view."
Being thus encouraged, and having already embarked in disingenuosity, our young gentleman, desiring to please his host, began at random a tale composed in great part of what he recollected of the story of Colonel Jack, seasoned occasionally with extracts from Mr. Smollett's ingenious novel of Ferdinand, Count Fathom. There was hardly a petty crime or a mean action mentioned in either of these entertaining fictions that he was not willing to attribute to himself. Meanwhile he discovered, to his surprise, that lying was not really so difficult an art as he had supposed it to be. His host listened for a considerable while in silence, but at last he was obliged to call upon his penitent to stop. "To tell you the truth, Mr. What's-a-name," he cried, "I do not believe a single word you are telling me. However, I am satisfied that in you I have discovered, as I have every reason to hope, one of the most preposterous liars I have for a long time fell in with. Indeed, I protest that any one who can with so steady a countenance lie so tremendously as you have just done may be capable, if not of a great crime, at least of no inconsiderable deceit, and perhaps of treachery. If this be so, you will suit my purposes very well, though I would rather have had you an escaped criminal or a murderer or a thief."
"Sir," said Dunburne, very seriously, "I am sorry that I am not more to your mind. As you say, I can, I find, lie very easily, and if you will give me sufficient time, I dare say I can become sufficiently expert in other and more criminal matters to please even your fancy. I cannot, I fear, commit a murder, nor would I choose to embark upon an attempt at arson; but I could easily learn to cheat at cards; or I could, if it would please you better, make shift to forge your own name to a bill for a hundred pounds. I confess, however, I am entirely in the dark as to why you choose to have me enjoy so evil a reputation."
At these words the other burst into a great and vociferous laugh. "I protest," he cried, "you are the coolest rascal ever I fell in with. But come," he added, sobering suddenly, "what did you say was your name?"
"I declare, sir," said Dunburne, with the most ingenuous frankness, "I have clean forgot. Was it Tom or John Robinson?"
Again the other burst out laughing. "Well," he said, "what does it matter? Thomas or John—'tis all one. I see that you are a ragged, lousy beggar, and I believe you to be a runaway servant. Even if that is the worst to be said of you, you will suit me very well. As for a name, I myself will fit you with one, and it shall be of the best. I will give you a home here in the house, and will for three months clothe you like a lord. You shall live upon the best, and shall meet plenty of the genteelest company the Colonies can afford. All that I demand of you is that you shall do exactly as I tell you for the three months that I so entertain you. Come. Is it a bargain?"
Dunburne sat for a while thinking very seriously. "First of all," said he, "I must know what is the name you have a mind to bestow upon me."
The other looked distrustfully at him for a time, and then, as though suddenly fetching up resolution, he cried out: "Well, what then? What of it? Why should I be afraid? I'll tell you. Your name shall be Frederick Dunburne, and you shall be the second son of the Earl of Clandennie."
Had a thunder-bolt fallen from heaven at Dunburne's feet he could not have been struck more entirely dumb than he was at those astounding words. He knew not for the moment where to look or what to think. At that instant the negro man came into the room, fetching the bottle of rum and the bread and cheese he had been sent for. As the sound of his entrance struck upon our young gentleman's senses he came to himself with the shock, and suddenly exploded into a burst of laughter so shrill and discordant that Captain Obadiah sat staring at him as though he believed his ragged beneficiary had gone clean out of his senses.