CHAPTER IIITHE MYSTERIOUS MAN
Againthe strange deep voice sounded.
It seemed to come from below the small cabin in which we stood—a snarling noise as though of a man enraged.
Neither Seal nor his men liked the situation. I could see by their faces that they were thoroughly scared. They had found gold, it was true, but below was the owner of it.
“Come on, lads,” urged Dicky Dunn courageously, “I’m going below to make the acquaintance of the skipper of this ’ere craft. The way is down that hatchway at the end of the big saloon.”
Encouraged by the old seaman the men moved back into the cabin we had first entered, and with Dunn I descended the dark stairs to explore, Seal following close behind us armed with his revolver.
I struck a match and, by its light, saw a quantity of ancient arms and armour lying with several skulls and bones. Apparently the men were below when the ship went down, and, the hatches being closed so tightly, neither air nor water reached them, so that they had been asphyxiated.
The passage led along to a bulkhead, where it took a turn at right angles and ended with a closed door.
This Seal opened boldly, and we found ourselves in a small cabin, quite light—for the big square window had been broken out—and furnished in the same antique style as the big saloon above.
It had an occupant—the strangest-looking creature I ever saw.
He was an old man with long white hair and white beard, a man with a thin, haggard face and black, deep-sunken eyes. On first entering he escaped our notice, but we saw him crouching beneath the table, hiding from us in terror.
His dress, ragged and tattered, was of three centuries ago—short breeches, a doublet of faded crimson velvet, and an old coat with puffed sleeves, while in his hand he carried a rusty poniard and seemed prepared to spring out upon us.
I shall never forget the ghastly look of hatred and terror upon the queer old fellow’s countenance as he faced us. We all three stood absolutely dumfounded. It was very interesting to discover a ship lost for three centuries, but to find a survivor still on board was incredible.
Yet there was a human being actually in the flesh; a weird old fellow who, for aught we could tell, had lived on board that vessel for ages.
“Come out, sonny,” cried Seal, when he found tongue; “we won’t eat you.”
In response the weird individual gave vent to that same shrill cry of rage that had first attracted our attention, brandishing his knife threateningly, but not budging an inch from his hiding-place.
“Enough of that, my man,” exclaimed the captain, authoritatively. “Come out and talk like a Christian. Where are you bound for? and how many days are you out?”
“The bloomin’ ship’s about three ’undred years overdue, I should fancy,” remarked Dicky Dunn, who was the ship’s humorist.
“Come along,” Seal urged persuasively, placing his hands on his knees and bending down to him. “Come out of it, old chap, and let’s have a yarn. I ain’t got any time to spare.”
But the old fellow only gnashed his gums and brandished his knife, for he appeared to entertain the greatest antipathy towards our skipper.
Presently, after some further coaxing, but receiving no word in reply, I succeeded in reassuring him that we meant him no harm, and he came forth from his hiding-place and with a savage grin stood before us. He was tall and gaunt, about six feet in height and as thin as a lath. But when we came to question him he steadily refused to answer one single question.
All the skipper’s queries he resented with marked hostility, and with me alone was he tractable.
Before long, however, I discerned the true state of affairs. This strange individual, whoever he was, was dumb, and, further, he was not in his right mind. Privation and solitude were probably the cause of it; but whatever the reason, the fact remained that the queer old fellow was unable to utter one single intelligible word, and he was also not responsible for his actions.
Now and then he burst into peals of laughter, grinning hideously, with all the characteristic symptoms of the maniac, and then he would suddenly strike an attitude as though to attack our skipper.
Fortunately I induced him to put his knife aside, for although rusty it was still very sharp. By all the means I could think of I endeavoured to extract some word from him, but in vain. The sounds that escaped him were deep, gutteral, and utterly unintelligible. By dumb show I tried to inquire who and what he was, but insanity asserted itself, for he only gave vent to a demoniacal shriek and cut some absurd capers that caused all three of us to laugh heartily.
I took out my pocket-book and handed it to him, together with a pencil, but instead of writing, as I hoped to induce him, he only looked to see what was contained in the pockets of the book and handed it back to me.
“Well!” cried Seal, “this chap beats everything! Who in the name of fortune can he be?”
“He’s a mystery,” I answered, utterly puzzled.
“He looks as old as Methuselah,” remarked the skipper. “He’s just as though he walked out o’ one of them old pictures.”
“He’s a lunatic, ain’t he, doctor?” asked Dunn.
“Most decidedly,” I responded; “and judging from the manner he received us, he is a rather dangerous one.”
“Well,” said Seal, “we’d better take him on board with us. Perhaps when he’s had a bit of grub and some rest we’ll be able to make him out. This mystery is a first-class one—better than any I’ve ever read in books. How old is he, doctor?”
“Impossible to tell,” I replied. “A good age certainly.”
“As old as this ship?” asked the seaman.
“I think not,” I responded, laughing.
“Well, we must find out something about him,” declared Seal, decisively.
“And what about that chestful of gold, sir?”
“Oh, we’ll ship that, of course,” answered the skipper. “It perhaps belongs to him, but we may as well hold it till he proves his right to it,” and he grinned meaningly.
The ancient mariner had turned, and was gazing out through the big open window to where theThrushwas lying awaiting our return. He seemed quite calm now, and no longer resented our intrusion upon his privacy. Indeed, with me he became quite friendly, and when I spoke again appeared to make an effort to understand me. He pointed to his mouth, which only emitted unintelligible sounds.
That he was insane there was no doubt. The strange look in his eyes was sufficient proof of it, but I entertained a hope that his mind was only unhinged by privation and solitude, and that by careful treatment his mental balance might become restored.
While we were questioning him the three men we had left above were rummaging the ship. One of them, it seems, managed by the aid of a rope to cross the wave-swept deck to the other cabin in the high bows and with an axe effect an entry. His report was that there were a number of skeletons there, most of them still in armour, together with old-fashioned cannon, and he brought back with him a fine banner of purple silk bearing a golden Maltese cross.
Below where we stood, the waves thundered ever and anon, and the heavy rolling told us that the wind was increasing.
“We’d better be getting aboard,” Seal remarked anxiously. “If we don’t make a start we shan’t be able to ship that there gold. You take charge of the old boy, doctor. What shall we call him, eh?”
“The Mysterious Man would be a good name, sir,” suggested Dunn.
“All right,” responded the skipper. “We’ll put him on the papers as Old Mr. Mystery. Go above and get the lads to shift that box of gold. Be careful with it, and mind it don’t go to the bottom.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” responded the grey-bearded seaman; and he went above, shouting to his shipmates to start work on the removal of the treasure.
He must have made some signal to Thorpe on theThrush, for a few minutes later we heard the siren blowing, while the men in the small cabin were working away with a strong will stowing the gold coins into anything they could find, for with such a sea running it was impossible to remove the great chest entire, besides which it was heavily bolted to the floor.
The Mysterious Man accompanied me above, and in silence stood watching the coin being removed. Sight of it produced no impression upon him whatever. His agility and fierce antipathy had given place to apathy, as it so often does in certain phases of insanity.
The old portrait of the thin-faced man in ruffle and doublet caught his eye, and he faced it and shook his fist at it, as though the original were his enemy. Then he went through into the main saloon, and, picking up one of the rusty swords, returned and slashed the picture until the canvas hung in its frame in ribbons.
The two parchments that we had found in the old leather bag were secure in my pocket, and the bag was used for the transport of part of the treasure. While the work of removing the coins was in progress, however, I seized the opportunity of searching further in the small cabin, and discovered in the oak panelling a small cupboard, wherein were several big parchment-bound books looking almost like commercial ledgers.
One of them I opened, and found it to be in manuscript in a crabbed hand that I could not decipher, but on certain pages were drawn rough plans. A second volume proved to be a printed book in Latin; and a third a rare old Book of Hours, printed by Pasquali, of Venice, in 1588. I took possession of half-a-dozen, but the others seemed to me to be of no account—one a Latin lexicon, and another a book in which certain household recipes had been written. All were, as far as I could judge, books written or printed in the first half of the sixteenth century, although I knew nothing of the mysteries of palæography or bibliography. Some of the writing was even and well executed, while the other was execrable, with long loops and curious dashes and flourishes above certain letters.
I gave the books I wanted into the hands of one of the sailors, who lashed them together and lowered them to the boat after the gold had been safely shipped.
Every moment the gale was increasing, so Seal thought fit to send the boat back to the steamer with its precious freight before we proceeded, as the gold weighed heavily, and he feared that if we went with it we might be swamped.
Through the square window of the big saloon, very like the window of an old-fashioned house, we watched the boat rise and fall on the long, green waves as it toiled towards the steamer. We watched one of the men shout through his hands, and could see the excitement his news created on board.
Thorpe bent over from the bridge and shouted back, while a dozen willing hands were ready to haul up the gold.
It was half an hour before they returned for us, and Seal expressed some doubts about the vessel weathering the storm. The pitching was terrible, and it was impossible to stand without clinging hold of something.
I occupied the time in searching every nook and crevice in the big saloon, but I discovered practically nothing, save in a cupboard some old pewter, over which a collector of such stuff would probably have gone into raptures, and an old silver tankard, which I took as part of my share of the loot, together with a helmet, sword, and breastplate.
But at length my search was brought to a conclusion by the boat hailing us from below, and we lowered the Mysterious Man by means of a rope around his waist, for he was too decrepit to spring, and the sight of his skinny legs dangling over the sea was certainly ludicrous. Then, when we were all clear, the men pulled us through the boiling waves back to the steamer, and as we looked behind we saw the weird seaweed-covered craft rocking and rolling as though every minute she must heel over.
CHAPTER IVIN WHICH I EXAMINE THE PARCHMENTS
Theadvent of the stranger on board theThrushcaused an outburst of surprise and consternation among the men, who stood in a group around him, addressing him and making remarks upon his personal appearance and his clothes.
“ ’E looks like old Father Christmas been starved to death!” I heard one seaman remark. “Look at his shoes. Them buckles are silver, mates!”
And then for the first time I noticed that the buckles on his shoes were very beautiful ones.
“There’s something confoundedly mysterious about both the craft and the man,” declared a seaman who had accompanied us. “There’s lots of skeletons on board, and old armour, cannon, and things. She was a battleship, I believe. At any rate, the men on board her were soldiers.”
“If they were, then the old fossil’s a good specimen,” one of them said, to which the old seaman who had rowed our boat replied: —
“Well, we collared over a thousand quid in gold, sonny. It was in them heavy bags that are stowed in the skipper’s quarters. Besides, the doctor’s got a few things—books, bits of parchment, and the like.”
They asked for a description of the craft, and we gave it to them, explaining the circumstances in which we discovered the Mysterious Man. The latter was seated on a coil of rope, glancing at us but utterly apathetic to the fact that he was the centre of attraction. We told them how the old fellow was both dumb and insane, whereupon their interest in him was increased fourfold. Their jeering remarks regarding his gorilla-like countenance and his quaintness of attire were quickly turned into expressions of sympathy and even the roughest man among them was ready to render the afflicted stranger any little service.
The armour and books had been placed in my cabin, and when Seal had related our experiences to Thorpe, the latter suggested that we should stand by theSeahorseand take her in tow when the gale abated. It would mean a day or two overdue in London, but we should nevertheless secure a prize such as no living man had ever before seen. Apart from the interest in the old vessel and the mystery of how it had come to the surface after being so long submerged, there were on board many things of value from an antiquarian point of view.
And so it was arranged that we should lay to that night, and if the wind went down next day, as Seal believed it would because the morrow was the fourth day of continued bad weather, we should tow the extraordinary craft to Valencia, and, if possible, round to London.
The Mysterious Man, after eating ravenously of food set before him, curled himself up in one of the men’s bunks in the forecastle and soon went to sleep. One man, a well-spoken, middle-aged sailor named Harding, was told off to take care of the madman and to see that he did not get into mischief, while the cure of his intellect was left in my charge.
Together with Seal I proceeded to examine our find. As the sun sank crimson and stormy, flooding the skipper’s cabin with a blood-red glow, he and I carefully counted the gold. There were 1,783 pieces, large and small, and of great variety. The English ones mostly bore the effigies of Edward VI. and Elizabeth. There were none of James I., but many were of Henry IV. of France, together with a variety of Spanish doubloons and Italian pieces. I found none of a later reign than Elizabeth, therefore I put down the date of theSeahorseas about 1603, or a few years earlier.
“I wonder whether Old Mystery will claim the coin?” Seal reflected, as he slowly filled his pipe, having finished the counting.
“As the sole survivor, it most probably belongs to him,” I said.
“But if he’s a lunatic, what claim can he make to it? There’ll be some job to find the vessel’s owner, I reckon.”
His remark caused me to remember the two parchments I had in my pocket, and I drew them out, opened them, and examined them carefully.
The first was beautifully and clearly written, about a foot square, and headed “Cosmvs.” It was in Latin, and I must admit that although I had passed in Latin up at Edinburgh, I was very rusty in it. The document at commencement read as follows: —
Cosmus Dei Gratia Magnus Dux Etruriæ, etc. et sacræ Religionis, et Militiæ Militum S. Stephani Papæ, et Martyris Magnus Magister et Custos, etc., Dilecto Nobis Pompæo Marie a Paule, Nobili Pisano et S. Stephani Militi, gratiam uram, et omne bonum.
Cosmus Dei Gratia Magnus Dux Etruriæ, etc. et sacræ Religionis, et Militiæ Militum S. Stephani Papæ, et Martyris Magnus Magister et Custos, etc., Dilecto Nobis Pompæo Marie a Paule, Nobili Pisano et S. Stephani Militi, gratiam uram, et omne bonum.
Then, after a screed of twenty long lines, the document ended: —
Datum Florentiæ die pa. Februarij anno ab incarn. MDCI. Nostri Magni Ducatus Etruriæ anno VI.
Datum Florentiæ die pa. Februarij anno ab incarn. MDCI. Nostri Magni Ducatus Etruriæ anno VI.
Below were three signatures in ink that had long ago faded yellow, but so badly written were they that I could not decipher them. At the foot of the document was threaded a hempen cord, and to it was attached a heavy leaded seal, a trifle bigger than half a crown. On the obverse was a Maltese cross, the same as upon the faded silken banner at my side, and on the reverse a shield bearing six balls, the arms of the Florentine house of the Medici. Around the cross was the legend “Sancti Stephani Signum Religioni,” while around the armorial bearings were the words: “Cosmvs Mag. Dux Etr. Magn. Magis.”
So insufficient was my knowledge of Latin that all I could make out of the writing was that it was some diploma or deed concerning some one named Paule, a noble of Pisa. But what honour it conferred upon him I could not decipher, so I turned my attention to the second parchment.
It was yellower, and penned in a hand so crabbed that for a long time I could not make out in what language it was written.
“Below were seven scrawly signatures in that strange old Elizabethan hand.”The Tickencote Treasure] [Chapter IV
“Below were seven scrawly signatures in that strange old Elizabethan hand.”
At last I decided that the first portion was in the abbreviated Latin of old documents, for after much puzzling I deciphered that the first words read “In Dei Nomine, Amen.” At foot was an endorsement in old English, which I deciphered, making a covenant between certain parties, and below were seven scrawly signatures in that strange old Elizabethan hand, namely of Geo. Greene, Gilbert Kanadale, John Ffreeman, Alex. Stephen Wyon, John Dollington, Clement Wollerton, and George A. Dafte, hys mark.
The bottom of the parchment had been cut until a short strip an inch wide hung from it, and upon this the round seal of yellow wax had been impressed, the device upon it being a shield with a leopard rampant, together with a fleur-de-lys. That is how best I can describe it, not being versed in heraldic terms.
That the two documents were precious ones could not for a moment be doubted when I recollected how carefully they had been preserved: first in that leathern bag and secondly in the treasure-chest. To me, however, they presented no appearance of value.
“What are they all about, doctor?” inquired the skipper, puffing at his pipe.
“At present I can’t tell. They’re both in Latin,” I answered, “and we must wait until we get a proper translation. This”—and I held the second document in my hand—“was written in the time of Queen Elizabeth, and seems to be a covenant, or something of the sort.”
“I suppose we can get some lawyer chap to puzzle ’em out?” Seal said.
“Oh, I don’t anticipate any difficulty,” I answered. “Only if there is any secret attached to them we don’t want to give it away.”
“Ah! I never thought of that,” remarked the skipper. “It is, as you say, very probable that some secret is contained there, and for that reason they were so carefully preserved and hidden away. No, doctor, we’d better not employ a lawyer. He’d want to know too much.”
Then I turned my attention to the books. The first I opened was of fine white parchment, thick, heavily bound, and written in a bold hand with many flourishes. A glance through it showed that it was an inventory of some kind, but it was all in Italian and much beyond me. The only part I could translate was the commencement, which, as far as I was able to decipher, read as follows: —
In the name of Almighty Godand of His Holy Mother, Saint Mary, and of St. Peter, and of St. Paul, of St. John the Baptist, and of all the Celestial Court of Paradise, who have conceded to me the benefit that I should commence this book sound of body and of mind. Amen.
In this Bookwritten by me, Bartholomew di Simon da Schorno, I have set down certain things that all men should know, as well as a certain Secret that one alone may discover to his advantage hereafter.
And then followed about 150 pages of manuscript and memoranda.
Through an hour I diligently endeavoured to decipher correctly regarding the secret mentioned, but it was in old Italian, with long l’s and s’s, and therefore extremely difficult to understand.
The date of the conclusion of the book I discovered to be August 16, 1591, on a Friday; while here and there I discovered the name of Paule, evidently the same family as the Pompæo Marie a Paule, the Pisan noble mentioned in the document with the leaden seal of Cosimo di Medici.
The author, Bartholomew da Schorno, whoever he was, had certainly produced a very respectable volume as regards size, and Job Seal and myself were extremely anxious to learn the secret which, in the introduction, was said to be contained therein.
The other books were not of great interest save perhaps to a bibliophile. They, however, showed that their owner was a scholar. The first, a thin manuscript on paper, and written in a neat Gothic hand, which I afterwards discovered was of the early fifteenth century, bore the title, “Trithemius, Liber de Triplici Regione.” The others were a well-written book of monastic law on vellum, with red and blue capitals of about the same date, and a kind of old pocket-book, in which was a treatise entitled “Loci Communes Theologici per Dominicas et Festes Totius Anni.”
It was the secret of old Bartholomew da Schorno—an Italian, evidently—that we were eager to discover, for both Seal and I felt confident that it would reveal to us the name of the dead owner of theSeahorseand the history of that remarkable resurrection.
In that heavy parchment book was a secret which old Bartholomew declared “one alone may discover to his advantage hereafter.”
What could it be?
Job Seal and I sat smoking our pipes and wondering what strange things were hidden within that yellow old volume that emitted so musty a smell.
Little, however, did we dream of the remarkable consequences that were to follow upon our startling discovery. It is, indeed, well sometimes that the Book of Fate is ever closed to us.
CHAPTER VWITH A STORY TO TELL
Atdaybreak next morning I was called up to the Mysterious Man, whom I found standing in a corner of the forecastle holding a loaded revolver in his hand and pointing it threateningly at anyone who approached him.
He had awoke, I was told, made a tour of the ship, and, gaining possession of the weapon belonging to the second engineer, proceeded to fire one chamber point-blank at Thorpe, who was on duty on the bridge. Then, when pursued, he took refuge in the forecastle, where I found him.
On my approach he calmed down immediately, and handed me the revolver as obediently as a child. Somehow I seemed to possess an influence over him which no one else could exercise, and very quickly induced him to return to his bunk, greatly to the satisfaction of the man who had been told off to be his keeper, and who had no doubt slept on duty.
The storm showed no sign of abatement, and laying to as we were we received the full force of the sweeping gale. The skipper was asleep, snoring loudly, as was his wont, therefore I returned to my berth, and for a couple of hours watched the capers of the rats, until the motion of the boat rising and rolling lulled me again to unconsciousness.
Through the whole of the following day we lay off the seaweed-covered relic of the past until, in the red sundown, the wind dropped, and after several attempts the men secured a wire hawser to the battered prow, and when Seal rang, “Full steam ahead,” theSeahorsebegan slowly to follow in our wake, amid the loud cheering of those on board.
The Mysterious Man stood on the bridge at my side and watched the operation with an expression of complete satisfaction, although more than once, when he believed I was not looking, he would turn and shake his skinny fist at the curious old craft at our stern.
Our progress was slow, for theThrushwas never at any time a fast boat. And with such a dead weight behind her the engineer had to be careful at what pressure he worked our unsafe boilers.
The skipper, after consultation with Thorpe and myself, decided not to make for Valencia but to tow his prize straight to Gibraltar and on to London. As the great black hull with its shroud of marine plants rose and fell behind us it certainly presented more the appearance of Noah’s Ark, as pictorially represented, than of a sea-going vessel. One fact I now discovered that I had not before noticed was that on the bows above the broken figure-head representing a seahorse was a wooden crucifix perhaps two feet high; broken it was true, but still bearing an effigy of the crucifixion, while upon the breast of the seahorse was carved a Maltese cross of similar design to that upon the old silken banner.
The mystery of it all was the sole topic of conversation both on the bridge and in the forecastle. Every man on board tried to obtain some word from the castaway, but in vain. He became tractable, ate well, would not touch grog, but remained always silent. He would stand erect by the capstan in the stern for hours, and with folded arms watch the rolling hulk ploughing her way slowly in the long streak of foam left by our propeller. He still wore his faded velvet breeches, but his bare legs were now covered by a pair of woollen stockings, while in place of his ragged doublet he wore an old pea-jacket, and sometimes an oilskin coat and peaked cap. He still, however, clung to the rusty sword which he had chosen, a blunt but finely-tempered weapon, and often it would be seen poking from beneath his oilskin as he walked the deck.
Once an attempt had been made to trim his long white hair and flowing beard, but this he had resented so vigorously, threatening to spit the man who held the scissors, that the effort had to be abandoned. He thus gave them to understand that although he might accept their modern dress as a loan he would brook no interference with his personal appearance.
Who was he? That was the question which all of us, from Job Seal down to the apprentices, were anxious to solve.
The mystery of theSeahorsewas great enough, but that surrounding the unknown man was greater. My own theory regarding the vessel was that in the early seventeenth century she had gone down or aground in shallow water, perhaps in one of the many coves on the Moroccan or Algerian coast, but the high prow and stern being closed down so tight both air and water were excluded. Those on board—fighting men, it seemed—had perished, but the buoyancy of the ship had been preserved, and by some submarine disturbance—volcanic, most probably—it had become released and risen to the surface.
The growth of barnacles, mussels, and weeds over the whole of the vessel from the stumps of her masts caused Seal to believe that she could only have been covered at high tide, and that she must have lain hidden in some well-sheltered spot where the force of the waves had been broken, otherwise she must have been beaten to pieces. He pointed out to me how some of the weed on her was only to be found on rocks covered at high water, yet if the theory were a correct one then she could not have been hidden in the Mediterranean, as it is an almost tideless sea.
Seal suggested that she might have been aground on the coast of Western Morocco, a country but little known to the civilized world although so near one of the greatest trade routes, and that she might have drifted from the Atlantic to the spot where we had discovered her.
This theory seemed the most likely one, although the presence of the Mysterious Man was utterly unaccountable.
The main point which puzzled Seal, I think, was what he should do with the gold. He regarded the poor old fellow as a gibbering idiot, and had but little to do with him. Customs officers and lunatics were the bluff old seaman’s pet abominations. He would probably have liked to claim the hoard of gold himself if it were not for the existence of one with a prior claim to it, and once or twice he expressed to me an anxiety as to what his owners would say to it all. They were skinflints of the worst type, and would, I expected, probably lay claim to it themselves.
Steaming slowly we passed the Gib. and made a straight course for Cape St. Vincent, which we sighted at dawn one rainy morning, then hugging the Portuguese coast we safely passed the mouth of the Tagus, being hailed more than once by other craft, the skippers all asking us with humorous banter what we had in tow.
Fortunately the weather had improved greatly, and even as we traversed the Bay of Biscay we had no reason to complain, for the oldSeahorserode proudly in our wake, rocking a good deal on account of its house-like shape, but nevertheless giving Seal the greatest satisfaction.
“It’ll make ’em open their eyes, doctor, when we tow ’er up the Thames,” he often said, as he paced his bridge and looked at her straining on the hawser.
Never a day passed but I occupied myself diligently with the documents and manuscripts that had fallen into my hands, but I am fain to confess that beyond what I have already explained to the reader I discovered absolutely nothing. Although I had passed my final examination and could write M.D. after my name, my book-learning was not sufficiently deep that I could decipher and understand those crabbed old screeds.
I showed them to the Mysterious Man, hoping that they would attract his attention and give me some clue to their meaning, but he remained quite passive when he saw them, and turning upon his heel looked out through the round port-hole.
I certainly was very anxious to get back to London to obtain some opinion upon the big vellum book in which Bartholomew da Schorno declared there was a secret that would be discovered hereafter. My voyage, besides being a pleasant one, had been full of excitement, for we had found an object the like of which no living eye had seen, together with an individual who was a complete and profound mystery.
The weather was all that could be desired when we entered the Channel, keeping close in to the coast of Normandy as far as Dieppe, and then taking a direct course across to Beachy Head, where we were signalled as homeward bound. When, however, we were off Folkestone, about nine o’clock one night, a squall struck us so suddenly that even Job Seal was unprepared for it. The glass had fallen rapidly, he had noticed, but such a heavy squall as it proved to be was not to be expected at that season of the year. Within a quarter of an hour a terrific sea was running, and theThrushseemed ever and anon thrown almost on her beam-ends. I noticed that Seal’s face for the first time during our trip betrayed some anxiety, and not without cause, for he suddenly exclaimed: —
“Ah! just as I expected. Blister my kidneys, doctor, but we’ve no bloomin’ luck. That hawser’s parted!”
I turned quickly to look astern, and there, sure enough, theSeahorsewas adrift and out of our wake. Until that moment the strain on the hawser had kept her comparatively steady, but the instant the steel cable had broken she pitched upon her beam-ends, burying her nose deep into the angry waves.
We both stood gripping a rail and watching, neither of us uttering a word.
For perhaps five minutes the antique vessel strove again and again to right herself, until one wave greater than the others crashed over her high stern. From where we stood we could hear the breaking of glass and the shivering of the heavy timbers that, half rotten, now broke up like matchwood.
Then almost immediately the saloon which we had explored began to fill, and slowly before our eyes she went down stern first.
The men, watching like ourselves, set up a howl of disappointment, and Seal gave vent to a volley of nautical expressions which need not here be repeated; but the Mysterious Man, who had also noticed the disaster, began dancing joyously and cutting capers on the deck, heedless of the storm raging about him. It was evident that the final disappearance of theSeahorsegave him the utmost satisfaction.
As for ourselves, we gazed with regret upon the mass of floating timbers that were swept around us. It was to our bitter chagrin that, after towing that relic of a bygone age all those miles at a cost of fuel and time, we had lost her almost at the mouth of the Thames.
But regret was useless. TheSeahorse, with its freight of crumbling skeletons, had gone down again, and would certainly never reappear. So Job Seal drew his oilskin closer around him, lamented his infernal luck, and, recollecting the thousand odd pieces of gold in his cabin, turned and gave an order to the helmsman which caused the bows of theThrushto run nearer towards the dark line of England’s cliffs between Folkestone and Dover.
Lights white and green were beginning to show in the distance, those of other ships passing up and down Channel, and as I stood by his side in my dripping oilskins I congratulated myself that if we weathered the squall I should be safely back in London in a very few hours, with as strange a story to tell as any man had related.
CHAPTER VIAN EXPERT OPINION
Onthe night following the regrettable disaster to theSeahorseI was back again in the cheap and rather comfortable rooms I had occupied for a couple of years or so in Keppel Street, Chelsea. It is a thoroughfare in which nearly every house exhibits the enticing legend, “Apartments to Let,” mostly in permanent, neatly-framed signs of black and gold.
Mrs. Richardson, my landlady, was “full” and had been for a year past, so No. 83, where I had diggings, was a quiet, eminently respectable house, a fitting, residence for a man of my serious calling. When, however, I returned with the Mysterious Man in a well-worn seaman’s suit, unkempt head, and his sword in hand instead of a cane, Mrs. Richardson looked askance at me.
I explained that my friend had come to live with me for a few weeks, and that I should want an extra room; when she, good soul, looked him up and down, noticed the big cracks in his sea-boots and the slit in the sleeve of his pea-jacket, and rather reluctantly replied that she would turn one of the servants out and prepare the room for my friend.
Presently, however, I took her aside and explained the curious facts, whereupon she said: —
“Lor’, doctor! Only fancy! The old gentleman may be two hundred years old!”
“Ah!” I remarked, “his age is only one of the minor mysteries connected with the affair. It is in order to solve them that I’ve decided that he shall remain under my care and treatment. He’s just a little wrong in his head, you know. Nothing at all serious.”
“He didn’t answer me when I spoke to him.”
“No, for a very good reason. He’s dumb.”
“Two hundred years old, insane, and dumb! Lawk a mercy! He is a strange old gentleman.”
“Well, Mrs. Richardson,” I said, “you’ve been very kind to me for the past two years, and I hope that you will do me the favour of looking after my friend.”
“Of course I will, doctor. But what’s his name?”
“He has no name. We call him the Mysterious Man.”
“Old Mister Mystery the girls will call him, I expect. But it don’t matter what they nickname him if he’s wrong in his head.”
I laughed and, leaving her, returned to my sitting-room, where the old castaway was engaged in examining all the objects in the room. He had opened the back of my small American timepiece and was watching the movement as though he had never hitherto seen any such mechanical contrivance.
The day had been a busy one for me. I had arranged with Seal that the old fellow should remain with me while the mystery of theSeahorsewas solved, and as regards the gold we had placed the whole of it in a big sea chest, sealed it, and that afternoon had deposited it in the care of the manager of the Tottenham Court Road branch of the London and South-Western Bank, where I had a small account.
The documents, manuscripts, armour, and silver tankard which I had secured from the ancient vessel I had carried to Keppel Street. The skipper was, of course, busy on the first day of landing, but his chagrin was intense that he had lost theSeahorse. That we had really discovered it could, of course, be proved by those vessels that had spoken us in the Channel, but proof of that sort was not like towing the remarkable relic up the Thames.
His owners, it appeared, were extremely angry at his being nearly a fortnight overdue, and that he had wasted time and fuel upon what they declared was a worthless derelict. According to what he afterwards told me, he had a bad half-hour with the senior partner of his firm, and very nearly got his notice of dismissal. He pointed out to the smug, go-to-meeting old gentleman, who was a churchwarden down at Chislehurst, that the boilers of theThrushwere in such a state that he dare not steam at any pressure, whereupon the senior partner replied: —
“That matters nothing whatever to us, Seal. The boat’s insured, and we should lose nothing.”
“No; but myself and the crew may lose our lives,” observed the skipper.
“If your berth does not suit you, Seal, there are many other men quite ready to sail in your place,” was the calm rejoinder.
And after that Seal left the office as quickly as he could, in order to give vent outside to his private opinion of the firm and their line of ships. This he did very forcibly, in language that only a Mediterranean skipper is in the habit of using.
Now that I was back again, enjoying the comfort of my own shabby little sitting-room after the small, stuffy cabin of theThrush, one rather curious incident caused me to reflect.
It occurred on the morning after the loss of theSeahorse. The squall had gone down. We had passed the Nore and were steaming full ahead into the mouth of the Thames. I had been seated on the bridge with Seal and Thorpe for a couple of hours or so when I had occasion to descend to my cabin.
On entering I found an intruder in the person of Harding, the seaman who had been told off as the keeper of the Mysterious Man. He did not notice my approach, for I had on a pair of tennis shoes with rubber soles, therefore I stood in the doorway for a few moments watching him.
He had spread open that document with the seven signatures that had so puzzled me, and with paper and pencil seemed to be scribbling some notes as to its purport. Strange, I thought, that a common seaman could decipher those ill-written lines of Latin where I had so entirely failed. So I watched and saw how, with his head bent to the open port-hole in order to obtain a good light, he was carefully deciphering the words contained there, and I detected by the expression on his countenance that what he found entirely satisfied him. Upon the small piece of paper in his palm he scribbled something now and then, and was just slipping it into his pocket, when I asked in a hard voice: —
“Well, what are you doing here?”
He turned with a start, his face flushed in confusion, and stammered: —
“Nothing, doctor. I—I was only looking at this old parchment you got out of Noah’s Ark.”
“You’ve been reading it,” I said. “I’ve watched you making some extracts from it. Give me that paper.”
He made a movement to place it in his pocket, but at the same moment I snatched the old document from his other hand and arrested his effort to conceal the scrap of paper.
“You have no right here,” I said angrily, “and I demand that paper whereon you have made notes of an affair that does not concern you.”
“I shall not give it you,” he responded defiantly.
“Then I shall call the captain.”
“You can do so if you wish. I shall be paid off to-day, so it doesn’t matter.”
“Give it to me,” I cried, incensed at the fellow’s insolence, and made a swift movement to seize his wrist. He was, however, too quick for me, for, grasping my arm with his left hand, he screwed up the paper with his right and dropped it through the porthole into the sea.
I saw it flutter for a moment in the air and drop into the surging water ten yards away.
“Leave this place at once,” I commanded. “You have no right here, and have evidently entered for some dishonest purpose. I shall inform Captain Seal at once.”
“All right,” he answered, shrugging his shoulders as he went through the doorway, “you needn’t get your wool off, doctor. I was doing no harm, surely, having a look at that old scribble.”
But the truth was patent. That man, an ordinary seaman, had read and understood what was written there. That look of supreme satisfaction on his face was sufficient to tell me that he had gained knowledge of some secret hidden from me.
Benjamin Harding was a seaman of exemplary conduct, it was true. He drank little, seldom swore, and was much more careful of his personal appearance than the rest of the grimy crew. His speech betokened a somewhat better education than the others, and I had more than once detected beneath his rough exterior traces of refinement. More than once, too, I had overheard him repress a too expressive imprecation from the mouth of one or other of his shipmates. Tall, lean, and muscular, his age I judged to be about forty, his beard and hair sandy, and his eyes a washed-out grey. His cheeks showed marks of smallpox, and under his left eye was a long white scar. I returned to the bridge and told Seal of the incident, but the pilot not yet being aboard he was too much occupied with the navigation of the ship to be able to reprimand the man there and then.
So I went again to my cabin and counted over my treasures, finding to my satisfaction that none were missing.
I saw but little more of the man Harding. The skipper later on told me that he had given the fellow a good talking too, and that he had expressed his regret at his insolence. He had, however, only shipped for the voyage, and would be paid off that day, therefore it was useless to do more than remonstrate.
Nevertheless, the incident disturbed me. I had a strange, indescribable intuition that the man Harding had obtained possession of some secret hidden from me; that the apparently ignorant seaman was acquainted with the Latin script and with those puzzling abbreviations which had so utterly floored me. Before my eyes he had deciphered line after line, reading it off almost as easily as the copies ofLloyd’sand theDispatch, that found so much favour in the forecastle. Yet why had he taken such precaution to destroy the memoranda he had written if the facts did not relate to some secret from which he expected to receive benefit?
Thus, while the Mysterious Man slept soundly in the room prepared for him, I sat for a long time over my pipe trying to decipher the uneven scribble and pondering over what might be written on that time-stained parchment.
Next day Seal came to see me, dressed in his shore-going toggery—a neat navy blue suit and a peaked cap a size too small for his ponderous head. The Mysterious Man so far demonstrated that his senses were returning that he expressed pleasure at meeting the skipper by holding out his hand to him, a fact which gave both of us satisfaction.
“I’m busy unloading now, you know, doctor,” the captain said, in his deep, cheery voice, “so I must leave it all to you. Act just as you think fit. For my own part I think we ought to get them parchments deciphered. They might tell us something interesting.”
“And the gold?”
“For the present we’ll stick to that,” was his prompt reply. “If anybody claims it we’ll investigate their claim, as the insurance people say, but as far as I can see the only person entitled to it is that lunatic over there,” and he jerked his thumb in the direction of the Mysterious Man.
He drank deeply of my whisky, and pronounced it good. We chatted for an hour or more, and when I asked about Harding he merely answered: —
“Oh, the fellow was paid off last night. I’m quite your way of thinking—there was some mystery about that chap. I’ve made inquiries and find that he hadn’t been many voyages before, because he betrayed ignorance of many common terms at sea, and gave himself away in lots of details.”
“He was an educated man,” I remarked.
“Yes, I believe he was. He’s left one or two books about the forecastle which are not the sort that sailors read.”
“What class of books?” I inquired.
“Oh, one was a Latin dictionary, another an odd volume ofChambers’ Encyclopædia, and a third book calledOld English Chronicles, whatever they are.”
The latter was certainly not a work in which a sailor would be interested. I had known it at college, the mediaeval chronicles of Geoffrey of Monmouth and other monks, a volume of the driest and most uninteresting kind, save to an antiquarian student. Yes, I felt more convinced than ever that Benjamin Harding was not what he had pretended to be.
The Mysterious Man had taken to smoking. I had purchased for him a shilling briar at a tobacconist’s in King’s Road, and while we talked he sat puffing at it and looking aimlessly down on the street. The pity of it all was that the poor old fellow was dumb. Even though a lunatic he might, if he could have spoken, have given us some clue to his past. But up to the present we were just as ignorant as to who or what he was as in that first moment when we had discovered him in the dark cabin of that death-ship.
To his old rusty sword he clung, as though it were a mascot. Even now he wore it suspended from his waist by a piece of cord that had come from off my trunk, and at night it reposed with him in his room. Once it had no doubt been the sharp, ready weapon of some swaggering elegant, but it was now blunt, rusted, and scabbardless, only its maker’s name and the remarkable temper of its blade showed what it once had been.
A week later I set about to discover some one who could decipher the parchments and the book containing the hidden secret of Bartholomew da Schorno, for therein I anticipated I should discover some clue to the mystery of theSeahorse. In the Manuscript Department of the British Museum I obtained the address of a certain Charles Staffurth, who, I was told, was an expert upon the court and commercial hands of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
So to his address in the Clapham Park Road, I carried my precious book and documents, and sought an interview. A prim old gentleman in steel-rimmed spectacles received me in a back room fitted as a study, and after the first half dozen words I recognized that he was a scholar.
I told the story of my discovery, to which he listened with breathless interest, and when I undid the brown paper parcel and revealed the parchments his eyes fairly danced with expectation and delight. He was an enthusiast.
He bent over them, handling them with a reverence and fondness which showed him to be a true palaeographist. He ran quickly through the pages of the vellum book and remarked: —
“Ah! they are not numbered, I see. Sixteenth century hand of Central Italy!”
He recognized it at once, without looking for dates.
“Really doctor—Doctor Pickering,” he exclaimed, glancing at my card, “this is a most remarkable story. I’m sure it will give me the greatest pleasure to look through these papers, and I will do so if you will leave them with me for a day or two. The book, you see, is voluminous, and will require a good deal of deciphering. They have many such at the Museum, so I have experience of the difficulties in reading them. Let’s see, to-day is Tuesday. Will you call on Thursday afternoon? By that time I hope to have read the greater portion of what is contained here. If, however, I discover anything of very great importance I will telegraph to you.”
And so it was arranged. I remained chatting with him for nearly half an hour, and then returned to my strangely silent companion, the Mysterious Man.
The old expert had evidently been much impressed by my story, and had commenced to decipher the documents as soon as I took leave of him, for at eleven o’clock next morning I received a telegram from him, worded as follows: —
“Please call here at once. Most important discovery.—Staffurth.”