CHAPTER I
DYMCHURCH-UNDER-THE-WALL
To those who have small knowledge of Kent, be it known that the fishing village of Dymchurch-under-the-Wall lies on the south coast midway between two of the ancient Cinque Ports, Romney and Hythe. In the days of George III with Trafalgar still unfought, our coast watchmen swept with keen glasses this broad bend of the Channel; watched, not for smugglers (for there was little in Dymchurch to attract the smuggler, with its flat coast-line open all the way from Dover cliffs around Dungeness to Beachy Head), but for the French men-o'-war.
Dymchurch was a happy little village in those days--ay, and prosperous too, for the Squire, Sir Antony Cobtree, though in his younger days a reckless adventurer, a gambler, and a duellist, had of late years resolved himself into a pattern Kentish squire, generous to all, and vastly popular. Equally popular was Dr. Syn, the Vicar--a pious and broad-minded man, with as great a taste for good Virginian tobacco and a glass of something hot as for the penning of long sermons which sent everyone to sleep on Sundays. Still, it was his duty to deliver these sermons, for, as I have said, he was a pious man, and although his congregation for the most part went to sleep, they were at great pains not to snore, because to offend the Doctor would have been a lasting shame.
The little church was old and homely, within easy cry of the sea; and it was pleasant on Sunday evenings, during the Doctor's lengthy prayers, to hear the swish and the lapping and endless grinding of the waves upon the sand.
The heavy drag of the long sermon and never-ending prayers was lifted when the hymns began. There was something about the Dymchurch hymns that made them worth singing. True, there was no organ to lead them; but that didn't matter, for Mr. Rash, the schoolmaster--a sallow, lantern-jawed young man, with a leaning towards music--would play over the tune on a fiddle. Then, led by the Doctor's sonorous voice, and seconded by the soul-splitting notes of Mipps the sexton, the choir, recruited entirely from seamen, whose voices had been cracked these many years at the tiller, would roll out some sturdy old tune, shaking the very church with its fury, and sounding more like a rum-backed capstan song than a God-fearing hymn. They felt it was worth while kneeling through those long, long prayers to have a chance at the hymns. The Doctor never chose solemn ones, or, if he did, it made no odds, for just the same were they bellowed like a chanty, and it was with a long-drawn note of regret that the choir drawled out the final amen.
Very often, when a hymn had gone with more spirit than usual, the Doctor would thump on the desk of the three-decker and address the choir with a hearty "Now, boys, that last verse once again." Then he would turn to the congregation and would add, "Brethren, for the glory of God, and for our own salvation, we will sing the--er--the last two verses once again." Whereat Mr. Rash would scrape anew upon the fiddle, Doctor Syn would pound out the rhythm with a fist banging on the pulpit side, and after him would thunder the sea salts from the choir with an enthusiasm that bade fair to frighten the devil himself.
When they had hardly a note left in their bodies, the service would be rounded off by the Doctor, and the congregation would gather in little groups outside the church to bid him good-night. Doctor Syn would take some minutes changing his black gown for his cloth surcoat; besides, there was the collection to be counted and entered into the book, and a few words of parochial business with the sexton. But at last it was all finished, and he would come forth to receive the homage of the parish. He would be accompanied by Sir Antony, who was warden and a regular church-goer, as the well-thumbed pages of a large Prayer Book in the family pew could prove. Bestowing a cheery word here and a kindly nod there, the gentlemen would pass on to the Court House, where, after a hearty supper, Doctor Syn would, metaphorically, lay aside his robes of righteousness, and over a long pipe of his favourite tobacco and a smoking bowl of bishop, with many an anecdote of land and sea, make the jolly Squire laugh till his sides ached.
While the Vicar entertained his patron at the Court House, Mr. Mipps in a like manner held court behind the closed doors of the old Ship Inn. Here, with his broken clay pipe asmoke like a burning chimney, and with eminent peril of singeing the tip of his nose, he would recount many a tale of horror and adventure, thoroughly encouraged by Mrs. Waggetts, the landlady, who had perceived the sexton's presence to be good for trade. Thus it was that, by working his imagination to good effect, Doctor Syn's parochial factotum was plied with many a free drink at the expense of the "Ship." The little sexton was further encouraged in yarning because it gratified his vanity to see that they all believed in him. It was exhilarating to know that he really made their flesh creep. He felt a power and chuckled in his heart when he saw his audience swallowing his exaggerations for gospel as easily as he himself could swallow rum--for Mipps liked rum, having served for a great part of his life as a ship's carpenter. As a seasoned traveller they respected him, for what he hadn't seen of horrors in the far-off lands--well, the whole village would have readily staked their wigs--was not worth seeing.
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CHAPTER II
THE COMING OF THE KING'S FRIGATE
Now Doctor Syn was fond of the sea, and he was never far away from it. Even in winter-time he would walk upon the sea-wall with a formidable telescope under his arm, his hands thrust deep into the pockets of a long sea-coat, and his old black, three-cornered parson's hat cocked well forward and pulled down over his eyes. And although the simple old fellow would be mentally working out his dry-as-dust sermons, he would be striding along at a most furious speed, presenting to those who did not know him an altogether alarming appearance, for in tune to his brisk step he would be humming the first verse of a sea chanty that he had picked up from some ruffianly sea-dog of a parishioner. As he strode along, with his weather eye ever on the look-out for big ships coming up the Channel, the rough words would roll from his gentle lips with the most perfect incongruity.
"Oh, here's to the feet that have walked the plank--
Yo-ho! for the dead man's throttle;
And here's to the corpses afloat in the tank,
And the dead man's teeth in the bottle."
He was as proud of this song as if he had written it himself, and it was a continual source of amusement to the fishermen to hear him sing it. He frequently did this of an evening in the parlour of the old Ship Inn, when he went there for a chat and a friendly pipe; for Doctor Syn was, as I have said, broad-minded, and held views that would certainly have been beyond the diocesan dignitaries. The very sight of a parson drinking with the men in a public inn had a good effect, he declared, upon the parish, for a good parson, like a good sailor, should know when he has had enough. The Squire would back him up, and there they would both sit every evening, laughing and talking with the fishermen. But on Sunday nights they dined at the Court House, leaving the field open for the redoubtable Mipps, who, as I have hinted, took full advantage of it.
Now, the ungainly little sexton had a great admirer in the person of Mrs. Waggetts, the landlady of the "Ship." Her husband had been dead for a number of years, and she was ever on the look-out for another. She saw in the person of Mipps her true lord and master. He was enterprising, he had also money of his own, for he was parish undertaker as well as sexton, and ran, from his small coffin shop in the village, every trade imaginable. You could buy anything, from a bottle of pickles to a marline-spike, in that dirty little store, and get a horrible anecdote thrown in with your bargain from the ready lips of the old rascal.
But the passion that smouldered in the breast of the "Ship" landlady was in no way shared by the little sexton.
"Mrs. Waggetts," he would say, "folk in the death trade should keep single. They gets their fair share of misery, Lord above knows, in these parts with the deaths so uncommon few."
"Well," Mrs.Waggetts would sigh, "I often wish as how it had been me that had been took instead of Waggetts. I fair envy him lying up there all so peaceful like, just a-rotting slowly along of his coffin."
But the sexton would immediately fly into a rage with a "Waggetts' coffin rottin', did you say, Mrs. Waggetts? Not mine. I undertook Waggetts, I'd have you to remember, and I don't undertake to rot. I loses money on my coffins, Mrs. Waggetts. I undertakes, ma'am--undertakes to provide a suitable affair wot'll keep out damp and water, and cheat worm, grub, slug, and slush."
"Nobody could deny, Mr. Mipps," the landlady would answer in a conciliatory tone, "as how you're a good undertaker. Anyone with half an eye could see as how you knocks 'em up solid."
But Mipps didn't encourage Mrs. Waggetts when she was pleased to flatter, so he would take himself off in high dudgeon to avoid her further attentions.
This very conversation took place one November afternoon, and the sexton, after slamming the inn door to give vent to his irritation, hurried along the sea-wall towards his shop, comforting himself that he could sit snug inside a coffin and cheer himself up with hammering it.
On the way he met Dr. Syn, who was standing silhouetted against the skyline, with his telescope focussed upon some large vessel that was standing in off Dungeness.
"Ah, Mr. Mipps," said the cleric, handing his telescope to the sexton; "tell me what you make of that."
Mipps adjusted the lens and looked. "The devil!" he ejaculated.
"I beg your pardon," said the Doctor; "what did you say?"
One of the King's Preventive men had come out of his cottage and was approaching them.
"I don't make head nor tail of it," replied the sexton. "Perhaps you do, sir."
"Well, it looks to me," continued the parson--"it--looks to--me--uncommonly like a King's frigate. Can't you make out her guns on the port side?"
"Yes," cried the sexton. "I'll be hanged if you're not right, sir; it's a damned King's ship as ever was."
"Mr. Mipps," corrected the parson, "again I must ask you to repeat your remark."
"I said, sir," replied the sexton, meekly handing back the glass, "that you're quite right. It's a King's ship, a nice King's ship!"
"And she's standing in, too," went on the parson. "I can make her out plainly now, and, good gracious, she's lowering a long-boat!"
"Oh!" said Mr. Mipps; "I wonder wot that's for?"
"A revenue search," volunteered the Preventer.
Mipps started; he hadn't seen the Preventer.
"Hello!" he said, turning round; "didn't know you was there, Sir Francis Drake. What do you make of that there ship?"
"A King's frigate," replied the Preventive man. "She's sending a boat's crew ashore."
"What for?" asked the sexton.
"I told you--a revenue search; to look for smugglers."
"Smugglers!" laughed the parson; "here in Dymchurch?"
"Ay, sir, so they say. Smugglers here in Dymchurch."
"God bless my soul!" exclaimed the parson incredulously.
"How silly," said the sexton.
"That remains to be seen, mister," retorted the Preventer.
"What do you say?" said the sexton.
"I say, mister, it remains to be seen."
" 'Course it does," went on the sexton. "Let's have another blink at her. Well," he said at length, closing the telescope with a snap and returning it, "King's ship or no, they looks to me more like a set of mahogany pirates, and I'm a-goin' to lock up the church. King's men's one thing, but havin' the plate took's another, and one thing that I don't fancy, being held responsible. So good-afternoon, sir!"--touching his hat to the Vicar--"and good-afternoon to you, Christopher Columbus!" and with this little pleasantry, which struck him as being the height of humour, the grotesque little man hopped off at high speed in the direction of the inn.
"Odd little man that, sir," said the Preventer.
"Very odd little man," said the Vicar.
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