MYNHEER TULP.
I brought the brig to an anchor in the Small Downs off Sandown Castle
toward the close of the month of August, 1815. The weather in the
Channel had been thick; I had shipped a couple of fishermen off Plymouth
to assist in the navigation of the brig, and from abreast of that port I
had groped the whole distance to the Downs with the hand-lead.
It was thick weather when I arrived off Deal; the breeze was a
“soldier’s wind” for the Channel; I counted five vessels only, and no
man-of-war was in sight when I brought up. The Dutch flag flew at our
trysail gaff-end, and our decks were bare of artillery from stem to
stern; for on entering the Channel I had caused all the guns to be
struck into the hold that the little ship, should we be boarded, might
present the appearance of a peaceful trader.
On letting go the anchor I sent two letters ashore by a Deal boat; one
was for my uncle Captain Round, who I had learnt from the boatmen was
well and hearty; the other was in the handwriting of the Señorita
Aurora, and addressed to Mr. Gerald Maxwell at Madrid. It was soon after
nine in the morning when we brought up; and while the church clocks of
Deal were striking eleven my uncle came alongside. He was alone; I had
asked him in a mysteriously phrased passage of my letter to come alone;
the fellow that rowed him alongside was the decayed waterman who had
opened the door to me that night when I visited my uncle after leaving
the _Royal Brunswicker_.
My uncle held me by both hands for at least five minutes. The whole
expression of his face was a very gape of astonishment. He looked me all
over, he looked the brig all over; he panted for words; when he was
able to articulate he said, “Bill, I thought you was drowned?”
“You got my letter?”
“Yes, and came off at once.”
“I sent you a letter written at sea weeks and weeks ago.”
“This is the only letter I have received from you,” said he; and,
trembling with agitation and excitement, he pulled out the letter that I
had sent ashore that morning.
The sailors were watching us, and my uncle, now that he had his voice,
shouted; so, taking the dear old fellow by the arm, I carried him into
the cabin, where sat the lady Aurora occupied in furbishing up her hat
to fit her for going ashore. My uncle started and stared at her. He
looked plump and and well kept, with his bottle-green coat, broad
brimmed, low crowned hat, and boots like a postillion’s of that time.
His face was jolly and rosy, despite the blueness of his lips; he
seemed, indeed, more weather-stained and sea-going than I, as though it
was the uncle and not the nephew who was just returned from three years
of the ocean. He stared at the lady Aurora, and whipped his hat off and
bent his back in a bow quick with nerve. The lady rose and courtesyed.
“Your wife, Bill?” said he.
“No, a shipwrecked lady. We took her off a rock in the South Pacific.”
“Off a rock! Lord love you all! What’s next to come?”
“Often have I heard Señor Fielding speak of you, Captain Round,” said
Miss Aurora.
“Yes, I will believe that of Bill, ma’am.”
“I am shipwrecked, indeed,” she exclaimed with a fine arch smile and
flashing look that carried me deep into the heart of the Atlantic and
Southern Oceans ere Gerald Maxwell was, or when, if he had been aboard,
he’d have seen us sitting very close side by side over a lesson in
English; “judge by my gown.” She swept it at the knees. “I am not fit to
be seen.”
“But ye are then, believe me,” said my uncle; and he sidled up to me
and, rubbing my arm with his elbow, muttered, “handsomest woman I ever
saw in my life, Bill; if she aint the Queen of Spain.”
“Señorita,” said I, addressing her in Spanish, “my uncle and I will talk
at this table; let us not disturb you. You and I have no secrets--now.”
She smiled and looked grave all in a moment, slightly bowed and resumed
her seat and her work. And, indeed, I minded not her presence. Much
that I should presently say, much that would presently be spoken by my
uncle, must be as unintelligible to her as Welsh or Erse.
We seated ourselves, and I took my uncle by the hand and blessed God for
the privilege of beholding him again. I inquired after my aunt; she was
well; after my cousin; hale and hearty; married three months since,
lived in a small house at Folkstone, whence her young husband traded in
a ship of which he was part owner. I asked after Captain Spalding. The
_Royal Brunswicker_ had passed through the Downs in the previous
December; my uncle had heard nothing of her since; he had written to
Spalding that I was drowned after having been pressed, and while being
conveyed aboard a frigate off Deal. He had claimed my wages and clothes
as next of kin, and Spalding had sent him what was due to me and what
remained of my togs. I asked how many men of the frigate’s boat had
perished; he replied only one man was picked up, one of the pressed men,
an Irishman.
“That was the fellow,” said I, “whose behavior led to the disaster.”
I had many more questions to ask, the tediousness of which I will not
bestow upon you. I then entered upon the story of my own adventures from
the hour of my leaving his house on that black night of storm and
thunder. He stopped me after I had related my gibbet experience to tell
me that a tall woman, dressed as a widow, was found about forty yards
distant from the gibbet, dead, with her arms round the ironed body of
the felon. Miss Aurora looked up at this; she had heard me tell that
story of the gibbet and the lightning stroke and the mother. She looked
up, I say, muttered, and crossed herself, then went on with her work. I
paused to think a little upon the dead mother, then proceeded steadily
with my story; when I came to Greaves’ narrative of the discovery of the
dollar-ship my uncle’s eyes grew small in his head with the intentness
of his gaze.
He seldom winked; he breathed small and faint until I described the
discovery of the dollars and their transhipment, on which he fetched a
deep breath and hit the table a sounding blow with his fist. Manifold
were the changes of his countenance as I progressed; he lived in every
scene I drew; cursed Yan Bol and his crew in the language of Beach
Street; started out of his chair to grasp the lady Aurora by the hand on
my relating her share in the recovery of the brig. And then he became a
strict man of business, his jolly face hardening to the rise and
pressure of his old smuggling instincts when I spoke of the chests of
dollars in the lazarette and asked him to advise me how, when, and where
to secretly convey them ashore.
“Let’s have a look at ’em, Bill,” said he. The excitement was gone out
of him; he was as cool as ever he had been in the most artful and
desperate of his midnight jobs. I took him into the lazarette and
between us we handled a chest of about three thousand dollars to test
its weight. He then said--as quietly as though his talk was of empty
casks and “dead marines”--“The money must be got ashore to-night. It
mustn’t remain aboard after to-night.”
“How shall I go to work?”
“Leave that to me.”
“Who’ll receive the cases, uncle?”
“I will, Bill.”
“Sketch me your idea that I may see my way.”
“I’ll go ashore now,” said he, “and make all necessary arrangements.
Keep aboard yourself and don’t let any of your people leave the brig.
Tell them we’ll pay ’em off at my house to-morrow. Destroy all your
papers--see to that, Bill. The moon’s old and nigh wore out--it’ll be a
dark night, raining and squally, I hope. You’ll have a lugger alongside
of you when it comes dark. She’ll hail you. Her name’ll be the _Seamen’s
Friend_, the name of the man that hails you, Jarvie Files. Trust him up
to the hilt, Bill, and leave him to discharge ye. He knows the ropes.
Afore midnight them chests, to the bottom dollar, ’ll be in my cellars.”
“When do I come ashore?”
“To-morrow. Quite coolly, Bill. Come along with your men and bring ’em
to my house, where the money in English gold for paying ’em off ’ll be
ready.”
“And what’s to become of this brig?”
“How many anchors do ye hold by?”
“One, uncle.”
“Moor her, Bill. You’ve got a snug berth. She’ll want a caretaker till
that there Mynheer Tulp arrives and settles up. She’s his property. And
the sooner Tulp arrives the better for all parties.”
He was about to make his way out of the lazarette.
“There is the Spanish lady,” said I. “Will you take her ashore and find
her a home in your house until she’s fetched? I’d sooner see her with
you than at an inn. She has a tongue. Gratitude will keep her quiet, I
hope, but she _might_ talk.”
“If you’re afraid of her, aren’t ye afraid of the men?”
“No. The men haven’t any settled notions on the subject of the silver
cargo. They want to get home, and up at Whitby they may talk if they
please. The lad Jimmy will hold his jaw. I’ve promised to take him into
my service. He’s a good lad.”
Without further speech my uncle got out of the lazarette, and after
waiting to see me put the hatch on and secure it, he stepped up to the
lady Aurora, and in his homely manner, that nevertheless borrowed a sort
of grace from the warmth of his heart, he begged her to make use of his
house until she heard from her friends. She thanked him, gazed at me
with a short-lived look of confusion, and said:
“Until I hear from Mr. Maxwell, until I receive communications from
Madrid, I am very poor. I wish not to part with these rings,” said she,
looking down upon her hands; “I wish not to remove them; and my
earrings,” continued she, with a shake of her head, “would not bring me
nearly money enough to buy me what I want.”
“Leave that to me, ma’am,” said my uncle; “name your figure when we get
ashore. There’s no luggage, I suppose?”
“Nothing that I care to take,” she answered. “Captain Round, I will ask
you to land me in some secret place, as if I was contraband, and show me
how to reach your house by the back ways. I do not love to be stared at,
and many mocking eyes will rest upon me if I appear in this costume in
your public streets.”
“You shan’t meet a soul,” answered my uncle, “if it isn’t a boatman too
bleared with ale to observe more than that you’re a woman.”
She put on her hat and jacket, then stood a moment looking a slow
farewell round her; her eyes met mine, and she turned a shade pale, as
though to an emotion to which she could not or would not give
expression.
“I’ll not say good-by, Señor Fielding,” said she, giving me her hand.
“No; we shall meet again to-morrow, I hope.”
The three of us went on deck. My uncle called his boat alongside; Miss
Aurora and he entered her, and they shoved off. I leaned upon the rail,
watching them as they rowed ashore. The boat made for the beach, a
little to the northward of Sandown Castle. There was no play or surf to
render the landing inconvenient. My uncle helped the girl out of the
boat, and they walked off across the sand hills--those same sand hills
which had provided me with my horrible experience of the gibbet.
But the gibbet was gone; the summer sun was shining upon the grassy
billows of sand. Afar, on the confines of that hilly waste, were many
trees, with a single church steeple among them--the shore sign of the
old town of Sandwich. Over the bows ran the white, low terraces of the
Ramsgate cliffs, soaring as they rounded out of the bay, and gathering a
milkier softness as they rose. Abreast was the yellow line of the
Goodwins, and yonder on the quarter stretched Deal Beach, rich with the
various colors of many boats hauled high and dry. A row of
seaward-facing houses flanked that beach; I could see the corner of the
alley where I was gripped by the press-gang, and memories of after-days
swarmed into my head.
But there was work to be done; I broke away from my idle musings, and
ordered the men to moor ship in obedience to my uncle’s instructions.
Cable was veered out, and a second anchor let go. I had found a bag of
thirty-two guineas and some silver in Greaves’ cabin after my poor
friend’s death. I used this money to settle with the two fishermen, and
sent them ashore. I then hailed a galley, and dispatched her to Deal for
such a supply of fresh meat and vegetables and ale as would give all
hands of us a good dinner and supper, and when the punt was gone I
called the crew aft, told them that I’d take them ashore next day, and
pay them off in English money at my uncle’s house near Sandwich; I also
thanked them for their good behavior during the long passage from the
Southern Ocean, and shook each man by the hand as a friend who had
served me very honestly at a time when my necessities were great.
The wind shifted during the day, and a number of ships brought up in the
Downs. A few small craft dropped anchor near the brig.
I heeded them not, nor the bigger vessels beyond. I feared only the
arrival of a man-of-war, and the being boarded by her for men. In the
afternoon a fine ship-sloop passed through the Gulls heading west; I
watched her with the steadfast eye of a cat, dreading to behold her tall
breasts of topsails suddenly shiver to the wind, her loftier canvas
vanish, and her anchor fall. She foamed onward, heeling a bright line
of copper off the Foreland, and vanished round that giant elbow of chalk
with her yards bracing up, and her bowlines tricing out for a “ratch”
down Channel.
When the evening came along, the dusk was deep but clear. There was no
wet; the breeze was about south--a steady, warm wind--a six-knot breeze.
The scene of Downs was very dark; you would think it black by contrast
with the picture it makes by night in these times. Ships then showed no
riding lights. Here and there a lantern gleamed from the end of a
spritsail yard, from the extremity of a mizzen-boom. The Goodwin Sands
were lampless, save in the far north, where burnt the spark first
kindled by that worthy Quaker of North Shields, Henry Taylor. The lights
of the little town of Ramsgate glowed soft and faint upon the face of
the dark heap of cliff afar; the lights along Deal Beach twinkled
windily. It was a very proper night for our adventure--dark, and but
little sea, and wind enough.
Shortly after six bells--eleven by the clock--I spied a shadow to
windward, drawing out of the south. The dusky phantom came along slowly,
as though she took a wary look at the several little craft she passed.
She shaped herself out upon the darkness presently--a large Deal lugger.
When she was under our stern she hailed. I, who had been impatiently
awaiting the arrival of this vessel, sprang on to the taffrail and sang
out:
“What lugger’s that?”
“The _Seamen’s Friend_,” was the reply.
“Who is the man that answers?” I called.
“Jarvie Files.”
“Right y’are!” I cried.
The lugger’s helm was put down, and she came alongside. One of my Whitby
men was on the forecastle, keeping what we term at sea an “anchor
watch.” I told him to remain forward.
“There are men enough,” said I, “belonging to the lugger to answer my
turn.”
The others and the Kanaka were in the forecastle asleep. Jimmy was awake
in the cabin, where the lamp was alight. Several figures came over the
side, and one of them, catching sight of me, said:
“Are you Mr. Fielding?”
“I am.”
“I’m from Capt’n Round, sir. The coast’ll be clear, I allow; but we’ll
have to look sharp. Where’s the stuff?”
“Follow me,” said I.
This Jarvie Files, and, perhaps, five others--men heavily booted, with
great shawls round their necks and fur caps drawn down to their
eyebrows--tramped after me into the cabin. Lanterns were ready. I showed
them the hatch of the lazarette; and, in about half an hour’s time, they
had cleared out the last case, had stowed it in the lugger alongside,
and were hoisting their sail. Their dispatch was wonderful; but they
were of a race of men who had been disciplined into an exquisite agility
in the art of dishing the revenue by the barbarous severity of the laws
against smuggling in that age. I watched the big boat haul her sheet aft
and stand away with her head to the eastward. She blended quickly with
the obscurity and I lost her. I guessed she was feigning a “ratch”
toward the Ostend coast, to dodge any shore-going eye that may have
rested upon her, and that presently she would be shifting her helm for
Pegwell Bay, where carts waited to convey the silver to my uncle’s
house.
I went into the cabin when I lost sight of her, lay down, and slept very
soundly and dreamt happily. I was too tired to rejoice; otherwise I
should have mixed a tumbler of spirits and lighted a pipe, and enjoyed
the luxury of a long contemplation of the successful issue of Tulp’s
expedition.
I awoke in the gray of the dawn, and, going on deck, found promise of a
fine day. I searched the shore and beach, down in the bay and about the
river, with the brig’s telescope, but nothing showed that was to be
likened to the lugger of last night. After breakfast, the Whitby men
came aft and said they’d be glad to go ashore soon. They wanted to get
to Ramsgate, where they might find a coalman bound to their port. I
answered that I could not leave the brig until a caretaker arrived, and
that there was no use in their going ashore unless I went with them to
pay them off at my uncle’s. However, half an hour after this a punt,
with a big lug, put off from Deal Beach, and blew alongside with five
men in her, two of whom came on board and said that they had received
instructions from Captain Round to take charge of the vessel while she
lay at anchor.
“All right,” said I, “you are the men I have been waiting for,” and I
told the Whitby fellows and the Kanaka to collect their traps and get
into the boat. I then took Jimmy into my cabin and gave him several
parcels of Greaves’ effects to convey to the punt. All that belonged to
Greaves I took; I cleared the cabin of nautical instruments, books,
chronometers, and the rest, and left nothing but dirt and dust for old
Tulp. I then got into the boat with Jimmy, and we headed for the beach.
When Miss Aurora went ashore her gaze had been bent landward; she never
once turned to take a farewell look at the old brig that had saved her
life. I could not blame her. She had had enough of the little ship. For
my part, I could look at nothing else as we rowed to the beach. I had
not been out of the brig since I had landed on the island to get the
dollars out of the cave. For many long months had the _Black Watch_ been
my home, the theater of the most dramatic of all the passages of my
life; she had earned me a fortune; she had rescued me from drowning; I
could not take a farewell look without affection and regret. She sat
very light, and in her faint rolls hove out a little show of grass; but
her copper was cleaner than I had supposed it. Her sides were worn and
rusty, her rigging slack, her masts grimy, her whole appearance that of
a vessel which had encountered and victoriously survived some very
fierce and frightful usage in distant seas. I kept my gaze fastened on
her till the keel of the punt drove on to the beach.
The sailors and the Kanaka handed their chests over to the landlord of
an ale-house for safe keeping; I then gave each man, and drank myself, a
pint of beer, after which we trudged off toward my uncle’s house. We
talked merrily as we went; our hearts were filled with the delights of
the scenes and sights of the summer land; our salted nostrils swelled
large to the sweetness of the haystacks and the aromas of the little
farmyards and orchards we tramped past; no man would smoke, that he
might breathe purely.
My uncle awaited us; my aunt gave me such a hug as the Prodigal Son
would have got from his mother had his father been out of sight. I asked
after Madam Aurora; she had driven to Deal that morning to shop, and, as
she had borrowed twenty pounds, her shopping might probably run into
some hours. It was one o’clock; a hearty meal had been prepared in the
kitchen for the men, and while they ate I dined with my uncle and aunt
off a roast leg of pork in the parlor adjacent, where we could hear the
fellows’ gruff voices and Jimmy’s bleating laugh. The chests had been
securely landed, Uncle Joe told me, and safely housed in his cellar.
The silver made five loads. They asked me to tell the whole story of the
discovery of those dollars over again, and my aunt put many questions
about the Señorita Aurora, who, she declared, was the finest, most
elegant, and genteel lady she had ever seen in her life.
When we and the men had dined, my uncle called them into the parlor and
took a receipt from each of them for three hundred and fifty dollars,
which he paid down in English gold. They thanked him for his
hospitality, begged their humble respects to the lady Aurora, wished me
many blessings, and with some hair-pulling and scrapes and bows got out
of the room and went their ways. I never saw or heard of those honest
fellows again, though I learnt that on this same day, after leaving us,
they and the Kanaka took a boat and sailed across to Ramsgate, where, no
doubt, they found a north-country collier bound to their parts.
Jimmy had brought Captain Greaves’ belongings under his arm and on his
back, the others carrying a few of the parcels among them. My uncle and
I overhauled the poor fellow’s effects, and then sat down to talk over
his will, to write a letter to Mynheer Tulp, and to consider how we were
to convert what silver belonged to me and to Greaves into British
currency.
“First of all, Bill,” said my uncle, “we’ll knock off a letter to Tulp
and send it away. Let him fetch his brig and his money; there’ll be more
daylight to see by when they’re out of the road.”
So I took a sheet of paper and addressed a letter to Mynheer Bartholomew
Tulp at his house in Amsterdam, his residence being known to me through
perusal of Greaves’ papers. I stated that the brig _Black Watch_ had
arrived in the Downs on the previous day, that her voyage had been
successful, that the cargo was housed ashore, and that Greaves had died
during the passage home; and I begged Mr. Tulp to lose not a moment in
visiting me at my uncle’s house, that he might receive what belonged to
him, for peril lurked in the protracted detention of the brig in the
Downs. When this letter was written I dispatched it to Sandwich by
Jimmy, that it might be transmitted without delay.
“Tulp will take his dollars at his own risk,” said my uncle, blowing out
a cloud of smoke; “your own dollars and the silver belonging to
Greaves’ll have to be negotiated cautiously; it’s a lot of money to
deal with, and it mustn’t be handled in the lump. We’ll have to work by
degrees through the money changers; find out several of them in London,
and deal with ’em one arter the other at intervals. Then we may make it
worth the while of the smugglers, some of my own particular friends, to
relieve us of a chest or two. My son-in-law’ll take some; he’s often
trading Mediterranean way; but I’m afeared it won’t do, Bill, to trouble
the banks; we don’t want any questions to arise. How it might work out
as a matter of law I don’t know; safest to look upon these here dollars
as run goods and treat ’em accordingly.”
I fully agreed with him, and it was settled that the money should be
exchanged in the manner he proposed. We then talked of Greaves’ will.
Indeed, we talked of many more things than I can recollect. Nothing,
however, could be done until Mynheer Tulp turned up. Every day I boarded
the brig and saw that all was right with the dear little ship; and I
remember once that while I stood with the lady Aurora and my uncle on
Deal Beach, viewing the vessel and recounting our experiences in her yet
again, it occurred to me to buy her, to re-equip her, put a good sailor
in command of her, and send her away to make a rich voyage for me. I
smiled when I had thus thought; it had been Miss Aurora’s notion, and
had she consented to marry me I daresay I should have bought the brig.
But I said to myself, “No”; the brig is not Tulp’s to sell; I must deal
with her owner, whose curiosity might prove inconveniently penetrating;
I have my money and I’ll keep it; and so I dismissed the _Black Watch_
as a venture out of my head.
One day--I think it was about a week after I had written to Amsterdam--I
returned with my lady Aurora to my uncle’s house after a morning’s
stroll about Deal. I heard voices in the parlor; Miss Aurora went
upstairs.
“Who is here?” said I to the old chap who opened the door.
“Mr. Tulp, from Amsterdam, sir,” he answered.
On this I knocked upon the door and entered the parlor.
Had I lived with Mynheer Tulp a month I could not have carried in my
head a more striking image of the man than my fancy had painted out of
Greaves’ brief description of him.
He was a little, withered old fellow, a mere trifle of months, I
daresay, on this side seventy; nose long and hooked, face hollow and
yellow, eyes small, black, and down-looking, though often a leary lift
of the lids sent a piercer at the person he talked to; he wore a wig,
and was dressed in the fashion of the close of last century. He was the
man I had dreamt of--the substance of the phantom I had beheld when I
looked at poor Greaves, and wondered whether his dollar-ship was a dream
or not.
My uncle was red in the face and was talking loudly when I entered.
“So! Und dis vhas Mr. Fielding?” said Mynheer Tulp standing up and
extending his hand. “Vell, I vhas glad to see you.”
He uttered even this commonplace slowly and cautiously as though he
feared his tongue.
“Now, Bill,” cried my uncle, “I want you to show Greaves’ bond to Mr.
Tulp; for he says you aren’t entitled to more than your wages--not even
to them as a matter of law, seeing you wasn’t shipped by him.”
“I tink you vill find dot right,” said Mynheer Tulp.
I carried Greaves’ bond, as well as his will, in my pocket; I placed the
bond or agreement upon the table, and Mynheer Tulp, picking it up, put
on a large pair of spectacles and read it through.
“Dis vhas of no use,” said he.
“We’ll see,” said my uncle.
“Understand me, Mr. Fielding,” continued the little Dutchman. “I don’t
mean to say dot you have not acted very vell, und dot you vhas not
entitled to a handsome reward, vhich certainly you shall have; but vhen
you talk to me of dirty odd tousand dollars--six tousand pounds of
English money----” he grinned hideously and shrugged his shoulders.
“What would you consider a handsome reward?” said I.
“You vhas second mate. I learn from your uncle dot your life vhas safed
by my brig. Should I sharge you mit safing your life? No. But if I vhas
you I should consider der safing of my life as handsome a reward as I
had der right to expect for any services afterward performed. But mit
you, my good young man, I goes much further. You have navigated the brig
safely home mit my money, und I say help yourself, my boy, to five
hundred pounds of der dollars before I takes them.”
“Before you takes ’em!” cried my uncle. “You’ll need every
line-of-battle ship that Holland possesses to enable you to catch even
a glimpse of the dollars afore all things are settled to my nephew
Bill’s satisfaction.”
“Vhat vhas your name again, sir?”
“Captain Joseph Round.”
“You hov der looks of an honest man, Captain Round. You vould not rob
me?”
“Not a ha-penny leaves this house,” said my uncle, “until Bill here has
taken his share according to your skipper’s bond, and until he’s
deducted the money that the captain has left by will, lawfully signed
and witnessed.”
“I likes to see dot vill,” said Mynheer Tulp, speaking always very
composedly, and occasionally snapping a look under his eyelids at one or
the other of us.
I put the will on the table. He picked it up and read it. When he had
read it he again grinned hideously, and said:
“Your name vhas Villiam Fielding?”
“Yes.”
“Und you benefit under dis vill to der amount of von tousand pounds?”
“Yaw,” said I.
“Und you vitness der vill dot vhas to benefit you? Shentlemen, it vhas
not vorth the paper it vhas wrote on;” and he threw the will upon the
table.
“It matters not one jot,” said I, who, as I had never attached the least
significance to the legality of this sailor-made will, was in no wise
astonished, because I reckoned old Tulp perfectly right. “About
forty-two thousand pounds’ worth of the thirteen tons of dollars I have
brought home for you at the risk of my life I keep, Mynheer. D’ye
understand me? I _keep_, I say,” and I repeated the sentence thrice,
while I approached him by a couple of strides. “Seven thousand are mine;
the rest will go to the erection of a church.”
“Der money,” said Mynheer Tulp without irritation, though his yellow
complexion was a shade paler than it had been a little while before,
“vhas left to der Church of Englandt?”
“You have read it,” said I.
“Now, shentlemen,” continued the little Dutchman, “dere vhas a Church of
Englandt, certainly; but dere vhas no Church of Englandt dot a man can
leaf money to.”
“You know a sight too much,” shouted my uncle. “The money’s in my
cellar, and there it stops till you settle.”
“Der Church of Englandt,” said Mynheer Tulp, “vhas a single body dot has
no property. You cannot leaf money to der Church of Englandt. Dot alone
makes my poor stepson’s vill nooll und void.”
“The money remains where it is----” began my uncle.
“Do you allow,” I interrupted, “that Captain Greaves has a right to his
share?”
“Do I allow it? Do I allow it?”
“You allow it. He could, therefore, do what he likes with his share?”
“Dot vhas right.”
“Do you know that he wished a church to be built as a memorial to his
mother, who was your wife, I believe?”
“Dot vhas very beautiful. But he vhas dead, und dot vill vhas not vorth
the ink it took to write out. I vhas next of kin, und I takes my poor
stepson’s share.”
When he had said this, my uncle and I spoke together; and from this
moment began an altercation which I should need a volume to embody. Tulp
lost his temper; my uncle roared at him; I, too, being furious with the
meanness of the wretched little beast, often found myself bawling as
though I were in a gale of wind. Tulp’s threats flew fast and furious.
Uncle Joe snapped his fingers under his long nose, and defied him in a
voice hoarse and failing with exertion. I began to see the idleness and
the absurdity of all this, and, throwing open the parlor door, I
exclaimed:
“Mr. Tulp, get you back to Amsterdam, and there sit and reflect. When
you come into our way of thinking, write; and then fetch your money. Go
to law, if you please. The Spanish consignees of the dollars will thank
you.”
The perspiration poured from the little man’s face, and he trembled
violently. His yellow complexion under the pressure of his temper, which
often forced his voice into a shriek, had changed into several dyes of
green and sulphur, like that of one in a fit. He stared wildly about him
in search of his strange little hat, which, however, he forgot he had
already snatched up and was holding.
“You’ll have to bear a hand with your decision,” cried my uncle, whose
face looked almost as queer as Tulp’s, with its purple skin and blue
lips; “they’re beginning to ask questions about the brig, and if you
don’t send for her soon she’ll be _going a-missing_. You know what I
mean. The Goodn’s are handy, and my nephew aint going to forfeit his
rightful share of the dollars because of _her_. The recovery of this
silver is to be more than a salvage job to Bill. There’s nigh upon
forty thousand pounds belonging to you a-lying in my cellars, but if ye
aren’t quick in fetching it something may happen to oblige me to send
all them chests out of my house, and then it’ll be no business of mine
to larn what’s become of ’em.”
The little Dutchman, now perceiving that he held his hat, clapped it on
his head and ran out of the room.
We heard no more of him that day; though next morning the old
longshoreman who waited upon my uncle said that he had seen the little
man pass the house, pause, walk up and down irresolutely, then hurry
away in the direction of Sandwich. As I could not get to hear of him at
Deal I guessed he lurked in Sandwich, and caused Jimmy to make
inquiries, which resulted in the discovery that Mynheer Tulp was
stopping at the Fleur de Lys Hotel. Three days after he had visited my
uncle he wrote to offer me half a ton of the silver, worth something
over three thousand pounds, on condition that my uncle peaceably
surrendered the rest of the money to him, and assisted him to convey it
to Amsterdam. I answered this by repeating my uncle’s threat, that if
very shortly he did not agree to my terms the silver would be removed,
my uncle would have no knowledge of its whereabouts, and I myself would
go abroad.
On the morning following the dispatch of this missive, Miss Aurora
received a letter; she read it and uttered a loud shriek, fell off her
chair at the breakfast table round which we were seated, and lay upon
the floor in a dead swoon. We thought she had died, and our fright was
extreme. We picked her up and placed her upon a sofa, and went to work
to recover her. Presently her sighs and moans satisfied us that she was
not dead. I glanced at the letter she had received; it was in Spanish. I
took the liberty of looking a little closely; it was signed by the
Señora de la Cueva.
“She has heard from her mother!” I cried.
She rallied presently, and then followed a scene scarcely less exciting
in its way than the shindy that had attended the visit of Mynheer Tulp.
Miss Aurora read the letter aloud; and as she read she wept, then burst
into fits of laughter, sprang about the room, sat again, continued to
read, interrupting herself often by clasping her hands, lifting them to
the ceiling, raising her streaming eyes, and thanking the Holy Mother of
God for this act of mercy in utterance so impassioned that the like of
it was never heard on the stage.
My homely uncle, my yet homelier aunt looked on, scarcely knowing
whether to shed tears or to laugh. I was very used to her ladyship’s
performances, but there was something in this exhibition of ecstasy that
went far beyond anything I had ever beheld in her.
“I rejoice indeed to learn that the señora is safe,” said I.
“Oh, it is a miracle! a miracle!” she cried; and then she wept and
laughed and carried on as before, reading aloud in Spanish, and lifting
up her eyes in gratitude to the Blessed Virgin.
At last she calmed down, and we conversed without the interruption of
emotional outbreaks. Her mother gave no particulars of her deliverance.
Mr. Maxwell had received Aurora’s letter; he was ill in his bed,
therefore she, the señora, had made her way to London--choosing that
port instead of Falmouth, because of the situation of Deal--intending to
proceed to Sandwich. But her infirmities had overwhelmed her; the
fatigue of the journey had been so great that she was unable to leave
her room in London. Her daughter must come to her, and without an
instant’s delay.
Within three hours of the receipt of this letter my uncle drove the lady
Aurora and me over to Deal, where we saw her safely into the London
coach. She had said many kind things to me as we drove to Deal, had
taken my hand and pressed it while she thanked me for--but what does it
matter how and for what this young lady thanked me? She tried to exact
many promises; I made none. Before she stepped into the coach she seized
my hand, looked at me hard, and her fine eyes swam. Nothing was said;
she took her seat; I and my uncle stood apart waiting while the coachman
gathered his reins and prepared for the start. The horses’ heads were
then let go, I raised my hat, the coach drove off, and I saw no more of
the Señorita Aurora de la Cueva. I say I saw no more of her; in truth,
though I once again heard of her, I never received a single line from
her. And possibly I should never have heard of her again but for her
sending from Madrid a draft for the money she had borrowed from Uncle
Joe. She warmly and gracefully thanked Captain and Mrs. Round for their
hospitality, begged them to remember her most gratefully to her valued
and valiant friend, their nephew, and then, so far as I was concerned,
the curtain fell upon her forever.
Mynheer Bartholomew Tulp lurked through a long week at Sandwich. In that
week he sent me four letters and each letter contained a fresh
proposal. I sent a single reply: that every proposal must be hugely
preposterous unless it went on all-fours with Greaves’ will and the
agreement with me. He was seen on several occasions in the neighborhood
of the house; once Jimmy perceived him looking in at the gate, and
supposed that he meant to call; but the little man made off on finding
himself observed.
At last, at the expiration of nine or ten days--and this brought us to a
Monday--I received a letter from Mynheer Tulp. We were at dinner at the
time; my uncle cried out:
“What does he say, Bill? Willing, perhaps, to spring another hundred
pound?”
I read the letter aloud; it was well expressed, in good English. Mynheer
said he had thought the matter over, and was prepared to settle with me
on my own terms. He admitted that I had a right to the share which Van
Laar would have received; that Greaves’ signature to the will indicated
his wishes as to the disposal of his money, which, of course, he would
have received as his share of the venture, had he lived. Would I permit
him to call upon me?
I immediately dispatched Jimmy with an answer, and in half an hour’s
time the little Dutchman was seated in my uncle’s parlor. He was
submissive and, in his way, very apologetic. Yet, though he had come to
confirm the terms of his own letter to me, midnight was striking before
every point was settled. His rapacity was shark-like. It cost my uncle
and me above an hour to make the little man agree to call the value of
the dollar four shillings. He disputed long and shrilly over a small
share that I claimed for the honest lad Jimmy. He opposed the repayment
of the wages of the Whitby men and the Kanaka out of the common stock,
as though he believed that my uncle would bear that charge! He was
nearly leaving the house on the question of the sum due to Jarvie Files
and his men for “running” the dollars. He insisted that my money and
Greaves’ should bear a proportion of the loss of the three tons of
silver stolen by Yan Bol and his crew. He grew furious when my uncle
insisted upon charging him for storage and risk, and thrice in _that_
discussion arose to go.
But by midnight, as I have said, all was settled. He now asked leave to
live in the house until he could remove his money to the brig, in which
he proposed to sail to Amsterdam, taking with him for a crew the men of
the _Seamen’s Friend_. My uncle told him he would be welcome, giving me
at the same time a wink of deep disgust at the motive of the old chap’s
request. It took us several days to count the dollars, and all the while
little Bartholomew Tulp sat looking on. What was left as his share,
after deductions, I never heard; it came, I believe, near to fifty
thousand pounds. When the division was made he went on board the brig;
Jarvie Files and his men carried his chests to the _Black Watch_ in the
dead of night, and when, next morning, I went down to the beach to look
for the now familiar figure of the brig riding to her two anchors, her
place was empty.
* * * * *
This, then, is the story of Greaves’ discovery, and of the part I played
in it. Of Yan Bol and his men I heard nothing for eighteen months; I
then got a letter from Captain Horsley, dated at Whitby. He had touched
at Amsterdam Island, found no signs of Yan Bol and his party, then dug
in the place I had indicated without finding the silver. There was no
look of the earth having been turned up in that place. A gale of wind
blew him off the island; then, a fortnight later, he spoke a ship bound
to Sydney, New South Wales, and learnt from her that she had picked up a
party of seamen sixty leagues eastward of Amsterdam Island; they were
six men, three of them in a dying condition for want of water. He had no
doubt, and neither had nor have I, that they were Yan Bol and his mates;
but what had the wretches done with the three tons of dollars?
Did I, when we had exchanged the large sum of dollars into English
money, did I procure the erection and endowment of a church in
accordance with the wishes of Michael Greaves? I answer yes; most
piously and anxiously did I fulfill my friend’s dying wish. Will I tell
you the name of the church, and where it is situated? No; I have
worshiped in it, but I will not tell you its name and where it is
situated, because this book is a confession, and I am informed that if
the descendants or inheritors of the Spanish consignees, or the owners
of the dollars, learnt that a church had been built out of the money,
they could and might advance a claim that would give all concerned in
that church on this side great trouble.
One little memorial I erected at my own expense; it long stood in the
garden of the house in which I dwelt for many years; need I tell you
that it was a memorial to my well-beloved, faithful, deeply-mourned
Galloon?