The ship was first sighted off Dungeness. She was labouring heavily. Her
paint was peculiar and her rig outlandish. She looked like a golden ship
out of a painted picture.
'Blessed if I ever see such a rig--nor such lines neither,' old
Hawkhurst said.
It was a late afternoon, wild and grey. Slate-coloured clouds drove
across the sky like flocks of hurried camels. The waves were purple and
blue, and in the west a streak of unnatural-looking green light was all
that stood for the splendours of sunset.
'She do be a rum 'un,' said young Benenden, who had strolled along the
beach with the glasses the gentleman gave him for saving the little boy
from drowning. 'Don't know as I ever see another just like her.'
'I'd give half a dollar to any chap as can tell me where she hails
from--and what port it is where they has ships o' that cut,' said
middle-aged Haversham to the group that had now gathered.
'George!' exclaimed young Benenden from under his field-glasses, 'she's
going.' And she went. Her bow went down suddenly and she stood stern up
in the water--like a duck after rain. Then quite slowly, with no
unseemly hurry, but with no moment's change of what seemed to be her
fixed purpose, the ship sank and the grey rolling waves wiped out the
place where she had been.
Now I hope you will not expect me to tell you anything more about this
ship--because there is nothing more to tell. What country she came from,
what port she was bound for, what cargo she carried, and what kind of
tongue her crew spoke--all these things are dead secrets. And a dead
secret is a secret that nobody knows. No other secrets are dead secrets.
Even I do not know this one, or I would tell you at once. For I, at
least, have no secrets from you.
[Illustration: Her bow went down suddenly.]
When ships go down off Dungeness, things from them have a way of being
washed up on the sands of that bay which curves from Dungeness to
Folkestone, where the sea has bitten a piece out of the land--just such
a half-moon-shaped piece as you bite out of a slice of bread-and-butter.
Bits of wood tangled with ropes--broken furniture--ships' biscuits in
barrels and kegs that have held brandy--seamen's chests--and sometimes
sadder things that we will not talk about just now.
Now, if you live by the sea and are grown-up you know that if you find
anything on the seashore (I don't mean starfish or razor-shells or
jellyfish and sea-mice, but anything out of a ship that you would really
like to keep) your duty is to take it up to the coast-guard and say,
'Please, I've found this.' Then the coast-guard will send it to the
proper authority, and one of these days you'll get a reward of one-third
of the value of whatever it was that you picked up. But two-thirds of
the value of anything, or even three-thirds of its value, is not at all
the same thing as the thing itself--if it happened to be the kind of
thing you want. But if you are not grown-up and do not live by the sea,
but in a nice little villa in a nice little suburb, where all the
furniture is new and the servants wear white aprons and white caps with
long strings in the afternoon, then you won't know anything about your
duty, and if you find anything by the sea you'll think that findings are
keepings.
Edward was not grown-up--and he kept everything he found, including
sea-mice, till the landlady of the lodgings where his aunt was threw his
collection into the pig-pail.
Being a quiet and persevering little boy he did not cry or complain,
but having meekly followed his treasures to their long home--the pig
was six feet from nose to tail, and ate the dead sea-mouse as easily
and happily as your father eats an oyster--he started out to make a new
collection.
And the first thing he found was an oyster-shell that was pink and green
and blue inside, and the second was an old boot--very old indeed--and
the third was _it_.
It was a square case of old leather embossed with odd little figures of
men and animals and words that Edward could not read. It was oblong and
had no key, but a sort of leather hasp, and was curiously knotted with
string--rather like a boot-lace. And Edward opened it. There were
several things inside: queer-looking instruments, some rather like those
in the little box of mathematical instruments that he had had as a prize
at school, and some like nothing he had ever seen before. And in a deep
groove of the russet soaked velvet lining lay a neat little brass
telescope.
T-squares and set-squares and so forth are of little use on a sandy
shore. But you can always look through a telescope.
Edward picked it out and put it to his eye, and tried to see through it
a little tug that was sturdily puffing up Channel. He failed to find the
tug, and found himself gazing at a little cloud on the horizon. As he
looked it grew larger and darker, and presently a spot of rain fell on
his nose. He rubbed it off--on his jersey sleeve, I am sorry to say, and
not on his handkerchief. Then he looked through the glass again; but he
found he needed both hands to keep it steady, so he set down the box
with the other instruments on the sand at his feet and put the glass to
his eye again.
He never saw the box again. For in his unpractised efforts to cover the
tug with his glass he found himself looking at the shore instead of at
the sea, and the shore looked so odd that he could not make up his mind
to stop looking at it.
He had thought it was a sandy shore, but almost at once he saw that it
was not sand but fine shingle, and the discovery of this mistake
surprised him so much that he kept on looking at the shingle through the
little telescope, which showed it quite plainly. And as he looked the
shingle grew coarser; it was stones now--quite decent-sized stones,
large stones, enormous stones.
Something hard pressed against his foot, and he lowered the glass.
He was surrounded by big stones, and they all seemed to be moving; some
were tumbling off others that lay in heaps below them, and others were
rolling away from the beach in every direction. And the place where he
had put down the box was covered with great stones which he could not
move.
Edward was very much upset. He had never been accustomed to great stones
that moved about when no one was touching them, and he looked round for
some one to ask how it had happened.
The only person in sight was another boy in a blue jersey with red
letters on its chest.
'Hi!' said Edward, and the boy also said 'Hi!'
'Come along here,' said Edward, 'and I'll show you something.'
'Right-o!' the boy remarked, and came.
The boy was staying at the camp where the white tents were below the
Grand Redoubt. His home was quite unlike Edward's, though he also lived
with his aunt. The boy's home was very dirty and very small, and nothing
in it was ever in its right place. There was no furniture to speak of.
The servants did not wear white caps with long streamers, because there
were no servants. His uncle was a dock-labourer and his aunt went out
washing. But he had felt just the same pleasure in being shown things
that Edward or you or I might have felt, and he went climbing over the
big stones to where Edward stood waiting for him in a sort of pit among
the stones with the little telescope in his hand.
'I say,' said Edward, 'did you see any one move these stones?'
'I ain't only just come up on to the sea-wall,' said the boy, who was
called Gustus.
'They all came round me,' said Edward, rather pale. 'I didn't see any
one shoving them.'
'Who're you a-kiddin' of?' the boy inquired.
'But I _did_,' said Edward, 'honour bright I did. I was just taking a
squint through this little telescope I've found--and they came rolling
up to me.'
'Let's see what you found,' said Gustus, and Edward gave him the glass.
He directed it with inexpert fingers to the sea-wall, so little trodden
that on it the grass grows, and the sea-pinks, and even convolvulus and
mock-strawberry.
'Oh, look!' cried Edward, very loud. 'Look at the grass!'