Lieutenant Thomas Goodhouse was the Collector of Customs in the town of
New Hope. He was a character of no little notoriety in those parts,
enjoying the reputation of being able to consume more pineapple rum
with less effect upon his balance than any other man in the community.
He possessed the voice of a stentor, a short, thick-set,
broad-shouldered person, a face congested to a violent carnation, and red
hair of such a color as to add infinitely to the consuming fire of his
countenance.
The Custom Office was a little white frame building with green
shutters, and overhanging the water as though to topple into the tide.
Here at any time of the day betwixt the hours of ten in the morning and
of five in the afternoon the Collector was to be found at his desk
smoking his pipe of tobacco, the while a thin, phthisical clerk bent
with unrelaxing assiduity over a multitude of account-books and papers
accumulated before him.
For his post of Collectorship of the Royal Customs, Lieutenant
Goodhouse was especially indebted to the patronage of Colonel Belford.
The worthy Collector had, some years before, come to that gentleman
with a written recommendation from the Earl of Clandennie of a very
unusual sort. It was the Lieutenant's good-fortune to save the life of
the Honorable Frederick Dunburne, second son of the Earl--a wild,
rakish, undisciplined youth, much given to such mischievous enterprises
as the twisting off of door-knockers, the beating of the watch, and the
carrying away of tavern signs.
Having been a very famous swimmer at Eton, the Honorable Frederick
undertook while at the Cowes to swim a certain considerable distance
for a wager. In the midst of this enterprise he was suddenly seized
with a cramp, and would inevitably have drowned had not the Lieutenant,
who happened in a boat close at hand, leaped overboard and rescued the
young gentleman from the watery grave in which he was about to be
engulfed, thus restoring him once more to the arms of his grateful
family.
For this fortunate act of rescue the Earl of Clandennie presented to
his son's preserver a gold snuffbox filled with guineas, and inscribed
with the following legend:
"To Lieutenant Thomas Goodhouse,
who, under the Ruling of Beneficent Providence,
was the Happy Preserver of a Beautiful and
Precious Life of Virtuous Precocity,
this Box is presented by the Father of Him whom He
saved as a grateful acknowledgment of His
Services.
Thomas Monkhouse Dunburne, Viscount of
Dunburne and Earl of Clandennie.
_August 17, 1752._"
Having thus satisfied the immediate demands of his gratitude, it is
very possible that the Earl of Clandennie did not choose to assume so
great a responsibility as the future of his son's preserver entailed.
Nevertheless, feeling that something should be done for him, he
obtained for Lieutenant Goodhouse a passage to the Americas, and wrote
him a strong letter of recommendation to Colonel Belford. That
gentleman, desiring to please the legitimate head of his family, used
his influence so successfully that the Lieutenant was presently granted
the position of Collector of Customs in the place of Captain Maull, who
had lately deceased.
The Lieutenant, somewhat to the surprise of his patrons, filled his new
official position as Collector not only with vigor, but with a not
unbecoming dignity. He possessed an infinite appreciation of the
responsibilities of his office, and he was more jealous to collect
every farthing of the royal duties than he would have been had those
moneys been gathered for his own emolument.
Under the old Collectorship of Captain Maull, it was no unusual thing
for a barraco of superfine Hollands, a bolt of silk cloth, or a keg of
brandy to find its way into the house of some influential merchant or
Colonial dignitary. But in no such manner was Lieutenant Goodhouse
derelict in his duties. He would have sacrificed his dearest friendship
or his most precious attachment rather than fail in his duties to the
Crown. In the intermission of his duties it might please him to relax
into the softer humors of conviviality, but at ten o'clock in the
morning, whatever his condition of sobriety, he assumed at once all the
sterner panoply of a Collector of the Royal Customs.
Thus he set his virtues against his vices, and struck an even balance
between them. When most unsteady upon his legs he most asserted his
integrity, declaring that not a gill or a thread came into his port
without paying its duty, and calling Heaven to witness that it had been
his hand that had saved the life of a noble young gentleman. Thereupon,
perhaps, drawing forth the gleaming token of his prowess--the gold
snuffbox--from his breeches-pocket, and holding it tight in his brown
and hairy fist, he would first offer his interlocutor a pinch of
rappee, and would then call upon him to read the inscription engraved
upon the lid of the case, demanding to know whether it mattered a fig
if a man did drink a drop too much now and then, provided he collected
every farthing of the royal revenues, and had been the means of saving
the son of the Earl of Clandennie.
Never for an instant upon such an occasion would he permit his precious
box to quit his possession. It was to him an emblem of those virtues
that no one knew but himself, wherefore the more he misdoubted his own
virtuousness the more valuable did the token of that rectitude become
in his eyes. "Yes, you may look at it," he would say, "but damme if you
shall handle it. I would not," he would cry, "let the Devil himself
take it out of my hands."
The talk concerning the impious possession of the Old Free Grace
Meeting-House was at its height when the official consciousness of the
Collector, who was just then laboring under his constitutional
infirmity, became suddenly seized with an irrepressible alarm. He
declared that he smoked something worse than the Devil upon Pig and Sow
Point, and protested that it was his opinion that Captain Obadiah was
doing a bit of free-trade upon his own account, and that dutiable goods
were being smuggled in at night under cover of these incredible
stories. He registered a vow, sealing it with the most solemn
protestations, and with a multiplicity of ingenious oaths that only a
mind stimulated by the heat of intoxication could have invented, that
he would make it his business, upon the first occasion that offered, to
go down to Pig and Sow Point and to discover for himself whether it was
the Devil or smugglers that had taken possession of the Old Free Grace
Meeting-House. Thereupon, hauling out his precious snuffbox and rapping
upon the lid, he offered a pinch around. Then calling attention to the
inscription, he demanded to know whether a man who had behaved so well
upon that occasion had need to be afraid of a whole churchful of
devils. "I would," he cried, "offer the Devil a pinch, as I have
offered it to you. Then I would bid him read this and tell me whether
he dared to say that black was the white of my eye."
Nor were those words a vain boast upon the Collector's part, for,
before a week had passed, it being reported that there had been a
renewal of manifestations at the old church, the Collector, finding
nobody with sufficient courage to accompany him, himself entered into a
small boat and rowed down alone to Pig and Sow Point to investigate,
for his own satisfaction, those appearances that so agitated the
community.
It was dusk when the Collector departed upon that memorable and
solitary expedition, and it was entirely dark before he had reached its
conclusion. He had taken with him a bottle of Extra Reserve rum to
drive, as he declared, the chill out of his bones. Accordingly it
seemed to him to be a surprisingly brief interval before he found
himself floating in his boat under the impenetrable shadow of the rocky
promontory. The profound and infinite gloom of night overhung him with
a portentous darkness, melting only into a liquid obscurity as it
touched and dissolved into the stretch of waters across the bay. But
above, on the high and rugged shoulder of the Point, the Collector,
with dulled and swimming vision, beheld a row of dim and lurid lights,
whereupon, collecting his faculties, he opined that the radiance he
beheld was emitted from the windows of the Old Free Grace
Meeting-House.
Having made fast his boat with a drunken gravity, the Collector walked
directly, though with uncertain steps, up the steep and rugged path
towards that mysterious illumination. Now and then he stumbled over the
stones and cobbles that lay in his way, but he never quite lost his
balance, neither did he for a moment remit his drunken gravity. So with
a befuddled and obstinate perseverance he reached at last to the
conclusion of his adventure and of his fate.
The old meeting-house was two stories in height, the lower story having
been formerly used by the Free Grace Believers as a place wherein to
celebrate certain obscure mysteries appertaining to their belief. The
upper story, devoted to the more ordinary worship of their Sunday
meetings, was reached by a tall, steep flight of steps that led from
the ground to a covered porch which sheltered the doorway.
The Collector paused only long enough to observe that the shutters of
the lower story were tight shut and barred, and that the dull and lurid
light shone from the windows above. Then he directly mounted the steps
with a courage and a perfect assurance that can only be entirely
enjoyed by one in his peculiar condition of inebriety.
He paused to knock at the door, and it appeared to him that his
knuckles had hardly fallen upon the panel before the valve was flung
suddenly open. An indescribable and heavy odor fell upon him and for
the moment overpowered his senses, and he found himself standing face
to face with a figure prodigiously and portentously tall.
Even at this unexpected apparition the Collector lost possession of no
part of his courage. Rather he stiffened himself to a more stubborn and
obstinate resolution. Steadying himself for his address, "I know very
well," quoth he, "who you are. You are the Divil, I dare say, but damme
if you shall do business here without paying your duties to King
George. I may drink a drop too much," he cried, "but I collect my
duties--every farthing of 'em." Then drawing forth his snuffbox, he
thrust it under the nose of the being to whom he spake. "Take a pinch
and read that," he roared, "but don't handle it, for I wouldn't take
all hell to let it out of my hand."
The being whom he addressed had stood for all this while as though
bereft of speech and of movement, but at these last words he appeared
to find his voice, for he gave forth a strident bellow of so dreadful
and terrible a sort that the Collector, brave as he found himself,
stepped back a pace or two before it. The next instant he was struck
upon the wrist as though by a bolt of lightning, and the snuffbox,
describing a yellow circle against the light of the door, disappeared
into the darkness of the night beyond. Ere he could recover himself
another blow smote him upon the breast, and he fell headlong from the
platform, as through infinite space.
* * * * *
The next day the Collector did not present himself at the office at his
accustomed hour, and the morning wore along without his appearing at
his desk. By noon serious alarm began to take possession of the
community, and about two o'clock, the tide being then set out pretty
strong, Mr. Tompkins, the consumptive clerk, and two sailors from the
_Sarah Goodrich_, then lying at Mr. Hoppins's wharf, went down in a
yawl-boat to learn, if possible, what had befallen him. They coasted
along the Point for above a half-hour before they discovered any
vestige of the missing Collector. Then at last they saw him lying at a
little distance upon a cobbled strip of beach, where, judging from his
position and from the way he had composed himself to rest, he appeared
to have been overcome by liquor.
At this place Mr. Tompkins put ashore, and making the best of his way
over the slippery stones exposed at low water, came at last to where
his chief was lying. The Collector was reposing with one arm over his
eyes, as though to shelter them from the sun, but as soon as Mr.
Tompkins had approached close enough to see his countenance, he uttered
a great cry that was like a scream. For, by the blue and livid lips
parted at the corners to show the yellow teeth, from the waxy whiteness
of the fat and hairy hands--in short, from the appearance of the whole
figure, he was aware in an instant that the Collector was dead.
His cry brought the two sailors running. They, with the utmost coolness
imaginable, turned the Collector over, but discovered no marks of
violence upon him, till of a sudden one of them called attention to the
fact that his neck was broke. Upon this the other opined that he had
fallen among the rocks and twisted his neck.
The two mariners then made an investigation of his pockets, the clerk
standing by the while paralyzed with horror, his face the color of
dough, his scalp creeping, and his hands and fingers twitching as
though with the palsy. For there was something indescribably dreadful
in the spectacle of those living hands searching into the dead's
pockets, and he would freely have given a week's pay if he had never
embarked upon the expedition for the recovery of his chief.
In the Collector's pockets they found a twist of tobacco, a red
bandanna handkerchief of violent color, a purse meagrely filled with
copper coins and silver pieces, a silver watch still ticking with a
loud and insistent iteration, a piece of tarred string, and a
clasp-knife.
The snuffbox which the Lieutenant had regarded with such prodigious
pride as the one emblem of his otherwise dubious virtue was gone.