J. JOB, _Proprietor_.
Standing there beneath the skylight I turned its pages over, wondering
vaguely how the visitors' book of a small provincial hotel had found its
way into that drawer. It contained the usual assortment of conventional
praise and vulgar jocosity:--
_Mr. and the Hon. Mrs. Smith of Huddersfield,
cannot speak too highly of Mrs. Job's ham and
eggs.--September 15, 1881_.
_Arrived wet through after a 15-mile tramp
along the coast; but thanks to Mr. and Mrs.
Job were soon steaming over a comfortable
fire.--John and Annie Watson, March, 1882._
Note appended by a humorist:
_Then you sat on the hob, I suppose._
There was the politely patronising entry:
_Being accustomed to Wolverhampton, I am
greatly pleased with this coast.--F. B. W._
The poetical effusion:
_Majestic spot! Say, doth the sun in heaven
Behold aught to equal thee, wave-washed
Penleven?_ etc.
Lighter verse:
_Here I came to take my ease,
Agreeably disappointed to find no fl--
Mrs. Job, your bread and butter
Is quite too utterly, utterly utter!_
_J. Harper, June 3rd, 1883._
The contemplative man's ejaculation:
_It is impossible, on viewing these Cyclopean cliffs,
to repress the thought, How great is Nature,
how little Man!_
(A note: _So it is, old chap!_ and a reproof
in another hand: _Shut up! can't you see
he's suffering?)_
The last entry was a brief one:
_J. MacGuire, Liverpool. September 2nd, 1886._
Twilight forced me to close the book and put it back in its place.
As I did so, I glanced up involuntarily towards the skylight, as if I
half expected to find a pair of eyes staring down on me. Yet the book
contained nothing but these mere trivialities. Whatever my
apprehension, I was (as "J. Harper" would have said) "agreeably
disappointed." I climbed on deck again, relocked the hatch, replaced
the tarpaulins, jumped into the boat and rowed homewards. Though the
tide favoured me, it was dark before I reached Mr. Dewy's quay-door.
Having, with some difficulty, found the frape, I made the boat fast.
I groped my way across his back premises and out into the gaslit street;
and so to the Ship Inn, a fair dinner, and a sound night's sleep.
At ten o'clock next morning I called on Messrs. Dewy and Moss.
Again Mr. Dewy received me, and again he apologised for the absence of
his partner, who had caught an early train to attend a wrestling match
at the far end of the county. Mr. Dewy showed me the sails, gear,
cushions, etc., of the _Siren_--everything in surprising condition.
I told him that I meant business, and added--
"I suppose you have all the yacht's papers?"
He stroked his chin, bent his head to one side, and asked, "Shall you
require them?"
"Of course," I said; "the transfer must be regular. We must have her
certificate of registry, at the very least."
"In that case I had better write and get them from my client."
"Is she not a resident here?"
"I don't know," he said, "that I ought to tell you. But I see no harm--
you are evidently, sir, a _bona fide_ purchaser. The lady's name is
Carlingford--a widow--residing at present in Bristol."
"This is annoying," said I; "but if she lives anywhere near the Temple
Mead Station, I might skip a train there and call on her. She herself
desired no delay, and I desire it just as little. But the papers are
necessary."
After some little demur, he gave me the address, and we parted.
At the door I turned and asked, "By the way, who was the fellow on board
the _Siren_ last night as I rowed up to her?"
He gave me a stare of genuine surprise. "A man on board? Whoever he
was, he had no business there. I make a point of looking after the
yacht myself."
I hurried to the railway station. Soon after six that evening I knocked
at Mrs. Carlingford's lodgings in an unattractive street of Bedminster,
that unattractive suburb. A small maid opened the door, took my card,
and showed me into a small sitting-room on the ground floor. I looked
about me--a round table, a horsehair couch, a walnut sideboard with
glass panels, a lithograph of John Wesley being rescued from the flames
of his father's rectory, a coloured photograph--
As the door opened behind me and a woman entered, I jumped back almost
into her arms. The coloured photograph, staring at me from the opposite
wall above the mantelshelf, was a portrait--a portrait of the man I had
seen on board the _Siren!_
"Who is that?" I demanded, wheeling round without ceremony.
But if I was startled, Mrs. Carlingford seemed ready to drop with
fright. The little woman--she was a very small, shrinking creature,
with a pallid face and large nervous eyes--put out a hand against the
jamb of the door, and gasped out--
"Why do you ask? What do you want?"
"I beg your pardon," I said; "it was merely curiosity. I thought I had
seen the face somewhere."
"He was my husband."
"He is dead, then?"
"Oh, why do you ask? Yes; he died abroad." She touched her widow's cap
with a shaking finger, and then covered her face with her hands.
"I was there--I saw it. Why do you ask?" she repeated.
"I beg your pardon sincerely," I said; "it was only that the portrait
reminded me of somebody--But my business here is quite different.
I am come about the yacht _Siren_ which you have advertised for sale."
She seemed more than ever inclined to run. Her voice scarcely rose
above a whisper.
"My agents at F-- have full instructions about the sale."
"Yes, but they tell me you have the papers. I may say that I have seen
the yacht and gear and am ready to pay the price you ask for immediate
possession. I said as much to Mr. Dewy. But the papers, of course--"
"Are they necessary?"
"Certainly they are. At least the certificate of registry or, failing
that, some reference to the port of registry, if the transfer is to be
made. I should also like to see her warrant if she has one, and her
sailmaker's certificate. Messrs. Dewy and Moss could draw up the
inventory."
She still hesitated. At length she said, "I have the certificate; I
will fetch it. The other papers, if she had any, have been lost or
destroyed. She never had a warrant. I believe my husband belonged to
no Yacht Club. I understand very little of these matters."
She left the room, and returned in five minutes or so with the open
document in her hand.
"But," said I, looking over it, "this is a certificate of a vessel
called the _Wasp_."
"Ah, I must explain that. I wished the boat to change her name with the
new owner. Her old name--it has associations--painful ones--I should
not like anyone else to know her as the _Wasp_."
"Well," I admitted, "I can understand that. But, see here, she is
entered as having one mast and carrying a cutter rig."
"She was a cutter originally. My husband had her lengthened, in 1886, I
think by five feet, and turned her into a yawl. It was abroad, at
Malaga--"
"A curious port to choose."
"She was built, you see, as long ago as 1875. My husband used to say
she was a broad boat for those days, and could be lengthened
successfully and turned into quite a new-looking vessel. He gave her an
entirely new sheathing, too, and all her spars are new. She was not
insured, and, being in a foreign port, it was understood he would have
her newly registered when he returned, which he fully intended.
So no alterations were made in the certificate here, and, I believe, her
old tonnage is still carved up somewhere inside her."
This was true enough. The figures on the certificate, 29.56, were those
I had seen on the beam in the forecastle.
"My husband never lived to reach England, and when she came back to F--,
though she was visited, of course, by the Custom House officer and
coastguard, nobody asked for her certificate, and so the alterations in
her were never explained. She was laid up at once in the F-- River, and
there she has remained."
Certain structural peculiarities in the main cabin--scarcely noted at
the time, but now remembered--served to confirm Mrs. Carlingford's
plainly told story. On my return to London that night I hunted up some
back volumes of Hunt, and satisfied myself on the matter of the _Wasp_
and her owner, William Carlingford. And, to be short, the transfer was
made on a fresh survey, the cheque sent to Mrs. Carlingford, and the
yawl _Siren_ passed into my hands.
All being settled, I wrote to my old acquaintance, Mr. Dewy, asking him
to fit the vessel out, and find me a steady skipper and crew--not
without some apprehension of hearing by return of post that Dewy and
Moss were ready and willing to sign articles with me to steer and sail
the yacht in their spare moments. Perhaps the idea did not occur to
them. At any rate they found me a crew, and a good one; and I spent a
very comfortable three months, cruising along the south-western coast,
across to Scilly, from Scilly to Cork and back to Southampton, where on
September 29, 1891, I laid the yacht up for the winter.
Thrice since have I applied to Messrs. Dewy and Moss for a crew, and
always with satisfactory results. But I must pass over 1892 and 1893
and come to the summer of 1894; or, to be precise, to Wednesday, the
11th of July. We had left Plymouth that morning for a run westward;
but, the wind falling light towards noon, we found ourselves drifting,
or doing little more, off the entrance of the small fishing haven of
Penleven. Though I had never visited Penleven I knew, on the evidence
of many picture-shows, that the place was well worth seeing.
Besides, had I not the assurances of the Visitors' Book in my cabin?
It occurred to me that I would anchor for an hour or two in the entrance
of the haven, and eat my lunch ashore at Mr. Job's hotel. Mr. Job would
doubtless be pleased to recover his long-lost volume, and I had no more
wish than right to retain it.
Job's hotel was unpretending. Mrs. Job offered me ham and eggs and, as
an alternative, a cut off a boiled silver-side of beef, if I did not
mind waiting for ten minutes or so, when her husband would be back to
dinner. I said that I would wait, and added that I should be pleased to
make Mr. Job's acquaintance on his return, as I had a trifling message
for him.
About ten minutes later, while studying a series of German lithographs
in the coffee-room, I heard a heavy footstep in the passage and a knock
at the door; and Mr. Job appeared, a giant of a man, with a giant's
girth and red cheeks, which he sufflated as a preliminary of speech.
"Good day, Mr. Job," said I. "I won't keep you from your dinner, but
the fact is, I am the unwilling guardian of a trifle belonging to you."
And I showed him the Visitors' Book.
I thought the man would have had an apoplectic fit there on the spot.
He rolled his eyes, dropped heavily upon a chair, and began to breathe
hard and short.
"Where--where--?" he gasped, and began to struggle again for breath.
I said, "For some reason or other the sight of this book distresses you,
and I think you had better not try to speak for a bit. I will tell you
exactly how the book came into my possession, and afterwards you can let
me have your side of the story, if you choose." And I told him just
what I have told the reader.