". . . staying with his wife and one son, a tall young fellow, aged
about twenty-one, maybe. They came from Liverpool--and they had a yacht
with them, that they kept in Port William harbour, anchored just below
the bridge. She would be about thirty tons--a very pretty boat.
They had only one hired hand for crew; used to work her themselves for
the most part; the lady was extraordinary clever at the helm, or at the
sheets either. Very quiet people they were. You might see them most
days that summer, anchored out on the whiting grounds. What was she
called? The _Queen of Sheba_--cutter-rigged-quite a new boat.
It was said afterwards that the owner, Mr. Blake, designed her himself.
She used often to drop anchor off Penleven. Know her? Why of course
I'd know her; 'specially considerin' what happened.
"'What was that?' A very sad case; it made a lot of talk at the time.
One day--it was the third of September, '86--Mr. and Mrs. Blake and the
son, they anchored off the haven and came up here to tea. I supposed at
the time they'd left their paid hand, Robertson, on board; but it turned
out he was left home at Port William that day, barkin' a small mainsail
that Mr. Blake had bought o' purpose for the fishin'. Well, Mrs. Blake
she ordered tea, and while my missus was layin' the cloth young Mr.
Blake he picks up that very book, sir, that was lyin' on the sideboard,
and begins readin' it and laffin'. My wife, she goes out of the room
for to cut the bread-and-butter, and when she comes back there was the
two gentlemen by the window studyin' the book with their backs to the
room, and Mrs. Blake lyin' back in the chair I'm now sittin' on, an' her
face turned to the wall--so. The young Mr. Blake he turns round and
says, 'This here's a very amusin' book, Mrs. Job. Would you mind my
borrowing it for a day or two to copy out some of the poetry?
I'll bring it back next time we put into Penleven.' Of course my wife
says, 'No, she didn't mind.' Then the elder Mr. Blake he says,
'I see you had a visitor here yesterday--a Mr. MacGuire. Is he in the
house?' My wife said, 'No; the gentleman had left his traps, but he'd
started that morning to walk to Port William to spend the day.'
Nothing more passed. They had their tea, and paid for it, and went off
to their yacht. I saw that book in the young man's hand as he went down
the passage.
"Well, sir, it was just dusking in as they weighed and stood up towards
Port William, the wind blowing pretty steady from the south'ard.
At about ten minutes to seven o'clock it blew up in a sudden little
squall--nothing to mention; the fishing-boats just noticed it, and that
was all. But it was reckoned that squall capsized the _Queen of Sheba_.
She never reached Port William, and no man ever clapped eyes on her
after twenty minutes past six, when Dick Crego declares he saw her off
the Blowth, half-way towards home, and going steady under all canvas.
The affair caused a lot of stir, here and at Port William, and in the
newspapers. Short-handed as they were, of course they'd no business to
carry on as they did--'specially as my wife declares from her looks that
Mrs. Blake was feelin' faint afore they started. She always seemed to
me a weak, timmersome woman at the best; small and ailin' to look at."
"And Mr. Blake?"
"Oh, he was a strong-made gentleman: tall, with a big red beard."
"The son?"
"Took after his father, only he hadn't any beard; a fine upstanding
pair."
"And no trace was ever found of them?"
"Not a stick nor a shred."
"But about this Visitors' Book? You'll swear they took it with them?
See, there's not a stain of salt-water upon it."
"No, there isn't; but I'll swear young Mr. Blake had it in his hand as
he went from my door."
I said, "Mr. Job, I've kept you already too long from your dinner.
Go and eat, and ask them to send in something for me. Afterwards, I
want you to come with me and take a look at my yacht, that is lying just
outside the haven."
As we started from the shore Mr. Job, casting his eyes over the _Siren_,
remarked, "That's a very pretty yawl of yours, sir." As we drew nearer,
he began to eye her uneasily.
"She has been lengthened some five or six feet," I said; "she was a
cutter to begin with."
"Lord help us!" then said Mr. Job, in a hoarse whisper. "She's the
_Queen of Sheba_. I'd swear to her run anywhere--ay, or to that queer
angle of her hawse-holes."
A close examination confirmed Mr. Job that my yacht was no other than
the lost _Queen of Sheba_, lengthened and altered in rig. It persuaded
me, too. I turned back to Plymouth, and, leaving the boat in
Cattewater, drove to the Millbay Station and took a ticket for Bristol.
Arriving there just twenty-four hours after my interview with Mr. Job, I
made my way to Mrs. Carlingford's lodgings.
She had left them two years before; nothing was known of her
whereabouts. The landlady could not even tell me whether she had moved
from Bedminster: And so I had to let the matter rest.
But just fourteen days ago I received the following letter, dated from a
workhouse in one of the Midland counties:--
"DEAR SIR,--I am a dying woman, and shall probably be dead before
this reaches you. The doctor says he cannot give me forty-eight
hours. It is _angina pectoris_, and I suffer horribly at times.
The yacht you purchased of me is not the _Wasp_, but the _Queen of
Sheba_. My husband designed her. He was a man of some property
near Limerick; and he and my son were involved in some of the
Irish troubles between 1881 and 1884. It was said they had joined
one of the brotherhoods, and betrayed their oaths. This I am sure
was not true. But it is certain we had to run for fear of
assassination. After a year in Liverpool we were forced to fly
south to Port William, where we brought the yacht and lived for
some time in quiet, under our own names. But we knew this could
not last, and had taken measures to escape when need arose.
My husband had chanced, while at Liverpool, upon an old yacht,
dismantled and rotting in the Mersey--but of about the same size as
his own and still, of course, upon the register. He bought her
of her owner--a Mr. Carlingford, and a stranger--for a very few
pounds, and with her--what he valued far more--her papers; but he
never completed the transfer at the Custom House. His plan was, if
pressed, to escape abroad, and pass his yacht off as the _Wasp_, and
himself as Mr. Carlingford. All the while we lived at Port William
the _Queen of Sheba_ was kept amply provisioned for a voyage of at
least three weeks, when the necessity overtook us, quite suddenly--
the name of a man, MacGuire, in the Visitors' Book of a small inn at
Penleven. We left Penleven at dusk that evening, and held steadily
up the coast until darkness. Then we turned the yacht's head, and
ran straight across for Morlaix; but the weather continuing fine for
a good fortnight (our first night at sea was the roughest in all
this time), we changed our minds, cleared Ushant, and held right
across for Vigo; thence, after re-victualling, we cruised slowly
down the coast and through the Straits, finally reaching Malaga.
There we stayed and had the yacht lengthened. My husband had sold
his small property before ever we came to Port William, and had
managed to invest the whole under the name of Carlingford.
There was no difficulty about letters of credit. At each port on the
way we had shown the Wasp's papers, and used the name of
Carlingford; and at Lisbon we read in an English newspaper about the
supposed capsizing of the _Queen of Sheba_. Still, we had not only
to persuade the officials at the various ports that our boat was the
_Wasp_. We knew that our enemies were harder to delude, and our
next step was to make her as unlike the _Wasp_ or the _Queen of
Sheba_ as possible. This we did by lengthening her and altering her
rig. But it proved useless, as I had always feared it would.
The day after we sailed from Malaga, a Spanish-speaking seaman, whom
we had hired there as extra hand, came aft as if to speak to my
husband (who stood at the wheel), and, halting a pace or two from
him, lifted a revolver, called him by name, and shot him dead.
Before he could turn, my son had knocked him senseless, and in
another minute had tumbled him overboard. We buried my husband
in the sea, next day. We held on, we two alone, past Gibraltar--
I steering and my son handling all the sails--and ran up for Cadiz.
There we made deposition of our losses, inventing a story to account
for them, and my son took the train for Paris, for we knew that our
enemies had tracked the yacht, and there would be no escape for him
if he clung to her. I waited for six days, and then engaged a crew
and worked the yacht back to F--. I have never since set eyes on my
son; but he is alive, and his hiding is known to myself and to one
man only--a member of the brotherhood, who surprised the secret.
To keep that man silent I spent all my remaining money; to quiet him
I had to sell the yacht; and now that money, too, is gone, and I am
dying in a workhouse. God help my son now! I deceived you, and yet
I think I did you no great wrong. The yacht I sold you was my own,
and she was worth the money. The figures on the beam were cut there
by my husband before we reached Vigo, to make the yacht correspond
with the _Wasp's_ certificate. If I have wronged you, I implore
your pardon.--Yours truly,
"CATHERINE BLAKE."
Well, that is the end of the story. It does not, I am aware, quite
account for the figure I saw standing by the _Siren's_ wheel. As for
the _Wasp_, she has long since rotted to pieces on the waters of the
Mersey. But the question is, Have I a right to sell the _Siren?_
I certainly have a right to keep her, for she is mine, sold to me in due
form by her rightful owner, and honestly paid for. But then I don't
want to keep her!