The golden kingdom; being an account of the quest for the same as described in the remarkable narrative of Doctor Henry Mortimer

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CHAPTER

I. THE MAN IN THE SNOW . .

II. CORKRAN THE COXSWAIN .

Chapter I The Man In The Snow

It was in very truth a vile night, the vilest of the winter, and that winter no green yule-tide. I was weary, and had been wet ; all day in the saddle, my grey mare fetlock deep in slush and snow, and the saddle-bags, damp and soaking, swinging against my knees till my very joints were stiff. Weary, and a trifle out of spirits at the dull round of life, the prosaic duties of a village leech, the empty house which had greeted my return, and above all the thought that when others rested from their labours I was yet in harness. Mistress Pumphret, the squire’s lady, was taken with an ague and like to die, so that at any moment there might come a rat-a-tat at the oak, which would mean for me a weary trudge with lanthorn and lancet, and no cosy bed and sound slumber.

“ A poor, drab, colourless life,” thought I, and yet God knows I did wrong to complain, however silently. Was I not in a wellpadded chair, stretched, for the nonce, at my ease before the blazing logs, doors and windows fast, the hangings drawn, a steaming tankard of ale, spiced and mulled, at my elbow, a clay stem between my teeth, and, above all, my leather-bound friends to keep me company ? Nay, more, was I not young and strong, free from ache and pain, with no thought of woman, with no sick child, and so inured to wrestling with death and striving to ease pain that the woes of my few patients did not harass my resting hours? Beyond doubt I was a surly dog, surly and ill-con¬ ditioned, but — for there is ever a but — it was just because the life blood coursed strong and full in my veins, just because my brain was ever busy, and that I hankered after change as a lass after her lover, just because I was in some manner a fool, that I had become thus tinctured with the bile of melancholy.

I placed the long churchwarden on the little table, sent a stream of blue smoke towards the low ceiling, and gat me to my books, taking that which came the handiest, and on which I had been busy on account of the squire’s lady, who was in the grip of the fell fen fever. It was a bulky tome in the Latin tongue, but with a prefix which set forth that the learned writing came from the brain and pen of Rhazes the Arabian. It had cost me a fair sum at Leyden in the days when, having finished my apprentice¬ ship, I had taken ship across seas and studied in the schools of Holland. Great times were these, with companions to my liking ; but now, beyond the vicar, a fat man and fifty, much wedded and needing my services each year with a monotonous regularity, I had not a kindred spirit in the parish — the broad, flat, inland parish of sluggish streams and sluggish men.

The title, deep-stamped and gilded, caught my eye. The book was a treatise on the fevers and febriculse of swamps, marshes, and morasses, and the very words bore a dreary significance. Had I not ridden past such all day and every day, miserable stretches, with here and there the pollard oaks shooting long, bare branches upwards from their snow-capped boles, frozen wastes where boomed the bittern and over which hovered the starving hawk? There came the sough of wind in the wide chimney, and the patter of hail upon the window glass. I stared at my jack-boots, reeking and toasting on the hearth, shivered as though one were treading on my grave, and reached for the tankard. Ere ever it touched my lips, however, I paused, for a sound struck upon my ears — the sound of singing. No words could I hear as yet, merely a burden of song welling up in the darkness without, but full of a weird merriment. “ Mercy on us ! ” quoth I ; “ what strange wight is this who traverses the

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village street on such a night and in such a mood ? ” I placed the tankard beside the pipe and hearkened diligently. It was a man’s voice, full and rich, yet with every now and then a hiccoughing catch in the notes which but intensified the pureness and volume of such as sounded true. I had heard singing at many a verbindung and merry gathering of roystering students, but never so queer a mixture of rollicking mirth, of fearsome eerieness, and yet through it all there ran the plaintive whine of the ballad-monger. The voice was for the most part magnificent, the air itself had something unholy about it, but it was not till I heard the words of a verse that I sprang from my chair and the hair bristled on my head.

There is no doubt I was tired and overwrought, for, after all, there was nought so very terrible about them, yet hearing them for the first time as I did, miles from the sea, on a wild night, in a still and lonely village street, they set my nerves quivering like the strings of a harp struck by strong fingers.

A blatter of frozen snow dashed on the panes, drowning the sense of the song which was taking shape and meaning, and then as the storm lulled a moment, the voice swelled out close at hand, beginning with a jerk and crack as though forced from a harsh windpipe by some rack and handle, and then swinging into time and measure, powerful, mellow, and deep-throated :

Sing hey ! for the grin on the dead man’s face,

For the slicing knife and the lean carcase,

For the bird with the beak and the last man left,

For the stranded boat and the shark bereft.

Yo, ho, ho !

Let the dead men go To Davy Jones, who waits below.

Before the last line was at an end I had dragged the hangings aside, undone the shutters which were fitted on the inner side of the window, and was gazing out into the darkness. A gleam of candlelight shot past me and made a chequered pattern of the lozenged panes on the stretch of white which mantled the erst¬ while muddy street. All else was black as ink, but as I gazed the bent figure of a man came stealing into the yellow triangle, and a sing-song voice besought me for succour.

“ An alms, for the love o’ Christ, and of your charity ! ” cried the man in the snow.

Heaven knows I was for shutting out all sight and sound of him, being chilled to the marrow by the horror of his lay ; but as I hesitated he came straight towards the window at a shuffling run and pressed his face close up against it, raising both arms, and clawing at the casement as though he would force an entrance in spite of me. Men say we surgeons grow callous, that we become hardened to the sight of suffering, and that our bowels of compassion are dried up, save in so far as we are forced to make pretence for the sake of filthy lucre.

In some measure it may be so, but what sent me to the door that night to usher in so undesired a guest was the look of wolfish hunger in the man’s eyes as his lean face stared into mine.

Had I not turned the key and shot back the bolt that look would have haunted me till my dying day, though for that matter I had been spared the strangest of strange adventurings and the writing of these remembrances, which none may ever scan. If such be not their fate, let the reader judge whether or no he would have had me set the door open with hands which trembled, though not with haste, the while I half feared to meet the creature who, in the dead of night, with footfall muffled by the snow, and in the most astonishing of voices, was seeking his sus¬ tenance by a wild song of the sea from an inland folk who slumbered.

The chill air smote me as I set my head without the porch, where in the summer roses climbed and clustered, an angry gust quenched the flame of the candle I had carried with me, and then something slid softly past my elbow, and as I turned I saw a man’s figure vanish within my own door, which was immediately closed and locked and bolted.

So sudden and startling was the change, that I stood stock still in astonishment.

A moment before I had been about to play the host, the good Samaritan, and now by all that was unchancy I was standing in my own porch in small shoes and bare-headed on the dirtiest night of the year, and my own door had been shut in my face. The tables were turned with a vengeance. The ballad-monger was tenant of the cottage, and I, its rightful occupier for five lean seasons, was cooling perceptibly without it. Cooling in body, but in a mental fume at the scurviness of the trick. “ Malediction on the rogue ! ” I muttered ; and again, “ Confound the rascal ! ” The odds were so plainly with him. There was a door at the back, but it was barred, and old Dame Pottinger, who cooked and cleaned for me, slept elsewhere, coming in the morning and going at night. There was no one else in the house but this mysterious villain, in whose eyes burned the light of hunger. The windows I had myself fastened from within ; there was no feasible access from the roof ; I could not descend a chimney. By all the fiends ! what was I to do ? I did the last thing that was to be expected — I burst into a shout of laughter not wholly mirthful, It was promptly answered from within the door.

“ Hee, hee ! ” came a rasping chuckle, and again “ Hee, hee ! ” and then the curious, creaking throat-jerk which I knew heralded a song, followed by another verse of the infernal ditty, sung this time with an air of unmistakable triumph :

Sing hey ! for the lad on the lonely isle,

For the signal flag and the firing pile,

For the knife-notched stick and the sail at last.

For the lass at home and the perils past.

Yo, ho, ho I Let the mariner go,

For it’s Jack that can tell what the sea doth show.

Let the merry man go,

Fuddled above and primed below.

At the outset the melody was close and clear, but towards the end it grew fainter as though receding, and I knew the man had left the passage and was making for my well-warmed room. A second later he was within it, and as the verse concluded, I judged he was somewhere near the hearth, the table, and, a plague on his impudence ! my nightcap of sound old ale. In a twinkling I had run to the window, the snow soaking to my feet, the bitter blast making my ears tingle and searching to my very vitals, for I had no cloak or cover-coat. It was now my turn to thrust my face to the glass, to feel the hail strike on the nape of my neck, to experience it melting on my hair and trickling down between the neck-band of my shirt and my creeping skin. There was my own chamber plain before my eyes, though somewhat gloomy, save near the fireplace.

One candle I had taken with me, the other scarce served to dispel the shadows ; but, aided by the ruddy glow from the faggots, it was sufficient to show me quite enough for my pur¬ poses. A bare-headed man stood with his back to the fire, to my fire ! — and such a man. His hair, of which I could not discern the colour, was a tousled mass like a ship’s mop; the side of his face on which the light fell was of the leanest; his nose long and high ; his cheek hollow, as though sucked in by his breath ; his chin sharp and protruding ; his mouth, a slit ; and the hue of the whole skin something between a rich copper and the whitey-brown of a rotten apple. From beneath his chin a beard depended, a straight straggle of grey hair like that of a billy-goat, and there was something set in it which glittered in the candlelight.

For the nonce I paid no attention to the fellow’s clothes. I was wholly absorbed with the half of his visage which was visible, and the grin which sat upon it. For the man was grinning, gloating over the prospect before him; and as I watched he stretched out an arm of surprising length, as I noticed even then, and seizing the tankard, hove it upwards to his mouth, tilted it towards the ceiling, and quaffed its contents at one huge gulp. Replacing the plain metal mug, he passed the back of one hand across his lips, and, as I am a truthful mortal, picked up the pipe — my pipe ! — and hastily sniffing at the bowl commenced to pull at the stem with the utmost satisfaction, continuing the smoke where I had relinquished it, for the weed was still alight and glowing. This was too much, however, and I tapped loudly on the glass with my knuckles, and called out with a fine effort at sarcasm :

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“Your pardon, my good sir, but you will find a fresh pipe in the cupboard, and a fresh fill in the jar shaped like a negro’s head upon the mantelshelf.”

His answer came readily enough.

“ Ay, ay, my master, and is that so ? Well, this is good enough, I trow, for a poor devil who has not whiffed for a week ; only the stem is a trifle unhandy, and my stumps do not fit the grooves of your sharp ivories, so here goes ! ”

With that, and all this time he had continued to look straight in front of him — with that, I say, he snapped the pipe stem some two inches from the bowl, stuck the stump into his slit of a mouth, and fell a-puffing once more with great good humour.

For a moment a surge of anger swept through me, and I was for smashing glass and frame, and bundling through and making for his scraggy throat. Somehow I knew it to be scraggy, though his coat collar was turned up and hid it. The mood passed as quickly as it came — my sense of humour saved me, for in all this there was something ridiculous in the extreme. The smug look, the broken pipe, the empty mug, myself disconsolate, the villain triumphant — it was inimitable 1 Furthermore, I had it in my heart to love this rascal, despite his confounded familiarity. We had not a thorough blackguard in the whole parish, nothing but drab respectability, with a most genteel church-going and an insufferable dulness over all. Clods ! clods like the earth they hoed and ploughed, good honest fellows full of beef and ale, and garbed in homespun and rig and furrow hosen, but not a rogue amongst them. And the women ! Well, I had no eye for them, though now and then, as I knew, one was weak, as is the way with maids. I scarce blamed such, so great the monotony of their colourless lives, and God knows they were not evil nor the lads real miscreants, though at times sots and selfish. To be sure, the squire drank like a fish and looked like it; but, Lord love you ! he was nothing but a pesky bore with his eternal vapourings anent his great stallion, and how to feed cattle, and how his old dame fared. No, we had not a thoroughpaced scoundrel in all Bishop-Solingford except — and of this I was very certain — the man with the mahogany face and the glittering speck in his beard who was making so free with my belongings.

My rage vanished and again I laughed — laughed till I shook and the tears came to my eyes, and the more I laughed the less could I stop laughing. What added to my merriment was to see this sailor man (for by this time I had taken in the cut of his coat and the sheen of his buttons) pick up the learned tome. “ Here is something he will scarce digest so well as my nut-brown,” thought I, and then became wholly afraid for the first time since I had clapped eyes on his face, for I perceived that the pipe had gone out and that he was seeking the wherewithal to light it.

The one thing on earth that I loved was my stock of vellum and of leather and of manuscript, and to see this fellow about to tear out a page, and that not the fly-leaf nor the blank at the end, was more than I could stand. I raised my elbow to drive it through a lozenge, and then I paused irresolute, even as the man had paused. He was no longer holding the book carelessly and at a distance, but was peering at it intently, turning it so that the candle should illumine the type, and to all appearance reading it with understanding. Here was a new marvel, that this rough rip, this shell-back, this old man of the ocean could master an ancient and foreign tongue, could find an interest in a treatise as ponderous as the volume which contained it !

He turned the leaves quickly, the pipe fell from his mouth, his lips worked, his forefinger traced the lines. It was plain he was familiar with the Latin, and equally plain that he had no great acquaintance with books, and followed the sense with difficulty.

Suddenly he sought the title-page, whereon, as I remembered, my name was written, along with the date and place where I had acquired the tome, and — for I was careful in money matters — the price I had paid for it. He scanned it all, and then laid the book on the table almost reverently.

“ If you have done,” I shouted, “ I would be glad to join you at the fire,” for of a verity the cold was becoming unbearable.

For the first time he turned his full face in my direction, and I saw he lacked an ear on one side, and had a livid scar running from his outer eye angle to where his auricle should have been.

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The grin was gone ; he was sombre in aspect and somewhat fierce in expression.

“ Fair and softly, Doctor Henry Mortimer,” said he, “ fair and softly, my young master; there is to be somewhat of a bargain between us ere ever you melt the snow from between your toes.”

He came towards the window as he spoke, and so long were his arms that, as they hung by his sides, his finger tips reached well below his knees. His manner of speech surprised me. I had expected his converse to be as rough as his outer man, but such was not the case. His voice was harsh indeed, as though sea salt had got into his weasand and formed a crust upon its walls ; but his manner of speaking was what is common amongst gentlemen, although he had to talk loudly for me to hear him.

“A bargain!” I cried; “it will be sufficient if we call quits, I fancy. You have amused me hugely, but - ”

“There it is,” said he; “you have hit upon it, Doctor Henry. I like your spirit, else you might have shivered out there till cockcrow for all I cared.”

“ Gad, sir ! ” said I, “you take things coolly; let me tell you that if I wished I could precious quickly have a pack of decent men hustling you to a pretty tune.”

“ Ho, ho ! ” he cried, “ so you think so, do you ? Well, I have heard the like before. Hustling, say you ; but to hustle one must be fairly near, and what think you of these barkers, Doctor Henry ? ”

He threw open his coat, and as I live, his naked skin con¬ fronted me ; no undervest, no shirt, no singlet, nothing but a narrow sash of red above his baggy breeches, and the butts of two pistols sticking upwards from its folds.

“Man!” I cried, “you must have been perished with the cold I ”

His face softened perceptibly, and he grinned again.

“You may say so,” he shouted, “and yet I have stood worse ere my beard was this colour,” and he plucked at his straggle of grey hairs, and fingered the little ornament set therein.

“ And the bargain ? ” said I.

“ To be sure, the bargain,” he rejoined. “ Stap me ! but you are a good lad, and I have half a mind to waive the privilege of my position.”

“ I would willingly waive mine,” I answered.

“ So I should suppose ; but all I ask is what one Christian should give another, a night’s lodging, food,” and here his voice grew eager, “ food, and a trifle in the way of underclothes.”

“And for this,” I cried, “you have put me to inconvenience?”

“Believe me, I regret it,” he answered; “but it is better to dictate than to beg. God knows ! ” he growled with a sudden burst of fury, “ I have begged enough from these labouring swine. Had I known you were what you are my conduct had been more civil, but I was famishing, famishing in Merry England, Merry England ! ” and he threw back his head and laughed bitterly. Then he motioned me towards the porch, and a moment later I again faced him, but with nothing between us.

“ Lead the way, sir,” said he, and, determined to show no sign of fear, I slipped past him and entered my own room, still clutching the unlighted candle, and with my feet sopping wet. He followed me in and shut the door, affording me an excellent opportunity to seize him by the nape of the neck had I so wished. Instead, I made for the fire and threw myself into my chair.

He came and stood again with his back to the logs, and I surveyed him to better advantage. The man was a scarecrow. His hair was coarse and of a reddish tint, his coat a dingy blue, frayed at the cuffs, and with the tails cut off. His breeches, of some sad yellow colour, were very wide, patched in a dozen places, and fastened below the knees with faded ribbons of puce, which formed a knot of ends and tags where they were tied. The skin of his lean shanks peeped through his stockings, which had once been green, and his miserable shoes were void of buckles and worn away at the heels. Such a tatterdemalion I had never seen, but the man looked hardy. He was of great breadth, too broad for his height, and his chest was both deep and long. His legs, though thin, were bowed in a way I have often noticed makes for strength in certain frames. Still, looking at him critically, I felt convinced I could master him in a fair tussle, for I was no chicken, and not yet over thirty, while this sea dog was a man who would never see fifty winters. The thought put another idea in my head.

“Your bargain, captain,” said I, giving him the first title that came into my mind, “ was a little weak in one particular.”

“ Indeed,” he answered with a droll smile, “ and that is ? ”

“You did not stipulate as to your own safety.”

“ Why, no, doctor,” he said in a strangely dreamy voice, “ why, no ; you see ” — he stopped and seemed confused — “ you see,” he went on, “ I have been accustomed to look,” he spoke with diffi¬ culty, “ to look after myself,” and having so said his eyes grew fixed and lost all expression, he tilted on to his toes, and before I could catch him pitched forward upon the floor, narrowly missing the table-edge with his forehead as he fell.

Chapter II Corkran The Coxswain

As I have hinted, I sprang to his aid, but was too late to prevent him thudding on a dog-skin which covered the floor boards close to where he had been standing. What had foiled me in the effort was the suddenness of his collapse, but what kept me from at once kneeling beside him and feeling for his heart-beat was a very horrible thing which happened as he struck the planking and the mat — his whole head of hair fell away from his skull ! That alone would have been nothing. It was plain to me at once that the reddish mop was but a counterfeit, a remarkably wellmade wig, but what kept me rigid and motionless was the astound¬ ing fact, believe it or not as you will, that the man had no scalp ! It was in very truth his skull with which the hairy mass had parted company. Still, the bones were covered, shrouded by the remnants of the integuments, which were like a tightly-stretched piece of dark and mottled parchment. Upon the skin were little eminences, for what had been the veins and other vessels were now dried and bunched and withered into fibrous cords, for all the world like the castings of sea-worms upon smooth sea sand. I had become accustomed to many gruesome scenes, but I con¬ fess the sight of that head shocked me, coming as it did after the remarkable episodes of a remarkable half-hour.

I recovered quickly, and was moved to pity and admiration at one and the same time. If the man had looked shabby from the front, he looked even shabbier now that he lay prone, and the wretched attempts to preserve decency, ay, and cohesion, in his nether garments were disclosed in full. It was clear to me why his coat tails had vanished — they had gone to the patching of his breeches. His plight stirred me to compassion, but the bold front he put upon his misery, the cavaliering way he had usurped my hearthstone, the reckless courage of the man who had borne himself like a swaggering bravo when he must have felt this fainting fit, if, indeed, it was not death itself, stealing upon him, excited my admiration. Yet only for a moment. I thought upon the empty tankard, I remembered that his eyes had glittered like the bauble in his beard, and then it seemed very plain to me that much of his bravado was due to my strong, hot ale swilled upon an empty stomach. Still, to give him due credit, his performances had begun with the swigging of my drink and the smoking of my pipe, both singularly impertinent actions, and curiously enough, very far removed from the gentlemanly behaviour he had exhibited when, to my mind, under the influence of liquor.

However that might be, there he lay, and it was my duty as a man, to say nothing of my leechship, to see what could be done for him.

I knelt by his side, but did not turn him upon his back, for if his heart still beat, its tapping between his ribs was best discovered in his present position. I therefore thrust my hand beneath him, slid it within the flaps of his coat, and applied my palm to the prsecordia. For a moment I felt no impact, and was for looking at his pupils and getting a glass to his lips, but presently there came a fluttering under my fingers, and I found the apex beat in a rib interspace. I tested his pulse, and it was present, though very feeble. The vital spark was not yet quenched, the man was merely in a swoon.

I had the curiosity to examine his head hurriedly. A knife, swept neatly from occiput to occiput, had no doubt severed the ghastly trophy ; indeed, a few grey hairs adhered to what was left and told me his beard was not, like his top thatch, a counterfeit. Rising, I crossed hastily to my cupboard and poured out a tass of brandy, and into it I dropped a few minims of the strong I )utch tincture of asafcetida, the which I opine has a smell suffi¬ cient to bring back most folk from the confines of the grave. I got him on his back, supported him, and had infinite difficulty in forcing the dose down his gullet, but with patience I succeeded. The effect was not slow in making itself felt. Then — and I recall this with some pleasure — I had the delicacy to replace his wig, which made an extraordinary difference to his visage. The man coughed and spluttered as the last drops trickled over his tongue, his eyelids flickered, and he heaved a sigh which was half a groan. I pressed upon the ridge above his eye, close to the root of his nose, and the stimulus did good. He raised his arm as if to defend himself.