Doctor Syn on the High Seas - Thorndike Russell - Страница 1
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Doctor Syn on the High Seas
by
Russell Thorndike
1936
keyed by Connie Lewis
To the memory of
John Buchan
under whose auscpices Doctor Syn
was first published, I respectfully
dedicate this volume, which
completes the Doctor’s history
Contents
Prologue: The Syns o’Lydd ……………………….. 4
1 Doctor Syn Meets Mister Mips ……………………… 6
2 Doctor Syn Becomes a Squire of Dames ………………. 10
3 Doctor Syn Escapes ………………………………. 17
4 The Challenge …………………………………… 22
5 The Abduction …………………………………… 29
6 The Duel ……………………………………….. 33
7 The Friend of the Family …………………………. 51
8 The Elopement …………………………………… 54
9 The Dead Man ……………………………………. 61
10 The Odyssey Begins ………………………………. 62
11 Pirates ………………………………………… 71
12 Syn Buys a Body and Soul …………………………. 75
13 Redskins ……………………………………….. 83
14 Clegg’s Harpoon …………………………………. 93
15 Syn Hoists the Black Flag ………………………… 102
16 The Red-Bearded Planter ………………………….. 104
17 Clegg’s “Imogene” ……………………………….. 106
18 Mutiny …………………………………………. 107
19 The Mulatto …………………………………….. 109
20 The Return ……………………………………….
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Prologue
The Syns o’Lydd
Syn is a name synonymous with “law and order” upon Romney Marsh. The
Syns o’Lydd have been legal prolocutors and attorneys-at-law for
Marshmen since the old days when Thomas Wolsey raised the lofty
campanile of the parish church to heighten the glory of God in the
neighbourhood, and incidentally to typify his own ambition. No doubt a
Syn of those days was as useful to the Ipswich grazier’s son as other
Syns have been to native graziers upon the Marsh. Whenever they fell
into legal difficulties there was always a Syn to pull them out.
So: an ancient town, Lydd; and an ancient race, the Syns.
Prolific, too, as their massed ranks of tombstones in the churchyard
show; while their mural tablets in the church itself serve as a
testimony for all time to the family’s integrity and learnin g.
Go where you will in the neighbourhood, and rummage amongst old
chests and cupboards until you have collected a pile of legal documents,
ancient and modern, as high as Wolsey’s Tower, and you will indeed be
hard put to discover one parchment that does not show the signature of a
Syn attorney. Statutes, recognizances, fines, conveyance of land or
messuage, recoveries, easements, vouchers, testaments and bequests—the
signature of Syn appears upon them all.
Of comfortable means they always seem possessed. They inhabited the
most mellow houses in Lydd and the adjacent New Romney. While waiting
for clients, they purchased for themselves, until by judicious
bargaining they gradually acquired much fertile land, large flocks of
good wool, and such substantial homesteads that no other family could
boast of a more delectable name upon the Marsh.
When there were no more purchasable properties upon the Levels of the
Marsh, they lifted their eyes into the hills, carrying their territorial
conquests along the skyline from Aldington to Lympne. But when they
realized that no financial embarrassment could shift the ancient
Pemburys from their fastness of Lympne Castle, they pushed their own
family possessions inland, acquiring property in Bonnington, Bilsington
and Appledore, until there was even a Syn attorney secure in distant
Tenterden, possessing the best cellars and stables in that comfortable
sleepy town.
Now, the holding of land upon the hills gave to the Syns, as it did
to other Marshmen in like case, a sense of security, for
the reclaimed pasturage of Romney Marsh owed its existence to the
Dymchurch Wall, which held the sea in check. The slogan of
the Marsh, “Serve God, honour the King; but first maintain the Wall”,
showed that possible calamity wa s ever in their minds, and Marshmen like
to think they had a retreat in the uplands in the event of the sea
breaking through and overwhelming the lower Levels. As folk in face of
a common danger are apt to hang together, so did the Marshmen show a
loyalty to one another. But none were so clannish as the Syns. They
inter-married. Syn kith led Syn kin to the altar, and in due course
added further cousins to the Syns. But just as in the most fruitful
tree will sometimes have its barren period in all its
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branches, so did the Syn dynasty have its sterile age, and this in the
mid years of the eighteenth century, the time in which this history is
about to be
unfolded. Then were the Syns sadly depleted. Jacobite tendencies
caused the family to send their best blood to be spilled in the Young
Pretender’s cause. Then an epidemic of ague which swept the Marsh took
heavy toll, so that the Syns, who had in the past multiplied so
exceedingly and covered the lands of the Levels of Romney, Welland, and
Denge; the Syns who had covered as many dead sheepskins with ink as they
had covered living sheepskins with wool, found themselves ten years
after the “45” bereft of their good men and true, and represented only
by old Solomon Syn, attorney at Romney, and his nephew Christopher Syn,
the youngest Don at Queen’s College, Oxford, and the youngest Doctor of
Divinity in either of the Great Universities.
His father, Septimus Syn, had been clerk to the Lords of the Level of
Romney Marsh, under the magistracy of Sir Charles Cobtree, who resided
at the Court House of Dymchurch-under-the-Wall. A tall, thin and
austere man, this Septimus, who to all outward appearances was as dry as
the parchments over which he toiled. But beneath his legal dustiness
there must have been burned a bright spark of adventurous romance, for
at the outbreak of the “45” he cast aside his quills and sandbox,
buckled on his sword, and took ship to Scotland, where he joined the
Young Pretender’s force. He wisely left his wife and only child under
the joint guardianship of his elder brother Solomon and Sir Charles
Cobtree. Wisely, for with three of his brothers he was killed at
Culloden. His wife followed him to the grave the same year—of a broken
heart, it was said—and thus at the age of eighteen was Christopher Syn
an orphan. Besides his two excellent guardians, his parents had
bequeathed to him many other valuable assets: a sufficient sum of money
to insure his independence and a brain and personality capable of
improving with security.
In the year 1754, when this history begins, Christopher Syn was in his
twenty-fifth year, and, as resident classical tutor at Queen’s College,
was respected by his elders and popular with
his students. As his great friend Antony Cobtree told his father, Sir
Charles, at Dymchurch, “I owe my degree to Christopher’s patience and
perseverence. By applying the spur at the right moment he lifted me
over the hedges that barred my way to scholarship.”
Although beloved by all, the young Doctor, two years juni or to Tony
Cobtree, was a sombre, tragic figure. Eyes deep, piercing and alive.
Hair raven black. Tall, slim and weird, with a brooding melancholy that
faded only when he smiled, and that because his smile conveyed a
princely graciousness, and a pledge of loyal friendship to the fortunate
recipient. Yes, a man of classic beauty and strength well equipped to
face and overcome whatever fate might hold in store for him. As an
orator he was magnificent, for each spoken syllable claimed its utmost
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