Doctor Syn on the High Seas - Thorndike Russell - Страница 2
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value, and every phrase its place of full significance, and backed in
all its moods by expressive movements of his wonderful hands, whose
strong delicacy could express more than most men’s tongues. A
personality that could not fail to make its mark in any walk of li fe,
but was at present confined within the bounds of scholarship at Oxford
University, a Doctor of Divinity. A priest. But more than all a man of
high
romance.
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Chapter 1
Doctor Syn Meets Mister Mipps
On a misty morning of late Se ptember in the year 1754, young
Christopher Syn, D.D., was riding along the flat top of the Dymchurch
SeaWall in the direction of Lympne.
The Oxford Summer Vacation was drawing to its close, and he had spent
it happily, partly with his uncle, the red-faced, rotund and jovial
attorney at New Romney, and partly with his boon companion Tony Cobtree
at Sir Charles’ old Court-house at Dymchurch.
The young student left the seawall and cantered his horse along the
winding roads that crossed the Marsh. Eventually he reached the grassy
bridle-path which runs along the foot of the hills, and has been made in
years gone by for easy access from camp to camp by the Roman Legions.
On either side the path sloped steeply down into deep, broad dykes, fed
by the surface-water from the hills, but Syn’s tall grey horse picked
his way carefully. Meanwhile the sun, gathering strength, had dispersed
the mist from the hills, and above him he could see his objective—the
grim, frowning walls of Lympne Castle. He was on his way there to
oblige Sir Henry Pembury, who had sent a Castle servant the night before
to the Dymchurch Court-House, bearing a note requesting Doctor Syn to
wait upon the Lord of Lympne at his earliest convenience. Being an old
friend of his Uncle Solomon and a Justice of the Peace, the young cleric
had taken the first opportunity to comply, though neither himself nor
the Cobtrees could think why Sir Henry should thus summon him. Little
did he imagine that such a simple journey was to be the prelude of a
mighty Odyssey which would demand the abandonment of books and
scholarship for murderous adventures with gunpowder and steel.
Opposite the Castle Hill, the bridle-path sloped gently down till
level with the dyke-water, and it was here that a resolute horseman
could save himself a good mile’s detour by leaping the dyke. Knowing
what was required of him, the horse, at the first touch of his master’s
heel, thundered down the slope, and with a sideways jump cleared the
water with a good two foot to spare. Reining him in on the farther
side, Doctor Syn patted the horse’s neck and dismounted, and with the
bridle over his arm led the way up the steep meadow that swept down from
the Castle walls. Throughout the ascent, the man and horse threaded
their way between giant blocks of crumbling masonry—all that was left
of the great Roman Portus Lemanis. In some of these walls could yet be
seen the metal rings for mooring galleys, but the grim
bulwarks which had once held back the sea were now embedded in grass and
used as shelter by the grazing sheep.
Now, bright noon-time, with sun-rays sparkling upon dewy grass-blades
and a fine expanse of sea about one, is no time for a man to reuminate
on ghosts, of things long dead, and yet Doctor Syn fell to wondering
whether any Roman spectre yet mounted his guard in spirit form upon
these walls.
Hardly had this flight of fancy flown to his brain when a sharp voice
belonging to some invisible shape cried out the challenge, “Who goes
there? I knows you. Halt and put yo ur hands above your head.”
Doctor Syn halted, not so much from fear as from astonishment. He
looked hard at the ruined bastion he was approaching, and from which the
voice had issued, but could see nothing unusual.
“Now, then,” went on the voice. “Hands up, I said and I don’t see ‘em
up. No humbug now. I knows you and you knows me.”
“Whom do you take me for?” asked Doctor Syn politely.
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“For what you are, of course,” came the indignant answer: “the new
Riding Officer at Sandgate—grey horse and all, and dressed like an
undertaker. Well, you won’t undertake me, because I ain’t a -going to be
undertook.”
It was then that Doctor Syn noticed the brass bell of a blunderbuss
wobbling at him through a fissure in the wall.
“Whom do you take me for?” says you, all innocent like,” went on the
voice sarcastically. ‘“The ruddy Customs,’ says I, ‘who goes spying
round traverns and listening to the talk of poor drunkards in order to
get on my track.”‘ And what for? Why, for having given a hand with a
tub or two to help the Dymchurch lads to a drink or two. We’ve had
about enough of you ruddy Riding Officers, and I for one aint’ standing
much more.”
“And I for another am not standing insult from any man, blunderbuss
or not,” replied Syn sharply. “You call me a Custom man, do you? Well,
as a Marshman born and bred, I take that as an insult—a ruddy insult,
as you seem to like that adjective. You, no doubt, are the Mister Mipps
who works in Wraight’s boatbuilding yard at Dymchurch-under-the-Wall. I
know all about you from my friend Tony Cobtree, the Squire’s son.
You’re a carpenter by trade and a smuggler by profit. I am no smuggler
myself, perhaps for lack of opportunity, by my people, the Syns o’ Lyd,
have saved many a one from the gallows.”
A whistle of astonishment came from the other side of the wall, and
the blunderbluss was withdrawn. “Ah, well, then, there’s no quarrel,
and I’ve been most damnably mistook in you, for which I asks your
honour’s pardon. A Syn o’ Lydd, are you? Then you’ll be old Mister
Solomon’s nephew, no doubt.”
“Quite right. They call me Doctor Syn.”
“What? A sawbones?”
“No, a parson. Come out of that fortification and shake hands.”
“Not me, even though you ain’t the ruddy Customs,” replied the voice.
“No showing myself on no skylines in case ruddy Customs does appear.
Step in, and I’ll give you as good a drink as ever you tasted. But I
ain’t coming out.”
“I approve your caution, Mister Mipps,” laughed the parson. “I’ll
come in, and if the drink you mention has not paid Customs it will of
necessity taste the sweeter.”
So Doctor Syn, after tying his bridle to a ring in the wall, walked
into the ruined bastion.
Mister Mipps gave the young parson the impression that had he not
been bor n a man, he would have been bred a ferret, for the most striking
feature in the little fellow was his nose—long, thin, and inquisitivelooking. As though to balance it, his hair, though scanty, was dragged
back and twisted into a tarred queue which stuck out at the back. In
addition, Mipps proved to be very thin, very small, dressed like a
sailor, and carrying an atmosphere of important impertinence. And,
again like a ferret, he was quick in movement and comically commanding.
“Glad to make your acquai ntance, Mister Mipps,” said the parson,
holding out his hand.
Mipps wiped his on the skirt of his coat and welcomed his guest with
a hard grip. He then removed the bung from a hand anker of brandy, a
neat little cask bound with brass hoops. Doctor Syn drank with relish,
and returned the anker. Mipps in his turn drank deep.
“Good brandy never hurt nobody,” he grinned.
“No, not even a parson,” replied the Doctor with a smile.
“And I drinks to the Syns o’Lydd,” said Mipps, handing the anker back
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