The Collected Fiction of William Hope Hodgson: The Dream Of X & Other Fantastic Visions (48 page)

After this little episode, the cap’n once more returned to his peculiar method of slumbering; but there was no longer any whispering on the part of Long John Kenstone and his mates. Instead, a quite uncomfortable silence reigned in the tap-room, broken presently by the departing feet of this man
and that man, until the place was empty, save for the fat landlord who leaned
against the great beer-tub, and regarded the sleeping captain in a meditative and puzzled fashion.

The landlord’s pondering was interrupted disagreeably; for slowly one of the sleeping captain’s eyes opened, and a curiously disturbing look was fixed silently upon the fat landlord, for the space of perhaps a full minute.
Then Captain Danblasten extended a great hand towards the landlord, and
in the hand was one of his big brass-bound pistols, the muzzle towards the Master Drinquobier. For a little space the captain directed the pistol thus,
whilst the landlord shrivelled visibly in a queer speechless fashion.

“Tenons de la verge d’une ancre!” said Captain Danblasten, even as he had
said it once before that evening. He tapped the pistol with his other hand, to emphasise his remark; and sat up on the bigger chest, still looking at the landlord.

“So,” he said, at last, speaking in English, “you’re thinkin’ to go halves with Long John o’ Kenstone, ye gowk tunbelly. You’m waitin’ now, beer-
hog, to give them the signal to enter when I’m gone over, ye swine; and think to fool Dan Danblasten easyways; and I knowin’ what ye meant, an’ they
only without in the enter-porch, ye fat fool. Out with you, smartly! Out, I say!” And therewith he flung the leaded pistol at the landlord’s head; but he
dodged, quite cleverly for so fat a man, and the weapon exploded against the wall with a great crash of sound; whilst Drinquobier ran heavily for the door,
tore it open, and fell headlong out into the passage-way, whilst within the empty tap-room, the captain sat on the chest and shook with a kind of grim
laughter.

Presently, he rose from the chest, after he had heard the landlord go
scrambling away in clumsy fright upon his hands and knees. He stood a few moments, listening intently; then, seeming to hear something, he ran with surprising nimbleness to the door, pushed it silently to, and set down the
socket-bar across from side to side, so that the door would have to be broken
down before anyone could enter. Then he bent forward to listen, and in a little while, heard the faint sound of bare feet without in the passage, and soon a soft, gentle fumbling at the door.

“Dépasser!” he shouted, roaring with a kind of half-laughter, half-anger.
Then, in English: “You’ve over-run your reckoning, my lads! Get below an’ turn in!” And with the word, he turned unconcernedly from the door, and went back to his rough couch, and presently was sleeping unemotionally,
whilst without the door, the men who had come with some hope of sur
prising him, departed with muffled but considerable fluency, and an
unabated avarice.

And thus, and in this manner exactly, was the home-coming of Captain
Danblasten, Pirate (presumably), and now (certainly) a most desirable citi
zen of the Port of Geddley.

Captain Danblasten waked early, and rolled off his uncomfortable bed.
He walked across to the shelf where the brandy-kegs were stored, and helped himself to a generous tot; after which he went over to the door, unbarred and
opened it, and bellowed the landlord’s name, calling him also old tunbelly and beer-hog, and cursing him between whiles in both French and English
until he came tumbling down the creaking stairs, in a very fluster of dismay.

Breakfast, was Cap’n Danblasten’s demand. Breakfast, and speedily and
plentifully; and if the maids were not up yet, then it was time they turned out, or old tunbelly could prepare the meal himself and serve it to him there
in the tap-room, upon one of his big chests. Meanwhile, he applied himself
methodically to the brandy-keg, varying his occupation by occasional bellows
through the quiet of the inn, for the breakfast he had ordered.

It came presently, and, squatted sideways upon the narrower chest, he
set to work. As he ate, he asked the landlord questions, about this and that
woman of the port, who—when he had gone off to sea all those twenty years gone—had been saucy maids, but were now mostly mothers of families, if he
could believe all that the fat Drinquobier told him.

“Eh,” said Cap’n Danblasten, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, “there was some saucy young ones among that lot, when I was a younker. An’ how’s young Nancy Drigg doin’?”

“She be Nancy Garbitt these thirteen year, Cap’n Danblasten, sir,” said the landlord. Whereat the cap’n ceased his eating, a moment, to hark the
better.

“Eh?” he said, in a curious voice, at last. “Married that top o’ my thumb,
Jimmy Garbitt? Dieu! but I’ll cut the throat of him this same day of our Lord!
Dieu! The sacre man-sprat! The blandered bunch o’ shakin’s! Dieu!”

“He’m dead these yere two years, cap’n,” said Drinquobier, staring hard
at Captain Danblasten, with half-frightened and wholly curious eyes. “I
heard oncest ‘s ye was sweet-ways on Nancy. No offence! No offence, cap’n! Seven, Jimmy left be’ind, an’ all on ‘em maids, at that.”

“What!” cried Captain Danblasten, with a sudden, strange anger, and
threw his brandy-mug at the landlord’s head. But afterwards he was silent for
a time, neither eating nor speaking; only frowning away to himself. “An’
Nancy Drigg, herself?” he asked, at length. “How’m she lookin’ these days, ye old tunbelly? Seven on ‘em! Seven on ‘em, an’ to that blandered bunch o’ shakin’s…. Why don’t ye answer, you bilge-guzzlin’ beer-cask! Open your
face, ye—ye—”

“Fair, cap’n, sir; fair an’ bonny like, Cap’n Danblasten,” old Drinquobier interjected with frightened haste, his frontal appendage quivering like a vast jelly, until the form shook on which he sat.

“Ah!” said the captain, and was quiet again; but a minute afterwards he
made it pointedly clear to the landlord that he needed a timber-sled to be outside of the inn speedily. “An’ half a dozen of thy loafer lads, tunbelly, do
ye hear! An’ smart, or I’ll put more than beer betwixt thy wind and water, ye old cut-throat, that must set a respectable townsman to sleep with his pistols to hand all the long night in this inn o’ yours, lest ye an’ your louts do him a
mischief! Smartly, ye beer-swiller, wi’ yon sled, an’ smartly does it, or I’ll be
knowin’ the why!”

And evidently smartly he did do it, as we say; for in a very few minutes
Captain Danblasten was superintending, pistol in hand, the transferring of
his two great chests to the sled, by the hands of a dozen brawny longshore
men, who had been fished out of various handy sleeping places, by the fear-driven landlord.

Cap’n Danblasten sat himself down upon his chests, and signalled to
the horse-boy to drive on. But as he started to move, the fat landlord
discovered somewhere in his monstrous body the remnant of a one-time
courage, and came forward towards the sled, crying out that he would be
paid for his liquor, bed and board. At this, Cap’n Danblasten raised one of
his pistols, evidently with the full intention of ending—once and for all—the entire agitation of the landlord’s avaricious soul; but suddenly thinking better
of it, he drew out a couple of guineas, which he hove in among the little
crowd of shore-boys, shouting to them to get their fill of good beer at the
hatchways, and the change might go to pay his debts to Drinquobier. This he
did, knowing full well that no change would the landlord ever see out of
those two guineas; and so sat back, roaring with laughter, and shouting to the horse-boy to “crack on sail an’ blow the sticks out o’ her!” Which resulted in
the lad laying his cudgel repeatedly and forcibly across the hindquarters of
the animal, which again resulted in the beast changing its walk to a kind of
absurd amble, which in its turn resulted in the sled bounding and bumping
along down the atrociously paved street, dignified by the name High Street
Alley, so that the last the group around the doorway of the Tunbelly saw, was
the broad heavy figure of Cap’n Danblasten jolting and rolling on the top of his great chests, and trying to take aim at the horse-boy with one of his big
brass-bound pistols, the while he bellowed to the lad to shorten sail, and
likewise be damned, as before.

And so they went rattling and banging round the corner, out of sight,
the clatter and crashing of the heavy sled punctuated twice by the reports of the cap’n’s pistols; after which he was content to hold on, and curse the boy,
horse, sled, the landlord of the Tunbelly, and the road, all with equal
violence, until in a minute the lad had once more got the horse controlled to
a walk, and was cursing back pluckily at the cap’n for loosing off his pistols at
him. And this way they came presently to a little house in the lower end of
the alley, where the boy stopped the sled and his cursing all in the same moment, and pointed with his horse-cudgel to the door of the little house, meaning that they had come to the place.

At this, Cap’n Danblasten got down lumberingly from the tops of his
big chests; and suddenly, before the boy knew his intention, he had caught
him by the collar of his rough jacket and hoist him bodily from the ground; whereupon the lad, full as ever of his strange pluck, set-to to curse him again
(so well he might, being half-strangled) and to striking at him with the
horse-cudgel. Immediately, the captain plucked the cudgel from him, and
then, setting the lad’s feet to the road again, he hauled forth a great handful
of gold-pieces, which he crammed forcibly down the back of the boy’s neck,
shaking with queer, noiseless laughter all the while.

“A good plucked un, Dieu! A good plucked un!” he said, and loosed the
lad suddenly, applying one of his big sea-boots with indelicate dexterity to intimate that he had no further need of his services. Whereupon the lad, who had ceased now to curse, ran off down the alley a little way, and commenced
to shake himself, until all the gold had come through; after which he
gathered it up, and calling to his horse, mounted the sled, and away so fast as the brute could go.

Meanwhile, Cap’n Danblasten was pounding at the door of the house, and shouting lustily the name of Nancy Drigg, outside the door of Nancy
Gaddley (Garbitt); until presently a startled feminine face came out of a
lattice above, and, seeing him, she screamed suddenly: “Dan! Da-an!” And withdrew hurriedly from sight.

“What do you want?” she asked presently, from within the room, and
not showing herself.

“Open!” shouted the cap’n, “afore I has the door down. I’m coom to
board wi’ ye, Nance. Open! I say!” And he commenced to kick at the door
with his great sea-boots.

“Husht now, Dan! You’ve the drink in you, or you’d no think to shame a lone woman in this fashion. Husht now, an’ I’ll coom down and let ‘ee in.”

Whereupon the cap’n ceased from his kicking, and turned round to survey the various heads that had been thrust from the casements of the alley about, to discover the cause of the disturbance.

“Bon quart! Bon quart!” he called, at first good humouredly; but changing his tone, as he saw they still continued to stare at him. “Bon quart! Bon quart!!” he roared angrily, and aimed with one of his discharged pistols at the head of the nearest. The flint snapped harmlessly, and the head dodged back;
but the captain hauled a fresh weapon from the skirts of his long coat, and seeing that he was still spied upon from a window higher up, he let drive in sound earnest, and very near ended the life of the onlooker; after which the alley might have held only the dead, for all of the living that displayed themselves to his view. He turned again, and commenced to kick upon the door, shouting.

And in the same instant, it was opened by Nancy, hurriedly wrapped about with her quilt.

“Husht now! Husht now, Dan, an’ coom in sober-like,” she said, “or ‘tis only the outside of the door I’ll have to ‘ee.”

The cap’n stepped inside, and turned on her:

“Nice wumman, ye, Nancy Drigg, to splice that blandered bunch of shakin’s, Jimmy Garbitt. An’ seven ye’ve had to him; an’ not a man in the lot; an’ little wonder; ye that could not wait for y’r own man to come home wi’
the fortun’ I promis’d ye; but must take a top-o-my-thumb to bed-mate.
Shame on ye for a poor sperreted wench; an’ me this moment wi’ the half o’
oor silver penny to my knife-chain, that we broke all them years gone; an’
never a throat I cut, but I ses: ‘there be another gold piece to my Nancy. An’
you to go brood-mare to that blandered—’”