seek your
betters. If you are dead, who may not be alive? Emlyn herself, perhaps,
after this. Oh, the devil is playing a merry game round old Cranwell
Towers to-night, and Thomas Bolle will take a hand in it."
He was right. The devil was playing a merry game. At least, so thought
others beside Thomas. For instance, that misguided but honest bigot,
Martin, as he contemplated the still senseless form of Christopher, who,
re-christened Brother Luiz, had been safely conveyed aboard the _Great
Yarmouth_, and now, whether dead or living, which he was not sure, lay
in the little cabin that had been allotted to the two of them. Almost
did Martin, as he looked at him and shook his bald head, seem to smell
brimstone in that close place, which, as he knew well, was the fiend's
favourite scent.
The captain also, a sour-faced mariner with a squint, known in Dunwich,
whence he hailed, as Miser Goody, because of his earnestness in pursuing
wealth and his skill in hoarding it, seemed to feel the unhallowed
influence of his Satanic Majesty. So far everything had gone wrong upon
this voyage, which already had been delayed six weeks, that is, till the
very worst period of the year, while he waited for certain mysterious
letters and cargo which his owners said he must carry to Seville. Then
he had sailed out of the river with a fair wind, only to be beaten back
by fearful weather that nearly sank the ship.
Item: six of his best men had deserted because they feared a trip to
Spain at that season, and he had been obliged to take others at hazard.
Among them was a broad-shouldered, black-bearded fellow clad in a
leather jerkin, with spurs upon his heels--bloody spurs--that he seemed
to have found no time to take off. This hard rider came aboard in
a skiff after the anchor was up, and, having cast the skiff adrift,
offered good money for a passage to Spain or any other foreign port, and
paid it down upon the nail. He, Goody, had taken the money, though with
a doubtful heart, and given a receipt to the name of Charles Smith,
asking no questions, since for this gold he need not account to the
owners. Afterwards also the man, having put off his spurs and soldier's
jerkin, set himself to work among the crew, some of whom seemed to know
him, and in the storm that followed showed that he was stout-hearted and
useful, though not a skilled sailor.
Still, he mistrusted him of Charles Smith, and his bloody spurs, and
had he not been so short-han
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