Doctor Syn

To those who have small knowledge of Kent let me say that the fishing village of Dymchurch-under-the-wall lies on the south coast midway between two of the ancient Cinque ports, Romney and Hythe.

In the days of George III, with Trafalgar still unfought, our coast watchmen swept with keen glasses this broad bend of the Channel; watched not for smugglers (for there was little in Dymchurch to attract the smuggler, with its flat coastline open all the way from Dover cliffs around Dungeness to Beachy Head), but for the French men-o’-war.

In spite of being perilously open to the dangers of the French coast, Dymchurch was a happy little village in those days⁠—aye, and prosperous, too, for the Squire, Sir Antony Cobtree, though in his younger days a wild and reckless adventurer, a gambler and a duellist, had, of late years, resolved himself into a pattern Kentish squire, generous to the village, and so vastly popular. Equally popular was Doctor Syn, the vicar of Dymchurch: a pious and broad-minded cleric, with as great a taste for good Virginia tobacco and a glass of something hot as for the penning of long sermons which sent everyone to sleep on Sundays. Still, it was clearly his duty to deliver these sermons, for, as I have said, he was a pious man, and although his congregation for the most part went to sleep, they were at great pains not to snore, because to offend the old Doctor would have been a lasting shame.

On the way he met Doctor Syn, who was standing silhouetted against the skyline with his telescope focused upon some large vessel that was standing in off Dungeness.

“Ah, Mr. Mipps,” said the cleric, handing his telescope to the sexton, “tell me what you make of that?”

Mipps adjusted the lens and looked. “The Devil!” he ejaculated.

“I beg your pardon?” said the Doctor. “What did you say?” One of the King’s preventer men had come out of his cottage and was approaching them.

“I don’t make no head nor tale of it,” replied the sexton. “Perhaps you do, sir?”

“Well, it looks to me,” continued the parson, “it⁠—looks⁠—to⁠—me⁠—uncommonly like a King’s frigate. Can’t you make out her guns on the port side?”

“Yes!” cried the sexton; “I’ll be hanged if you’re not right, sir; it’s a damned King’s ship as ever was.”

“Mr. Mipps,” corrected the parson, “again I must ask you to repeat your remark.”

“I said, sir,” replied the sexton, meekly handing back the glass, “that you’re quite right: it’s a King’s ship, a nice King’s ship!”

“And she’s standing in, too,” went on the parson. “I can make her out plainly now, and, good gracious! she’s lowering a longboat!”

“Oh!” said Mr. Mipps, “I wonder wot that’s for?”

“A revenue search,” volunteered the preventer.

Mipps started. He hadn’t seen the preventer.

“Hello!” he said, turning round; “didn’t know you was there, Sir Francis Drake. What do you make of that there ship?”

“A King’s frigate,” replied the preventer man. “She’s sending a boat’s crew ashore.”

“What for?” asked the sexton.

“I told you: a revenue search; to look for smugglers.”

“Smugglers,” laughed the parson, “here in Dymchurch?”

“Mister Cobtree,” he whispered fearfully, “you are older than I am, but I feel somehow as if I can give you a point or two, because you’ve got sense. I’m a man of Kent, I am, and I’m going to be a hangman sooner or later, but above all I belongs to the Marsh and understands her, and them as understands the Marsh⁠—well, the Marsh understands them, and this is what she says to them as understands her: ‘Hide yourself like I do under the green, until you feels you’re ready to be real mud.’ I takes her advice, I do; I’m under the green, I am, but I can be patient, because I knows as how some day I’ll be real dirt. You can’t be real dirt all at once; so keep green till you can; and if I has to keep green for years and years, I’ll get to mud one day, and that’ll be the day to hang that Rash and cheat old Mipps of his body.” And to encourage himself in this resolve Jerry took another thimbleful of rum.

“I’m afraid I don’t follow you,” said Denis.

“Don’t try to,” replied the youngster, “don’t try to. You’ll get it in time. The Marsh’ll show you. She takes her own time, but she’ll get you out of the green some day and ooze you up through the sluices, and then you’ll be a man of Kent, and no mistaking you.”

“Tell me,” said the cleric, leaning farther forward over the table.

The captain sat up rigid in his chair, took his pipe from between his lips, and spoke as if repeating a lesson that he didn’t understand.

“Once in a Cuban town, in a little Cuban town⁠—can’t remember the precise longitude and latitude⁠—but that’s no matter, and I can’t even remember the name of the town or what I was doing there exactly, but that has no odds on the story.”

“Go on,” said the cleric.

“Well, in this little Cuban town I saw an old priest die. He was as dead as this table, you understand; the doctor said so, and I knew it. Well, imagine my horror when half an hour after death this old man arose, entered the next hut, and deliberately, brutally, and carefully stabbed a sleeping child to death.”

The Doctor said nothing, but just looked at the captain.

If the village was abed by ten o’clock, the coffin shop was very much alive at half an hour after midnight. Jerk, according to his instructions, found himself tapping upon the back window at that very hour and immediately found himself hauled into the house by Mr. Mipps himself. The sexton wore a voluminous riding cloak, heavily tippeted, and a black mask hid the upper part of his face, but Jerk could see by a glance at the fine sharp jaws that Mipps had laid aside his oiliness of manner, his sarcastic wit, and cringing self-complacency, and was allowing the real man that was in him to shine forth for once in a way probably for his express advantage. Jerk now saw the iron qualities in the sexton that had struck the love spark upon the flinty bosom of Mrs. Waggetts, for as Mipps walked about among his men, from room to room, and in and out of the coffin shop, which was heavily shuttered, he carried a power upon his shoulders that would have done credit to Boney himself. And the company that Jerk found himself among⁠—well, if the young hangman had suddenly found himself in the greenroom of Drury Lane Theatre in the midst of the great play actors, he could not have been more surprised, for there, collected altogether, were the jack-o’lanterns, the Marsh witches, and the demon riders, all preparing themselves as for a country fair.