Doctor Syn on the High Seas - Thorndike Russell (читать лучшие читаемые книги TXT) 📗

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.

- 5 -

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.

- 6 -

“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