Naval Occasions, and Some Traits of the Sailor-manBartimeus
History
Naval Occasions, and Some Traits of the Sailor-man
Bartimeus
Great Britain -- History, Naval -- 20th century -- Fiction; Great Britain. Royal Navy -- Fiction; Sailors -- Fiction; Sea stories, English
Summed up, it appeared to amount to this: A pirate or murderer had been
captured by a man-of-war, taken to Trinidad prison to be tried, and
there sentenced to death. "Time the old _Calypso_ was out on the
Station." ... That would be in the ’forties or thereabouts. The old
man’s father had been a warder in Trinidad prison at the time, and had
performed some service or kindness to the prisoner, in exchange for
which the condemned felon had given him a clue to the whereabouts of his
plunder. It was apparently buried in a grave in Port des Reines
cemetery, but the warder had died before he could verify this valuable
piece of information. His son, the ex-Gunner, had actually been to a
cemetery at Port des Reines, but had gone to the wrong one, and did not
find out his mistake till after the ship had sailed. The plunder was
valued at £70,000.
Selby turned the paper over and folded it up. "What do you wish me to
do with this, Mr Tyelake? Have you any relations or next-of-kin? It
seems to me——"
The old man shook his head faintly. "I’ve got no relatives alive—nor
friends. They’re all dead ... an’ I’m dyin’. That’s for you, that
there bit of paper. Keep it, it’s to your advantage.... Some day,
maybe, you’ll go to Port des Reines, an’ it’s the old cemetery furthest
from the sea. I went to the wrong one time I was there."
"But," said Selby, half-amused, half-incredulous, "I—I’m a total
stranger to you.... If all this was true——"
"You keep it," said the old man. His voice was very spent and scarcely
raised above a whisper. "I meant it for the first Navy-man that came
along. You came, an’ you were kind to me. It’s yours—an’ to your
advantage...."
There was silence again in the little room, and Selby sat on in the
dusk, wondering how much of the story was true, or whether it was all
the hallucination of a failing mind; but the old man had given him the
paper, and he would keep it as a memento, ... and the fact of its being
a prison-form seemed to bear out some of the details; anyhow, the story
was very interesting. He rose and lit the lamp; the old man had slipped
off into an easy doze, with his pathetic collection of treasures still
lying in a heap on the quilt; Selby replaced them in the ditty-box, and
put the box back where he had found it; the piece of paper that had been
a prison-form he put in his pocket-book. As he was leaving, the woman
who had been there earlier in the day made her appearance.
Selby wished her good evening, told her the old man was dozing, and
passed down the path. "I’ll come again to-morrow," he added at the
gate. But that night the old man died, and the next morning, having
ascertained from the vicar that there was nothing he could do to help,
Selby shouldered his knapsack and struck out once more along the road
that led up on to the moor.
*II.*
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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