Read Ebook: Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature Science and Art Fifth Series No. 34 Vol. I August 23 1884 by Various

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'Yes, something has happened,' was the answer.

Wrentham cooled suddenly when he observed how Philip had been occupied. 'Have you seen Miss Heathcote?'

Philip had a repugnance to the sound of Madge's name on this man's lips, and yet it was pronounced respectfully enough.

'I have not seen her yet.--But look here, Wrentham; I wish you would do without referring to Miss Heathcote so frequently. I do not like to have her name mixed up in the mess of my affairs.'

'I beg your pardon, my dear Philip, if I have touched the very least of your corns. 'Pon my honour, it was accidental, and I am sorry for it.'

'All right, all right.'

'Well, but I must ask you to pardon me once again, for I am compelled to refer to the lady, and I hope to do so as a gentleman should in speaking to his friend of the fair one who is to be that friend's wife. Will you grant me leave?'

'What is it?' was the irritable query.

'I mentioned to you that I imagined Miss Heathcote could throw some light on the proceedings of Mr Beecham and Mr Shield. Now I know she can.'

'You say that as if you thought she would not. How do you know that she knows anything about their business?'

'Don't get into a temper with me--there's a good fellow. Although I could not enter into your plan with the enthusiasm you and I would have liked, I am anxious--as anxious as yourself--to see you out of this scrape.'

'Don't mind my ill-humour just now,' muttered Philip apologetically, in answer to his manager's appeal.

'Certainly not,' Wrentham went on, instantly restored to his usual ease. 'Well, I could not rest in the office to-day, and having put everything square until to-morrow, I went up to Clarges Street.'

'To call on Mr Shield again?'

'No; but to examine apartments in the house opposite to the one in which he is staying. Whilst I was engaged in that way, I looked across the road and saw, in the room opposite, Beecham, Shield, and Miss Heathcote together.'

'Well, you guessed that Beecham was a friend of my uncle's, and as she started this morning to visit Mr Shield, there was nothing extraordinary in seeing them together.'

'Oh, you were aware of that! No; nothing extraordinary at all in seeing them together; but it confirms my surmise that Miss Heathcote can give us--you, I mean--information which may be useful.'

They were interrupted by a gentle knock at the door, and when Philip opened it, Madge entered.

SANITARY INSPECTION OF THE PORT OF LONDON.

We move easily in the little beaten track of our own concerns, and do not think of the care that is taken of us. What snug citizen of us all ever imagines danger to himself and the community from such a source as the port of London? Nevertheless, if the matter be given a moment's consideration, it must be allowed that danger threatens there of a very real kind. Our great port swarms all the year round with vessels of every nationality. They come with human and other freight from this country and that, from ports maybe in which disease of one sort or another was rife when they sailed; they carry the germs of many a deadly malady in cabin or in hold; disease often ripens on the voyage amongst passengers or crew, and is carried right up to the port itself; and the vessels, on their arrival here, lie a day, a week, a month in our docks. What, if any, precautions are taken, and by whom, to prevent the diseases that are thus borne so near to us, from spreading through the port, and from the port through the wide area of London itself? The thing is worth looking into for a moment.

But let us see how the work of inspection is done. We are aboard our pretty little launch, which has been steaming impatiently this half-hour past. The master is at the wheel, the 'boy' is lively with the ropes, and the inspector has his note-book ready. The medical officer descends to the cosy little cabin; and when he has changed his silk hat for the regulation blue cloth cap, and bestowed his umbrella where no nautical eye may see it, he produces a cigar-case, and observes casually, that should stress of weather confine us below, the locker is not wholly destitute of comforts. That all may know what we are and what our business is, we fly in the bows, or the stern--I speak as a landsman--a small blue flag, whereon is inscribed in white letters, 'Port Medical Officer.'

Our next visit is to one of the splendid Dundee passenger boats. No chance of fault-finding here, where everything is spick-and-span throughout. These are very fast boats, and their fittings are fine enough for a yacht. The chairs in the saloon are velvet, the fireplace a picture in itself, and the pantry glistens with silver-plate. As we go down below, the captain suggests refreshments; but the medical officer, fully alive to the force of example, makes a modest reply to the effect that the day is not yet far spent. We board then a Guernsey sailing-boat, discharging a cargo of granite. The mate is nursing a wounded hand, crushed the day before in attending to a crank; and the medical officer tenders a bit of professional advice, for which he receives no fee. The crew's quarters in the forecastle have a decidedly close smell, and the inspector thinks that a little lime-washing would not be amiss. We go on to visit a 'monkey'-barge, the craft which sails the unromantic waters of the canal. Cleanliness abounds here--the master, in fact, is polishing his candlestick when we arrive; but he receives a reprimand from the inspector for not having his papers on board. In this way the work of inspection is performed. It is lightly and easily done, to such perfection has the system been brought; and thanks to the extreme care with which it has been carried out for years past, and to the readiness with which masters and owners have complied with the instructions of the medical officer, it is now often in nine cases out of ten almost entirely formal. To see the really big vessels, we must go farther down the river; but we have learned something in the Pool as to the manner in which the sanitary work is conducted amongst the craft of every description.

We are now at the Shadwell entrance to the London Docks. Limehouse is on one side of us, and Rotherhithe on the other. It is a charming bit of the river, for those with an eye for quaint water-side scenery, as one of Mr Whistler's early canvases abundantly testifies. The gray steeple of Limehouse church is to the left; nearer to hand, the red house of the harbour-master stands out brightly; ancient weather-smitten wharfs are on either side; queer old tenements with projecting stories, and coloured white, brown, and black, elbow one another almost into the water; and behind us rise the countless masts and delicate rigging of the vessels lying in the dock. The sun has gained full power now, and burnishes the restless surface of the river as I take leave of my courteous friends.

FOOTNOTES:

See also the article on 'Quarantine' in the present sheet.

VERMUDYN'S FATE.

A TALE OF HALLOWEEN.

A little knot of miners were gathered round the fire in Pat Murphy's drinking-saloon, situated in that delightful locality known to diggers as Rattlesnake Gulch. They were listening eagerly to the details of a story related by Gentleman Jack, a member of their fraternity who had recently visited San Francisco. He had gone there with the twofold object of having what was facetiously termed a 'fling,' just to relieve the monotony of existence, and also with the intention of exchanging the gold he had accumulated during the past six months for notes and coin. He had likewise in some mysterious way contrived to get rid of the burden of his wealth, and now returned almost penniless to the bosom of his friends; but this fact in nowise diminished the cheerfulness with which the wanderer greeted his mates, or disturbed the equanimity with which he recounted his adventures since their last meeting. He had just ended his narration with the account of a curious discovery of which he had heard the details that morning on his way back to the Gulch.

'Mighty queer!' repeated the chorus, following suit.

'Spin out that yarn again, mate!' demanded a gentleman who rejoiced in the sobriquet of Old Grizzly. This personage had only entered the 'bar' in time to catch the concluding words of the narrative. 'Let's have it, Jack!' he repeated impatiently.

'I know the place--travelled that road years afore they ever thought of running cars through it,' interposed Old Grizzly. 'But what about the man?'

'Well, that's the queer part of the story; not that they found a man, but that they should have found him where they did, and with so much gold on him too,' answered Gentleman Jack with his slow languid drawl.

'Say!' ejaculated Old Grizzly, who was listening with a curiously eager excited face to the indifferent, careless utterances of the younger man. 'Cut it short, mate, and tell us how they found him.'

'Well, they were blasting a big rock, and as it broke, it disclosed a cave right in the heart of the limestone; but there must once have been an entrance to it, for the skeleton of a man lay there. All his clothes had fallen to dust; but there was a ring on one finger, and about seventeen ounces of gold lay in a little heap under him. It had evidently been in his pockets once; but the bag that held it, and the skeleton's clothing, were alike a heap of dry light dust. There was nothing to identify him, nothing to show how long he had been there. The very ring he wore was of such a queer outlandish fashion that the fellows who found him could make nothing of it.'

'Was that all?' demanded the elder man.

'All that I can recollect.--Stay! I think he had a rusty knife somewhere near him, but nothing more. It's a queer story altogether. How he got there, if he died in the cave, and by what means it was afterwards closed up--these are all mysteries.'

'Spin us your yarn, old chap!' shouted a dozen voices; and passing the word for a fresh supply of whisky, they gathered closer round the log-fire, filled their pipes, and prepared to listen with the keen interest of men who lead an isolated and monotonous life far from the stir and life of big cities, and are therefore ever ready and eager to hail the smallest incident with pleasure; while a good story-teller is regarded with universal respect. Rattlesnake Gulch was at that period a comparatively new Claim, on the very outskirts of civilisation, and news from the cities was long in reaching the denizens of this locality.

'What I am now going to tell you, boys, has never crossed my lips from that day to this, and most likely never would, if I hadn't chanced to come along just now as Jack was speaking about the body those navvies found in the Devil's Panniken.'

'Bedad, and it's that same night now!' put in Murphy.

'So it is!' acquiesced Old Grizzly; 'but I never thought of it till this minute; and now the whole thing comes round again on All-Halloween, of all nights in the year. Those of you boys who've been raised in the old country will know what folks believe, in most villages and country places, of Halloween, and the strange things that happen then to men abroad at midnight, and to lads and lasses who try the Halloween spells for wives and husbands.'

'Sure everybody knows them things,' agreed Murphy, casting an uneasy glance over his shoulder as he spoke.

'Well, true or false, I for one thought little enough of them when I was young; but as luck or fate would have it, I rode through the Devil's Panniken on the 31st of October, that special night I'm going to tell you of. I wasn't alone either; perhaps, if I had been, I shouldn't have felt so jolly; for, not to speak of the loneliness of the place, with its great black rocks towering up on either side of you, and almost shutting out the sky, except for a narrow strip overhead, the place had an ill name both with the Injuns and with miners. Many a queer tale was told round camp-fires, and folks said the place was haunted; that miners had lost their way there many a time, and had never been seen or heard of again.

'I'd been working all that season at a Claim--a new un then, but worked out and forgotten now--which we used to call Cherokee Dick's, because a Cherokee Injun first showed us the place. There was perhaps a dozen of us all told; but I chummed and worked from the first along with a chap they called the "Flying Dutchman." When we had been together a goodish bit, he told me his real name was Cornelius Vermudyn; and I acquainted him with mine and where I hailed from. He was a Dutchman, sure enough, but had travelled half over the world, I used to think from his talk; and he could speak as good English as you or me--or any here.'

A dubious smile hovered for an instant on Gentleman Jack's lips at this na?ve statement, but nobody observed him; they were all intent on Old Grizzly and his yarn, and that worthy continued: 'We began to find our Claim about cleaned out, and we--that's me and Vermudyn--reckoned to make tracks before the winter, and get down 'Frisco-way. Well, we each had a good horse and a nice bit of gold, and we was sworn mates--come what might--so we started, riding as far as we could by day and camping out at night, if we weren't able to reach a settlement or diggings by nightfall.

'On this night, it seemed as if we'd no luck from the beginning. We lost our way for a goodish bit, and were some time finding the track again; after that, night seemed to come on us suddenly like. We'd rode and rode that day without ever a sign of man or beast, and when we came to this place, Vermudyn says: "This must be the famous Devil's Panniken, old boy." I had been almost falling asleep on my horse's neck; but I woke with a start, and answered all in a hurry: "Of course it is." It seemed somehow as if I knew that place well, and I began to ride on quickly.

"Stop!" hollered Vermudyn, "unless you want to lame your horse or break his knees among those rocks." As he came up with me, he put his hand on my arm, and I drew rein.

"Anyhow," I said, "let's get out of this, and then we'll camp for the night. I'm as tired as a dog, and can hardly stick in my saddle."

"Why not camp here?" says Vermudyn with a laugh. "Who's afraid?"

"I'm not--if that's what you mean," I answered; "but I'd rather camp outside."

"A good two miles of bad riding," said he quietly. "Why shouldn't we content ourselves with a snug corner of the rocks, where we can shelter from the wind? As far as I can make out, there's brush and litter enough for a fire, and we've got a bait for our horses."

'While he talked and argued, I grew more and more tired, exactly as if I had ridden a hundred miles without drawing rein. It seemed then as if I didn't care what came next, so long as I could roll myself up in my blanket and snooze, so I answered short enough: "Have your own way. The place is ours, I reckon, as much as it is other folk's."

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