August 21, 2025 • 29 mins
Immerse yourself in the enchanting tales of Bernard Capes, crafted to captivate your imagination as you cozy up by the fireplace during the long, chilly days of winter. Let A. Gramour guide you through this collection of stories that promise to entertain and warm your spirit.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Section six of At a Winter's Fire. This is a
LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
At a Winter's Fire by Bernard Capes William Tyrett's copy.
(00:21):
This is the story of William Tirett, who went to
King's Cob for rest and change, and with the latter
at least, was so far accommodated as for a time
to get beyond himself and into regions foreign to his
experiences or his desires. And for this condition of his
I hold myself something responsible, inasmuch as it was my
(00:44):
inquisitiveness was the means of inducing him to an exploration
of which the result, with its measure of weirdness, was
for him alone. But it seems I was appointed an
agent of the unexplainable without my knowledge, and it was
simply my misfortune to find my first unwitting commission in
the selling of a friend. I was, for a few
(01:07):
days about the end of a particular July, lodged in
that little old sea board town of Dorset that's called
King's Cob. Thither there came to me one morning a
letter from William Turret, the polemical journalist, a queer fish
like the cuddle with an ink bag for the confusion
of enemies, complaining that he was fagged and used up,
(01:29):
and desiring me to say that nowhere could complete rest
be obtained, as in King's cob I wrote and assured
him on this point. The town, I said, lay wrapped
in the hills as in blankets, its head only winking
a sleepy eye projecting from the top of the broad
steep gully in which it was stretched at ease. Thither
(01:51):
few came to the droning coast, and such as did,
looked up at the high street baking in the sun,
and thinking of Jacob's ladder, composed them to slumber upon
the sand, and left the climbing to the angels. Here,
I said, the air and the sea were so still
that one could hear the oysters snoring in their beds,
(02:13):
and the little frizzle of surf on the beach was
like to the sound to dreaming ears of bacon frying
in the kitchens of the blest. William Turwitt came and
I met him at the station six or seven miles away.
He was all strained and springless, like a broken child's toy.
Not like that William, who, with lance in rest, shot
(02:36):
through the lists in Fleet Street a dispute of gallipolar
could have triumphed over him morally a child physically. The
drive in the inn brake by undulating roads and scented
valleys shamed his cheek to a little flush of self assertion.
I will sleep under the vines, he said, and the
(02:57):
grapes shall drop into my mouth. I answered, lest in
King's cob, your repose should be everlasting. The air of
that hamlet has matured like old Port in the bin
of its hills, till to drink of it is to swoon.
We alighted at the crown of the high Street, purposing
to descend on foot the remaining distance to the shore. Behold,
(03:21):
I exclaimed, how the gulls float in the shimmer like
ashes tossed aloft by the white draft of a fire.
Behold these ancient buildings, nodding to the everlasting lullaby of
the bay waters. The cliffs are black with the heat apoplexy.
The lobster is drawn scarlet to the surface. You shall
be like an adult egg put into an incubator, so
(03:45):
he said, I shall rest and not hatch. The very
thought is like sweet oil on a burn. He stayed
with me a week, and his body waxed wondrous, round
and rosy, while his eye acquired a foolish and vacant expression.
So it was with me. We rolled together by shore
(04:05):
and by road of this sluggard place, like spent billiard balls,
and if by chance we cannoned, we swerved sleepily apart,
until perhaps one would fall into a pocket of the sand,
and the other bring up against a cushion of sea wall. Yet,
for all its enervating atmosphere, King's Cobb had its fine
(04:26):
traditions of a sturdy independence and a slashing history withal.
And its aspect is as picturesque as that of an
opera bo fishing harbor. Then too, its high street, as
well as its meandering rivulets of low streets, is rich
in buildings, venerable and antique. We took an irresponsible, smiling
(04:48):
pleasure in noting these advantages. Particularly after lunch, and sometimes
where an old house was empty, we would go over
it and stare at beams and chimney pieces, and hear
the haunted tale of its fortunes with a faint half
memory in our breasts of that one time bugbear we
had known as copy. But though more than once a
(05:11):
flaccid instinct would move us to have out our pencils,
we would only end by bunging our foolish mouths with
them as if they were cigarettes, and then vaguely wondering
at them, for that being pencils they would not draw.
By then we were so sinulous and demoralized that we
could hear in the distant strains of the European concert
(05:32):
nothing but an orchestra of sweet sounds, and would have
given ourselves away in any situation with a pound of tea. Therefore,
perhaps it was well for us that a peremptory summons
to town, reaching me, after seven days of comradeship with William,
I must make shift, to collect my faculties with my effects,
(05:52):
and return to the more bracing climate of Fleet Street.
And here you will note begins the story of William Tyrett,
who would linger yet a few days in that hanging
garden of the south coast, and who would pull himself
together and collect matter for copy. He found a very
good subject. That first evening of his solitude. I was
(06:13):
to leave in the afternoon and the morning we spent
in aimlessly rambling about the town. Towards midday, a slight
shower drove us to shelter under the green veranda of
a house standing up from the lower fall of the
high street that we had often observed in our wanderings.
This house, or rather houses, for it was a block
(06:34):
of two, was very tall and odd looking, being all
built of clean squares of a whitish granite, and the
double porch in the middle base led up to by side,
going steps behind thin iron railings, roofed with green painted
zinc in. Some of the windows were jalousies, but the
(06:57):
general aspect of the exterior was gaunt and rigid, and
the whole block bore a dismal, deserted look, as if
it had not been lived in for years. Now. We
had taken refuge in the porch of that half that
lay uppermost on the slope, and here we noticed that
at a late date the building was seemingly in process
(07:17):
of repair, painters, pots and brushes lying on a window sill,
and a pair of steps showing within through the glass.
They have gone to dinner, said I, Supposing we seized
the opportunity to explore. We pushed at the door. It yielded.
We entered, shut ourselves in, and paused to the sound
(07:37):
of our own footsteps, echoing and laughing from corners and
high places. On the ground floor were two or three
good sized rooms with modern grates, but cornices, chimney pieces, ambussures,
finally Jacobian. There were innumerable understair and overhead cupboards too,
and pantries and closets, and passages going off darkly in
(08:00):
to the unknown. We cloned the stairway to the first
floor to the second. Here was all pure Jacobean, but
the walls were crumbling, the paper peeling, the windows dim
and foul with dirt. I have never known a place
with such echoes. They shook from a footstep like nuts
rattling out of a bag. A mouse behind the skirting
(08:22):
led a whole camp following of them. To ask a
question was as in that other house, to awaken the
derizved shouts of an opposition. Yet in the intervals of
silence there fell a deadliness of quiet that was quite appalling.
By force of contrast, let us go down, I said,
I am feeling creepy. Pooh said William Turret, I could
(08:46):
take up my abode here with a feather bed. We descended, nevertheless,
arrived at the ground floor. I am going to the back,
said William. I followed him a little reluctantly. I confess
gloom and shadow had fallen upon the town, and this old,
deserted hulk of an abode was ghostly to a degree.
(09:06):
There was no film of dust on its every shelf
or sill that did not seem to me to bear
the impress of some phantom finger feeling its way along.
A glint of stealthy eyes would look from dark, uncertain corners.
A thin, evil vapor appeared to rise through the cracks
of the boards from the unvisited cellars in the basement.
(09:27):
And here too we came suddenly upon an eccentricity of
outbuilding that wrought upon our souls with wonder. For penetrating
to the rear, through what might have been a cloak
closet or butler's pantry, we found a supplementary wing, or
rather tail of rooms loosely knocked together to proceed from
the back, forming a sort of skilling to the main building.
(09:51):
These rooms led direct into one another, and consisting of
little more than timber and plaster were in a woeful
state of dilapidation. Everywhere. The last grinned through torn gaps
in the ceilings and walls everywhere, The latter were blotched
and mildewed with damp, and the floorboards rotting in their tracks,
fall and mortar, rusty tins, yellow teeth of glass, whitened soot.
(10:16):
All the decay and rubbish of a generation of neglect
littered the place and filled it with an acrid odor.
From one of the rooms, we looked forth through a
little discolored window upon a patch of fourlorn weedy garden,
where the very cats glowered in a depression that no
surfeit of mice could assuage. We went on our nervous feet,
(10:37):
apologetic to the grit they crunched, And when we were
come to near the end of this dreary annex, turned
off to the left into a short gloom of passage
that led to a closed door. Pushing this open, we
found a drop of some half dozen steps, and going
gingerly down these stopped with a common exclamation of surprise
(10:58):
on our lips. Perhaps our wonder was justified, for we
were in the stern cabin of an ancient West India man,
some twenty feet long by twelve wide. There it all was,
from the deck transoms above to the side lockers, and
great curved window sloping outwards to the floor, and glazed
(11:19):
with little panes and galleries that filled the whole end
of the room. Thereout we looked over the degraded garden
to the lower quarters of the town, as if indeed
we were perched high up on waves, and even to
a segment of the broad bay that swept by them.
But the room itself, what phantasy of old sea dog
(11:40):
or master mariner had conceived it? What pulsied spirit, condemned
to rust in inactivity, had found solace in this burlesque
of ship craft, To renew the past in such a fixture,
to work oneself up to the old glow of flight
and action, and then while one stamped, rocked maniacally, to
(12:01):
feel the refusal of so much as a timber, to
respond to one's fervor of animation. It was a grotesque picture. Now,
this cherished chamber had shared the fate of the rest.
The paint and gilding were all cracked and blistered away.
Much of the glass of the stern frame was gone
or hung loose in its sashes. The elaborately carved lockers
(12:23):
moldered on the walls. These were but dummies when we
came to examine them, mere slabs attached to the brickwork
and decaying with it. There should be a case, bottle
and rummers in one at least, said William Turrett. There are, sir,
at your service, said a voice behind us. We started
and turned. It had been such a strained voice that
(12:45):
it was with something like astonishment. I looked upon the speaker.
Whence he had issued I could not guess, but there
he stood behind us, nodding and smiling. A squab thick
settled fellow, with a great bald head, and all the
hair on his face, a tuft like a teasel sprouting
from his under lip. He was in his shirt sleeves,
(13:06):
without coat or vest. And I noticed that his dirty
lawn was oddly plaited in front, and that about his
ample paunch was buckled. A broad belt of leather greased
hip boots encased his lower limbs, and the heels of
these were drawn together as he bowed. William Turret, a
master of nervous English, muttered, Great Scott under his breath.
(13:29):
Permit me, said the stranger, and he held out to
us a tin pannikin produced from heaven knows wear that
swam with fragrance. I shook my head, William Turret, that
fated man did otherwise. He accepted the vessel and drained it.
It smacks of all castile, he said, handing it back
(13:49):
with a sigh of ecstasy. Who the devil are you, sir?
The stranger gave a little crow parregrine iron, sir, at
your service, copped paragrin iron of the raven Sloop, among others.
You are very welcome to the run of my poor abode. Yours,
I murmured, in confusion. We owe you a thousand apologies.
(14:13):
Not at all, he said, addressing all of his courtesy
to William Me. Since my rejection of his beaker, he
took pains to ignore. Not at all, he said. Your
intrusion was quite natural under the circumstances. I take a
pleasure in being your cicerone this cabin, he waved his
hand pompously. A fancy of mine, sir, A fancy of mine.
(14:36):
The actual material of the latest of my commands brought
hither and adapted to the exigencies of shore life. It
enables me to live eternally in the past, a most
satisfying illusion. Come to night and have a pipe in
a glass with me, I thought, William turret mad. I
will come by all means, he said. The stranger bowed
(14:58):
us out of the room. That is right, he exclaimed,
you will find me here. Good bye for the present.
As we plunged like dazed men into the street, now
groaned sunny. I turned on my friend William, I said,
did you happen to look back as we left the cabin? No,
I did, Well, there was no stranger there at all.
(15:22):
The place was empty. Well, you will not go to night,
you bet, I do, I shrugged my shoulders. We walked
on a little way in silence. Suddenly my companion turned
on me, a most truculent expression on his face. For
an independent thinker, he said, you are a rather pulsolanimous jackass,
(15:45):
a man of your convictions to shy at a shadow. Fie,
sir fie. What if the room were empty, the place
was full enough of traps to permit of Captain Iron's
immediate withdrawal. Much may be expressed in a sniff. I sniffed.
That afternoon I went back to town and left the
offense of William to his fate. It found him at
(16:08):
once the very day following that of my retreat, I
was polishing phrases by gaslight in the dull sitting room
of my lodgings in the Lambeth Road, when he staggered
in upon me. His face was like a sheep's, white
and vacant. His hands had caught a trick of groping
blindly along the backs of chairs. You have obtained your copy,
(16:31):
I said. I made him out to murmur yes in
a shaking under voice. He was so patently nervous that
I put him in a chair and poured him out
a wineglassful of London brandy. This generally is a powerful emetic,
but it had no more effect upon him than water.
Then I was about to lower the gas to save
(16:52):
his eyes, but he stopped me with a thin shriek.
Light light, he whispered, it cannot be too light for me. Now,
William Turrett, I said, by and by, watchful of him,
and marking a faint effusion of color soaked to his cheek.
You would not accept my warning, and you were extremely
rude to me. Therefore you have had an experience, an
(17:16):
awful one, he murmured, an awful one, no doubt. And
to obtain surcease of the haunting memory of it, you
must confide its processes to me. But first I must
put it to you, which is the more posollanimous to
refuse to submit one's manliness to the tyranny of the unlawful,
or to rush into situations you have not the nerve
(17:38):
to adapt yourself too. I could not foresee. I could
not foresee. Neither could I, and that was my very
reason for declining the invitation now proceed. It was long
before he could, But presently he essayed and gathered voice
with the advance of his narrative, and even unconsciously threw
(18:01):
it into something the form of copy. And here it
is as he murmured it, but with a gasp for
every full stop. I confess I was so far removed
by the tone of your protest, as after your departure,
to make some cautious inquiries about the house we had visited,
I could discover nothing to satisfy my curiosity. It was
(18:24):
known to have been untenanted for a great number of years.
But as to who was the landlord, whether Captain Iron
or another, no one could inform me, and the agent
for the property was of the adjacent town where you
met me. I was not fortunate, indeed, in finding that
anyone even knew of the oddly appointed room. But considering
(18:45):
that owing to the time the house had remained vacant,
the existence of this eccentricity could be a tradition only
with some casual few, my failure did not strike me
as being all that bodeful. On the contrary, I had
only wetted my desire to investigate further in person and
penetrate to the heart of a very captivating little mystery.
(19:07):
But probably I thought it is quite simple of solution,
and the fact of the repairers and the landlord being
in evidence at one time a natural coincidence. I dined
well and sallied forth about nine o'clock. It was a
night pregnant with possibilities. The lower strata of air were calm,
but overhead the wind went down the sea with a
(19:30):
noise of baggage wagons, and there was an ominous hurrying
and gathering together of forces under the bellying standards of
the clouds. As I went up the steps of the
lonely building, the high street seemed to turn all its
staring eyes of lamps in my direction. What a droll fellow,
they appeared to be saying. And how will he look
when he reissues? There ain't nobody in that house, croaked
(19:54):
a small boy who had paused below, squinting up at me.
How do you know? Said? I move on, my little man,
he went, And at once it occurred to me that
as no notice was taken of my repeated knockings, I
might as well try the handle. I did, found the
door unlatched, as it had been in the morning, pushed
it open, entered and swung it to behind me. I
(20:18):
found myself in the most profound darkness. That darkness, if
I may use the paradox of a peopled desolation, that
men of but little nerve or resolution find insupportable. To me.
Trained to a serenity of stoicism, it could make no
demoralizing appeal. I had at my match box, opened it
(20:38):
at leisure, and while the whole vaulting blackness seemed to
tick and rustle with secret movement, took a half dozen
vestas into my hand, struck one alight, and by its
dim radiance, made my way through the building by the
passages we had penetrated in the morning. If at all
I shrank or perspired on my spectral journey, I swear
(20:59):
I was not conscious of doing so. I came to
the door of the cabin. All was black and silent. Ah,
I thought the rogue has played me false. Not to
subscribe to an uncertainty, I pushed at the door, saw
only swimming dead vacancy before me, and tripped at the
instant upon the sill, stumbling, crashing into the room below,
(21:21):
and slid my length on the floor. Now I must
tell you it was here my heart gave its first somersault.
I had fallen, as I say, into a black vault
of emptiness. Yet as I rose, bruised and dazed to
my feet, there was the cabin, all alight from a
great lantern that swung from the ceiling, and our friend
(21:41):
of the morning seated at a table with a case,
bottle of rum and glasses before him. I stared incredulous. Yes,
there could be no doubt it was he, and pretty
flushed with drink too by his appearance. Incandescent light in
a west Indiaman, I muttered, for not otherwise could I
account for the sudden illumination? What the deuce belay that?
(22:05):
He growled? He seemed to observe me for the first time.
A handsome manner of boarding a craft. You've got, sir,
said he, glooming at me. I was hastening to apologize,
but he stopped me coarsely. Oh curse the long jaw
of him. Fill your cheek with that, you barbary ape
and wag your tail if you can but burn your tongue.
(22:26):
He pointed to the case bottle with a forefinger that
was like a dirty parsnip. What induced me to swallow
the insult and even some of that pungent liquor of
his rude offering the it's for copy was no doubt
at the bottom of it. I sat down opposite my host,
filled and drained a bumper. The fire ran to my
brain so that the whole room seemed to pitch and curtsey.
(22:49):
This is an odd fancy of yours, I said, What
is said? He this, I answered, waving my hand around.
This freak of turning a back room into a cab.
He stared at me, then burst into a malevolent laugh
back room by thunder, said he. Why, of course, just
a step into the garden, where the roses and the
(23:11):
buttercupses be a groin. Now, I pricked my ears. Has
the night turned fowl? I muttered, What a noise the
rain makes beating on the window. It's like to be
a foul one for you, at least, said he. But
as for the rain, it's blazing moonlight. I turned to
the broad casement in astonishment. My god, what did I see? Oh,
(23:35):
my friend, my friend, will you believe me? By the
melancholy glow that spread there through? I saw the whole
room was rising and sinking in rhythmical motion, that the
lights of King's cob had disappeared, and that in their
place was revealed a world of pale and tossing water,
the pursuing waves of which leapt and clutched at the
(23:57):
glass with innocuous fingers. I darted to my feet mad
in an instant look, Look, I shrieked. They follow us.
They struggled to get at you, you bloody murderer. They came,
rising on the crests of the billows. They hurried fast
in our wake, tumbling and swaying their stretched drowned faces,
(24:18):
now lifted to the moonlight, now overwashed in the long
trenches of water. They were rolling against the galleries of glass,
on which their hair slapped like ribbons of seaweed. A
score of ghastly white corpses with strained black eyes and pointed,
stiff elbows crooked up in vain for air. I was mad,
(24:39):
but I knew it all now. This was no house
but the good, ill fated vessel Rayo, once bound for Jamaica,
but on the voyage fallen into the hands of the
bloody buccaneer Paul Hardman, and her crew made to walk
the plank, and most of her passengers. I knew that
the dark scoundrel had boarded and mastered her, and having
(25:02):
first fired and sunk his own sloop, had steered her
straight for the Cuban coast, making disposition of what remained
of the passengers on the way. And I knew that
my great grandfather had been one of those doomed survivors,
and that he had been shot and murdered under orders
of the ruffian that now sat before me. All this
(25:23):
as retailed by one who sailed for a season under
hardman to save his skin is matter of old private
history and of common report. Was it that the monster buccaneer,
after years of successful trading in the ship he had stolen,
went into secret and prosperous retirement under an assumed name,
and was never heard of more on the high seas.
(25:45):
But it seems it was for the great grandson of
one of his victims to play yet a sympathetic part
in the gray old tragedy. How did this come to
me in a moment? Or rather, what was the dream
buzzing in my brain of proof and copy and all
the tame stagnation of a long delirium of order, I
(26:06):
had nothing in common with the latter. In some telepathic way,
influenced by these past dated surroundings, dropped into the very
den of this procrustus of the sea. I was there
to re enact the fearful scene that had found its
climax in the brain of my ancestor. I rushed to
the window, thence back to within a yard of the
(26:28):
glowering buccaneer, before whom I stood with tossed arms, wild
and menacing. They follow you, I screamed, passive, relentless, and deadly.
They follow in your wake and will not be denied.
The strong, the helpless, the coarse, and the beautiful, all
you have killed and mutilated in your wanton devilry. They
(26:49):
are on your heels like a pack of specter hounds,
and sooner or later they will have you in their
cold arms and hail you down to the secret places
of terror. Look at Beston, who leads with a fearful
smile on his mouth. Look at that pale girl you tortured,
whose hair rise and lengthens A swarm of snakes nosing
the hull for some open porthole to enter. By dog
(27:12):
and devil, You are betrayed by your own hideous cruelty.
He rose and struck at me, blindly staggered, and found
his filthy voice in a shriek of rage. Jor under
make hell of the galley, fire heat some irons red,
and fetch out a bucket of pitch. We'll learn this
dandy galute, his manners wrought to the snapping point of desperation.
(27:35):
I sprang at and closed with him, and we went
down on the floor together with a heavy crash. I
was weaponless, but I would choke and strangle him with
my hands. I had him under my fingers, crooked in
his throat, his eyeballs slipped forward like banana ends squeezed
from their skins. He could not speak or cry, but
(27:55):
he put up one feeble hand and flapped it aimlessly
at that In the midst of my fury, I glanced
above me and saw a press of dim faces crowding
a dusk hatch, and from them a shadowy arm came through,
pointing a weapon, and all my soul reeled sick, and
I only longed to be left time to destroy the
venomous horror beneath me before I passed. It was not
(28:19):
to be something. A physical sensation like the jerk of
a hiccup shook my frame, and immediately the waters of
being seemed to burst their dam and flow out peacefully
into a valley of rest. William Turret paused and well said,
I you see me here? He said, I woke this
(28:39):
morning and found myself lying on the floor of that
shattered and battered closet, and a starved demon of a
cat licking up something from the boards. When I drove
her away, there was a patch there like ancient dried blood.
And how about your head, my head, Why the bullet
seemed stuck in it between the temples and there I
am afraid it is still just so. Now, William Turret,
(29:04):
you must take a Turkish bath and some cooling salts,
and then come and tell me all about it again. Ah,
you don't believe me, I see, I never supposed you would.
Good night. But when he was gone, I sat ruminating
that Captain Iron, I thought, walked over the great rent
in the floor without falling through well well end of
(29:30):
William Turrett's copy
Section six of At a Winter's Fire. This is a
LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
At a Winter's Fire by Bernard Capes William Tyrett's copy.
(00:21):
This is the story of William Tirett, who went to
King's Cob for rest and change, and with the latter
at least, was so far accommodated as for a time
to get beyond himself and into regions foreign to his
experiences or his desires. And for this condition of his
I hold myself something responsible, inasmuch as it was my
(00:44):
inquisitiveness was the means of inducing him to an exploration
of which the result, with its measure of weirdness, was
for him alone. But it seems I was appointed an
agent of the unexplainable without my knowledge, and it was
simply my misfortune to find my first unwitting commission in
the selling of a friend. I was, for a few
(01:07):
days about the end of a particular July, lodged in
that little old sea board town of Dorset that's called
King's Cob. Thither there came to me one morning a
letter from William Turret, the polemical journalist, a queer fish
like the cuddle with an ink bag for the confusion
of enemies, complaining that he was fagged and used up,
(01:29):
and desiring me to say that nowhere could complete rest
be obtained, as in King's cob I wrote and assured
him on this point. The town, I said, lay wrapped
in the hills as in blankets, its head only winking
a sleepy eye projecting from the top of the broad
steep gully in which it was stretched at ease. Thither
(01:51):
few came to the droning coast, and such as did,
looked up at the high street baking in the sun,
and thinking of Jacob's ladder, composed them to slumber upon
the sand, and left the climbing to the angels. Here,
I said, the air and the sea were so still
that one could hear the oysters snoring in their beds,
(02:13):
and the little frizzle of surf on the beach was
like to the sound to dreaming ears of bacon frying
in the kitchens of the blest. William Turwitt came and
I met him at the station six or seven miles away.
He was all strained and springless, like a broken child's toy.
Not like that William, who, with lance in rest, shot
(02:36):
through the lists in Fleet Street a dispute of gallipolar
could have triumphed over him morally a child physically. The
drive in the inn brake by undulating roads and scented
valleys shamed his cheek to a little flush of self assertion.
I will sleep under the vines, he said, and the
(02:57):
grapes shall drop into my mouth. I answered, lest in
King's cob, your repose should be everlasting. The air of
that hamlet has matured like old Port in the bin
of its hills, till to drink of it is to swoon.
We alighted at the crown of the high Street, purposing
to descend on foot the remaining distance to the shore. Behold,
(03:21):
I exclaimed, how the gulls float in the shimmer like
ashes tossed aloft by the white draft of a fire.
Behold these ancient buildings, nodding to the everlasting lullaby of
the bay waters. The cliffs are black with the heat apoplexy.
The lobster is drawn scarlet to the surface. You shall
be like an adult egg put into an incubator, so
(03:45):
he said, I shall rest and not hatch. The very
thought is like sweet oil on a burn. He stayed
with me a week, and his body waxed wondrous, round
and rosy, while his eye acquired a foolish and vacant expression.
So it was with me. We rolled together by shore
(04:05):
and by road of this sluggard place, like spent billiard balls,
and if by chance we cannoned, we swerved sleepily apart,
until perhaps one would fall into a pocket of the sand,
and the other bring up against a cushion of sea wall. Yet,
for all its enervating atmosphere, King's Cobb had its fine
(04:26):
traditions of a sturdy independence and a slashing history withal.
And its aspect is as picturesque as that of an
opera bo fishing harbor. Then too, its high street, as
well as its meandering rivulets of low streets, is rich
in buildings, venerable and antique. We took an irresponsible, smiling
(04:48):
pleasure in noting these advantages. Particularly after lunch, and sometimes
where an old house was empty, we would go over
it and stare at beams and chimney pieces, and hear
the haunted tale of its fortunes with a faint half
memory in our breasts of that one time bugbear we
had known as copy. But though more than once a
(05:11):
flaccid instinct would move us to have out our pencils,
we would only end by bunging our foolish mouths with
them as if they were cigarettes, and then vaguely wondering
at them, for that being pencils they would not draw.
By then we were so sinulous and demoralized that we
could hear in the distant strains of the European concert
(05:32):
nothing but an orchestra of sweet sounds, and would have
given ourselves away in any situation with a pound of tea. Therefore,
perhaps it was well for us that a peremptory summons
to town, reaching me, after seven days of comradeship with William,
I must make shift, to collect my faculties with my effects,
(05:52):
and return to the more bracing climate of Fleet Street.
And here you will note begins the story of William Tyrett,
who would linger yet a few days in that hanging
garden of the south coast, and who would pull himself
together and collect matter for copy. He found a very
good subject. That first evening of his solitude. I was
(06:13):
to leave in the afternoon and the morning we spent
in aimlessly rambling about the town. Towards midday, a slight
shower drove us to shelter under the green veranda of
a house standing up from the lower fall of the
high street that we had often observed in our wanderings.
This house, or rather houses, for it was a block
(06:34):
of two, was very tall and odd looking, being all
built of clean squares of a whitish granite, and the
double porch in the middle base led up to by side,
going steps behind thin iron railings, roofed with green painted
zinc in. Some of the windows were jalousies, but the
(06:57):
general aspect of the exterior was gaunt and rigid, and
the whole block bore a dismal, deserted look, as if
it had not been lived in for years. Now. We
had taken refuge in the porch of that half that
lay uppermost on the slope, and here we noticed that
at a late date the building was seemingly in process
(07:17):
of repair, painters, pots and brushes lying on a window sill,
and a pair of steps showing within through the glass.
They have gone to dinner, said I, Supposing we seized
the opportunity to explore. We pushed at the door. It yielded.
We entered, shut ourselves in, and paused to the sound
(07:37):
of our own footsteps, echoing and laughing from corners and
high places. On the ground floor were two or three
good sized rooms with modern grates, but cornices, chimney pieces, ambussures,
finally Jacobian. There were innumerable understair and overhead cupboards too,
and pantries and closets, and passages going off darkly in
(08:00):
to the unknown. We cloned the stairway to the first
floor to the second. Here was all pure Jacobean, but
the walls were crumbling, the paper peeling, the windows dim
and foul with dirt. I have never known a place
with such echoes. They shook from a footstep like nuts
rattling out of a bag. A mouse behind the skirting
(08:22):
led a whole camp following of them. To ask a
question was as in that other house, to awaken the
derizved shouts of an opposition. Yet in the intervals of
silence there fell a deadliness of quiet that was quite appalling.
By force of contrast, let us go down, I said,
I am feeling creepy. Pooh said William Turret, I could
(08:46):
take up my abode here with a feather bed. We descended, nevertheless,
arrived at the ground floor. I am going to the back,
said William. I followed him a little reluctantly. I confess
gloom and shadow had fallen upon the town, and this old,
deserted hulk of an abode was ghostly to a degree.
(09:06):
There was no film of dust on its every shelf
or sill that did not seem to me to bear
the impress of some phantom finger feeling its way along.
A glint of stealthy eyes would look from dark, uncertain corners.
A thin, evil vapor appeared to rise through the cracks
of the boards from the unvisited cellars in the basement.
(09:27):
And here too we came suddenly upon an eccentricity of
outbuilding that wrought upon our souls with wonder. For penetrating
to the rear, through what might have been a cloak
closet or butler's pantry, we found a supplementary wing, or
rather tail of rooms loosely knocked together to proceed from
the back, forming a sort of skilling to the main building.
(09:51):
These rooms led direct into one another, and consisting of
little more than timber and plaster were in a woeful
state of dilapidation. Everywhere. The last grinned through torn gaps
in the ceilings and walls everywhere, The latter were blotched
and mildewed with damp, and the floorboards rotting in their tracks,
fall and mortar, rusty tins, yellow teeth of glass, whitened soot.
(10:16):
All the decay and rubbish of a generation of neglect
littered the place and filled it with an acrid odor.
From one of the rooms, we looked forth through a
little discolored window upon a patch of fourlorn weedy garden,
where the very cats glowered in a depression that no
surfeit of mice could assuage. We went on our nervous feet,
(10:37):
apologetic to the grit they crunched, And when we were
come to near the end of this dreary annex, turned
off to the left into a short gloom of passage
that led to a closed door. Pushing this open, we
found a drop of some half dozen steps, and going
gingerly down these stopped with a common exclamation of surprise
(10:58):
on our lips. Perhaps our wonder was justified, for we
were in the stern cabin of an ancient West India man,
some twenty feet long by twelve wide. There it all was,
from the deck transoms above to the side lockers, and
great curved window sloping outwards to the floor, and glazed
(11:19):
with little panes and galleries that filled the whole end
of the room. Thereout we looked over the degraded garden
to the lower quarters of the town, as if indeed
we were perched high up on waves, and even to
a segment of the broad bay that swept by them.
But the room itself, what phantasy of old sea dog
(11:40):
or master mariner had conceived it? What pulsied spirit, condemned
to rust in inactivity, had found solace in this burlesque
of ship craft, To renew the past in such a fixture,
to work oneself up to the old glow of flight
and action, and then while one stamped, rocked maniacally, to
(12:01):
feel the refusal of so much as a timber, to
respond to one's fervor of animation. It was a grotesque picture. Now,
this cherished chamber had shared the fate of the rest.
The paint and gilding were all cracked and blistered away.
Much of the glass of the stern frame was gone
or hung loose in its sashes. The elaborately carved lockers
(12:23):
moldered on the walls. These were but dummies when we
came to examine them, mere slabs attached to the brickwork
and decaying with it. There should be a case, bottle
and rummers in one at least, said William Turrett. There are, sir,
at your service, said a voice behind us. We started
and turned. It had been such a strained voice that
(12:45):
it was with something like astonishment. I looked upon the speaker.
Whence he had issued I could not guess, but there
he stood behind us, nodding and smiling. A squab thick
settled fellow, with a great bald head, and all the
hair on his face, a tuft like a teasel sprouting
from his under lip. He was in his shirt sleeves,
(13:06):
without coat or vest. And I noticed that his dirty
lawn was oddly plaited in front, and that about his
ample paunch was buckled. A broad belt of leather greased
hip boots encased his lower limbs, and the heels of
these were drawn together as he bowed. William Turret, a
master of nervous English, muttered, Great Scott under his breath.
(13:29):
Permit me, said the stranger, and he held out to
us a tin pannikin produced from heaven knows wear that
swam with fragrance. I shook my head, William Turret, that
fated man did otherwise. He accepted the vessel and drained it.
It smacks of all castile, he said, handing it back
(13:49):
with a sigh of ecstasy. Who the devil are you, sir?
The stranger gave a little crow parregrine iron, sir, at
your service, copped paragrin iron of the raven Sloop, among others.
You are very welcome to the run of my poor abode. Yours,
I murmured, in confusion. We owe you a thousand apologies.
(14:13):
Not at all, he said, addressing all of his courtesy
to William Me. Since my rejection of his beaker, he
took pains to ignore. Not at all, he said. Your
intrusion was quite natural under the circumstances. I take a
pleasure in being your cicerone this cabin, he waved his
hand pompously. A fancy of mine, sir, A fancy of mine.
(14:36):
The actual material of the latest of my commands brought
hither and adapted to the exigencies of shore life. It
enables me to live eternally in the past, a most
satisfying illusion. Come to night and have a pipe in
a glass with me, I thought, William turret mad. I
will come by all means, he said. The stranger bowed
(14:58):
us out of the room. That is right, he exclaimed,
you will find me here. Good bye for the present.
As we plunged like dazed men into the street, now
groaned sunny. I turned on my friend William, I said,
did you happen to look back as we left the cabin? No,
I did, Well, there was no stranger there at all.
(15:22):
The place was empty. Well, you will not go to night,
you bet, I do, I shrugged my shoulders. We walked
on a little way in silence. Suddenly my companion turned
on me, a most truculent expression on his face. For
an independent thinker, he said, you are a rather pulsolanimous jackass,
(15:45):
a man of your convictions to shy at a shadow. Fie,
sir fie. What if the room were empty, the place
was full enough of traps to permit of Captain Iron's
immediate withdrawal. Much may be expressed in a sniff. I sniffed.
That afternoon I went back to town and left the
offense of William to his fate. It found him at
(16:08):
once the very day following that of my retreat, I
was polishing phrases by gaslight in the dull sitting room
of my lodgings in the Lambeth Road, when he staggered
in upon me. His face was like a sheep's, white
and vacant. His hands had caught a trick of groping
blindly along the backs of chairs. You have obtained your copy,
(16:31):
I said. I made him out to murmur yes in
a shaking under voice. He was so patently nervous that
I put him in a chair and poured him out
a wineglassful of London brandy. This generally is a powerful emetic,
but it had no more effect upon him than water.
Then I was about to lower the gas to save
(16:52):
his eyes, but he stopped me with a thin shriek.
Light light, he whispered, it cannot be too light for me. Now,
William Turrett, I said, by and by, watchful of him,
and marking a faint effusion of color soaked to his cheek.
You would not accept my warning, and you were extremely
rude to me. Therefore you have had an experience, an
(17:16):
awful one, he murmured, an awful one, no doubt. And
to obtain surcease of the haunting memory of it, you
must confide its processes to me. But first I must
put it to you, which is the more posollanimous to
refuse to submit one's manliness to the tyranny of the unlawful,
or to rush into situations you have not the nerve
(17:38):
to adapt yourself too. I could not foresee. I could
not foresee. Neither could I, and that was my very
reason for declining the invitation now proceed. It was long
before he could, But presently he essayed and gathered voice
with the advance of his narrative, and even unconsciously threw
(18:01):
it into something the form of copy. And here it
is as he murmured it, but with a gasp for
every full stop. I confess I was so far removed
by the tone of your protest, as after your departure,
to make some cautious inquiries about the house we had visited,
I could discover nothing to satisfy my curiosity. It was
(18:24):
known to have been untenanted for a great number of years.
But as to who was the landlord, whether Captain Iron
or another, no one could inform me, and the agent
for the property was of the adjacent town where you
met me. I was not fortunate, indeed, in finding that
anyone even knew of the oddly appointed room. But considering
(18:45):
that owing to the time the house had remained vacant,
the existence of this eccentricity could be a tradition only
with some casual few, my failure did not strike me
as being all that bodeful. On the contrary, I had
only wetted my desire to investigate further in person and
penetrate to the heart of a very captivating little mystery.
(19:07):
But probably I thought it is quite simple of solution,
and the fact of the repairers and the landlord being
in evidence at one time a natural coincidence. I dined
well and sallied forth about nine o'clock. It was a
night pregnant with possibilities. The lower strata of air were calm,
but overhead the wind went down the sea with a
(19:30):
noise of baggage wagons, and there was an ominous hurrying
and gathering together of forces under the bellying standards of
the clouds. As I went up the steps of the
lonely building, the high street seemed to turn all its
staring eyes of lamps in my direction. What a droll fellow,
they appeared to be saying. And how will he look
when he reissues? There ain't nobody in that house, croaked
(19:54):
a small boy who had paused below, squinting up at me.
How do you know? Said? I move on, my little man,
he went, And at once it occurred to me that
as no notice was taken of my repeated knockings, I
might as well try the handle. I did, found the
door unlatched, as it had been in the morning, pushed
it open, entered and swung it to behind me. I
(20:18):
found myself in the most profound darkness. That darkness, if
I may use the paradox of a peopled desolation, that
men of but little nerve or resolution find insupportable. To me.
Trained to a serenity of stoicism, it could make no
demoralizing appeal. I had at my match box, opened it
(20:38):
at leisure, and while the whole vaulting blackness seemed to
tick and rustle with secret movement, took a half dozen
vestas into my hand, struck one alight, and by its
dim radiance, made my way through the building by the
passages we had penetrated in the morning. If at all
I shrank or perspired on my spectral journey, I swear
(20:59):
I was not conscious of doing so. I came to
the door of the cabin. All was black and silent. Ah,
I thought the rogue has played me false. Not to
subscribe to an uncertainty, I pushed at the door, saw
only swimming dead vacancy before me, and tripped at the
instant upon the sill, stumbling, crashing into the room below,
(21:21):
and slid my length on the floor. Now I must
tell you it was here my heart gave its first somersault.
I had fallen, as I say, into a black vault
of emptiness. Yet as I rose, bruised and dazed to
my feet, there was the cabin, all alight from a
great lantern that swung from the ceiling, and our friend
(21:41):
of the morning seated at a table with a case,
bottle of rum and glasses before him. I stared incredulous. Yes,
there could be no doubt it was he, and pretty
flushed with drink too by his appearance. Incandescent light in
a west Indiaman, I muttered, for not otherwise could I
account for the sudden illumination? What the deuce belay that?
(22:05):
He growled? He seemed to observe me for the first time.
A handsome manner of boarding a craft. You've got, sir,
said he, glooming at me. I was hastening to apologize,
but he stopped me coarsely. Oh curse the long jaw
of him. Fill your cheek with that, you barbary ape
and wag your tail if you can but burn your tongue.
(22:26):
He pointed to the case bottle with a forefinger that
was like a dirty parsnip. What induced me to swallow
the insult and even some of that pungent liquor of
his rude offering the it's for copy was no doubt
at the bottom of it. I sat down opposite my host,
filled and drained a bumper. The fire ran to my
brain so that the whole room seemed to pitch and curtsey.
(22:49):
This is an odd fancy of yours, I said, What
is said? He this, I answered, waving my hand around.
This freak of turning a back room into a cab.
He stared at me, then burst into a malevolent laugh
back room by thunder, said he. Why, of course, just
a step into the garden, where the roses and the
(23:11):
buttercupses be a groin. Now, I pricked my ears. Has
the night turned fowl? I muttered, What a noise the
rain makes beating on the window. It's like to be
a foul one for you, at least, said he. But
as for the rain, it's blazing moonlight. I turned to
the broad casement in astonishment. My god, what did I see? Oh,
(23:35):
my friend, my friend, will you believe me? By the
melancholy glow that spread there through? I saw the whole
room was rising and sinking in rhythmical motion, that the
lights of King's cob had disappeared, and that in their
place was revealed a world of pale and tossing water,
the pursuing waves of which leapt and clutched at the
(23:57):
glass with innocuous fingers. I darted to my feet mad
in an instant look, Look, I shrieked. They follow us.
They struggled to get at you, you bloody murderer. They came,
rising on the crests of the billows. They hurried fast
in our wake, tumbling and swaying their stretched drowned faces,
(24:18):
now lifted to the moonlight, now overwashed in the long
trenches of water. They were rolling against the galleries of glass,
on which their hair slapped like ribbons of seaweed. A
score of ghastly white corpses with strained black eyes and pointed,
stiff elbows crooked up in vain for air. I was mad,
(24:39):
but I knew it all now. This was no house
but the good, ill fated vessel Rayo, once bound for Jamaica,
but on the voyage fallen into the hands of the
bloody buccaneer Paul Hardman, and her crew made to walk
the plank, and most of her passengers. I knew that
the dark scoundrel had boarded and mastered her, and having
(25:02):
first fired and sunk his own sloop, had steered her
straight for the Cuban coast, making disposition of what remained
of the passengers on the way. And I knew that
my great grandfather had been one of those doomed survivors,
and that he had been shot and murdered under orders
of the ruffian that now sat before me. All this
(25:23):
as retailed by one who sailed for a season under
hardman to save his skin is matter of old private
history and of common report. Was it that the monster buccaneer,
after years of successful trading in the ship he had stolen,
went into secret and prosperous retirement under an assumed name,
and was never heard of more on the high seas.
(25:45):
But it seems it was for the great grandson of
one of his victims to play yet a sympathetic part
in the gray old tragedy. How did this come to
me in a moment? Or rather, what was the dream
buzzing in my brain of proof and copy and all
the tame stagnation of a long delirium of order, I
(26:06):
had nothing in common with the latter. In some telepathic way,
influenced by these past dated surroundings, dropped into the very
den of this procrustus of the sea. I was there
to re enact the fearful scene that had found its
climax in the brain of my ancestor. I rushed to
the window, thence back to within a yard of the
(26:28):
glowering buccaneer, before whom I stood with tossed arms, wild
and menacing. They follow you, I screamed, passive, relentless, and deadly.
They follow in your wake and will not be denied.
The strong, the helpless, the coarse, and the beautiful, all
you have killed and mutilated in your wanton devilry. They
(26:49):
are on your heels like a pack of specter hounds,
and sooner or later they will have you in their
cold arms and hail you down to the secret places
of terror. Look at Beston, who leads with a fearful
smile on his mouth. Look at that pale girl you tortured,
whose hair rise and lengthens A swarm of snakes nosing
the hull for some open porthole to enter. By dog
(27:12):
and devil, You are betrayed by your own hideous cruelty.
He rose and struck at me, blindly staggered, and found
his filthy voice in a shriek of rage. Jor under
make hell of the galley, fire heat some irons red,
and fetch out a bucket of pitch. We'll learn this
dandy galute, his manners wrought to the snapping point of desperation.
(27:35):
I sprang at and closed with him, and we went
down on the floor together with a heavy crash. I
was weaponless, but I would choke and strangle him with
my hands. I had him under my fingers, crooked in
his throat, his eyeballs slipped forward like banana ends squeezed
from their skins. He could not speak or cry, but
(27:55):
he put up one feeble hand and flapped it aimlessly
at that In the midst of my fury, I glanced
above me and saw a press of dim faces crowding
a dusk hatch, and from them a shadowy arm came through,
pointing a weapon, and all my soul reeled sick, and
I only longed to be left time to destroy the
venomous horror beneath me before I passed. It was not
(28:19):
to be something. A physical sensation like the jerk of
a hiccup shook my frame, and immediately the waters of
being seemed to burst their dam and flow out peacefully
into a valley of rest. William Turret paused and well said,
I you see me here? He said, I woke this
(28:39):
morning and found myself lying on the floor of that
shattered and battered closet, and a starved demon of a
cat licking up something from the boards. When I drove
her away, there was a patch there like ancient dried blood.
And how about your head, my head, Why the bullet
seemed stuck in it between the temples and there I
am afraid it is still just so. Now, William Turret,
(29:04):
you must take a Turkish bath and some cooling salts,
and then come and tell me all about it again. Ah,
you don't believe me, I see, I never supposed you would.
Good night. But when he was gone, I sat ruminating
that Captain Iron, I thought, walked over the great rent
in the floor without falling through well well end of
(29:30):
William Turrett's copy
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Law & Order: Criminal Justice System - Season 1 & Season 2
Season Two Out Now! Law & Order: Criminal Justice System tells the real stories behind the landmark cases that have shaped how the most dangerous and influential criminals in America are prosecuted. In its second season, the series tackles the threat of terrorism in the United States. From the rise of extremist political groups in the 60s to domestic lone wolves in the modern day, we explore how organizations like the FBI and Joint Terrorism Take Force have evolved to fight back against a multitude of terrorist threats.