The Sailor Part 6

Johnnie walked on air. At every shop window he came to he stopped to examine his foreign penny. But what was that in comparison with a real live parrot all the way from the West Indies? That night, Johnnie was the happiest boy in Kentish Town. He slept with the foreign penny under his pillow, and his dreams were of unparalleled magnificence.

And on the sofa in the kitchen below, tossed and dozed the unhappiest boy in Kentish Town. He had escaped the police by a miracle, he was quit of Auntie, he was free of the selling of matches, but tomorrow or the day after he was leaving the only friends he had ever known. As for the sea and Mr. Thompson and the _Margaret Carey_, there was some subtle but deadly instinct in him that had warned him already. There would be no Mother to wash him and bind his wounds, or to give him fried bacon and see that he came to no harm.

Twice he woke in the middle of the night, sweating with fear, and wildly calling her name.

IX

The next day it rained incessantly from morning till night, and there was just a faint hope in the boy's mind that it might prevent Mr.

Thompson coming to fetch him. He clung desperately to this feeble straw, because it was the only one he had, but he was not such a fool as to think that Mr. Thompson was the kind of man who stays at home for the weather. Therefore it did not surprise him at all when he was solemnly told that evening about six o'clock, just after he had had his tea, that Mr. Thompson had come for him.

Sure enough Mr. Thompson had. Moreover, he had come in a cab. All the same, he managed to enter the kitchen with the water running off his pea-jacket on mother's spotless floor, and as he stood blinking fiercely in the gas light, he looked bigger and hairier and less like a human being than ever.

Henry Harper's one instinct was to take a tight hold of Mother's ap.r.o.n.

And this he did in spite of the fact that Johnnie and Alfie and Percy were sitting round the table, drinking tea and eating bread and jam.

Mother told Henry Harper very gently he must be a man, whereupon he did his best to meet Mr. Thompson boldly. But he made a very poor job of it indeed.

Mr. Thompson, whose speech could only be followed with certainty by specialists, was understood to ask whether the boy's sea chest was ready.

"He has only the clothes he stands in," said Mother, tartly.

Mr. Thompson said that was a pity.

The boy hadn't even an overcoat, and Mother decided to give him quite a good one of Johnnie's--Johnnie bravely saying he didn't mind, although he minded a goodish bit, as he was rather proud of that particular garment.

"Your father will buy you another," said Mother. "I couldn't think of sending any boy to sea without an overcoat."

She also made up a bundle of odds and ends for the boy: a flannel shirt, two much-darned pairs of drawers, a rather broken pair of boots, a knitted comforter, and a pot of marmalade. She then gave him a kiss and put an apple into his hand and told him to be a good boy, and then he was gone.

X

Henry Harper followed Mr. Thompson into the cab that was waiting at the street door. He sat all alone opposite that ogre in the darkness, holding on desperately to the bundle and the apple that Mother had given him. He didn't venture to speak; he hardly ventured to breathe while the cab rumbled and tumbled through the rain. He didn't know where he was going. He only knew that he was going to sea, and he didn't even know what the sea was like, except that it was water and people got drowned in it. There was no sea at Blackhampton.

Mr. Thompson had not much conversation. This may have been due to his superior rank, or because he was one of those strong, silent men who prefer actions to words after the manner of the heroes in the best modern romances. Not that the boy was acquainted with any of these; he could neither read nor write; indeed, it was quite true what the Foreman Shunter had said, "that he didn't know A from a bull's foot,"

although, of course, that was speaking figuratively.

Mr. Thompson sat grim and silent as the tomb. But suddenly, by the light of a pa.s.sing lamp, the boy saw his right hand enter his pocket and come out with a large clasp knife in it. This he opened at his leisure. And then all at once a wave of terror swept over Henry Harper. This man was Jack the Ripper.

That famous person was then at his zenith. He had lately committed his fourth horrible murder in Whitechapel. The boy knew that as an undoubted fact, because he had cried the crime in the streets of Blackhampton, and had sold out twice in an hour. Moreover, he knew as a fact--extremely well informed contemporaries had told him--that Jack the Ripper was a sailor.

It was no use attempting to struggle or cry out. Besides, he was now paralyzed with terror. The only thing there was to hope for was that the Ripper would kill him before he started to mutilate.

They pa.s.sed another street lamp, and the boy saw that Mr. Thompson had something else in his hand. It was a fantastically shaped metal case.

The murderer opened it coolly and took out a queer, dark looking substance. He cut a piece off with his knife, put it in his mouth, then closed the blade and returned it to his pocket. The boy began to breathe again. It was a plug of tobacco.

All the same, Henry Harper knew he was not yet out of the wood. He was as sure as he was sitting in a four-wheeler--a thing he had never done before in his life--that this large and hairy sailor with the clasp knife was the murderer. Moreover, as he cast terrified glances through the wet windows into the sodden streets, he was certain this was Whitechapel itself. Everything looked so dark and mean and sullen, with noisome alleys on every hand and hardly any lamps to see them by, that full-grown women, let alone boys of thirteen, could be done to death in them without attracting the police.

It was not a bit of use trying to escape. Jack the Ripper would cut his throat if he moved hand or foot. The best thing he could do was to keep still. That was all very well, but he was sick with fear. He was being taken into the heart of Whitechapel to be done to death as Mary Ann Nichols and Catherine Morton--he was always very good at remembering names--and the other victims had been. He was familiar with all the details; they had been enormously discussed; there wasn't a newsboy in Blackhampton who hadn't his own private theory of these thrilling crimes. For instance, Henry Harper himself had always maintained that the sailor was a big sailor, and that he had a black beard. He had little thought a week ago when he had presented this startling theory to young Arris with a certain amount of intellectual pride that he would so soon be in a position to prove it.

They came to some iron gates. The cab stopped under a lamp. Mr.

Thompson put his head out of the window. If the boy had not been petrified with terror now would have been his chance. But he couldn't move.

The Ripper began to roar like a bull at some unseen presence, and soon the gates moved back and the cab moved on. And then about a minute later, for the first time in his life, the boy saw the mast of a ship.

He knew it was a ship. He had seen pictures in shop windows. There was one shop window in particular he frequented every Friday evening, which always displayed the new number of the _'l.u.s.trated London News_ and the _'l.u.s.trated London News_ was great on ships. This was a kind of glorified ca.n.a.l boat with masts, but according to the _'l.u.s.trated London News_, and there could be no higher authority, it was undoubtedly a ship.

In his excitement at seeing it, he nearly forgot who was sitting opposite. Perhaps he wasn't going to be mutilated in Whitechapel after all. There might be yet a chance; the murderer had not again taken his knife out of his pocket. But suddenly another special edition flashed through his memory: "'Orrible crime on the 'Igh Seas. Revolting Details." And then he knew that he was being decoyed to the high seas, in order that this man could work his will upon him at his leisure in circ.u.mstances of unspeakable ferocity.

The cab stopped again. Mr. Thompson opened the door and got out. It was still raining very hard. There was a lamp close by, and the boy could see the water falling in long, stealthy, narrow rods. The murderer told him roughly to come out. He came out at once. Had he had the pluck of a mouse, he would have run for it. But he was quaking and trembling, his knees were letting him down.

The driver of the cab, a grotesque in an oilskin cape with a hat to match it, dragged a large wooden box tied round with cord off the roof of his machine and with the help of its owner lowered it to the ground.

By the time this was done there came out of the darkness three or four strange men, who moved with the stealth of those used to the night.

They gathered round the box and its owner with humble offers of their a.s.sistance.

The boy's first thought was that these scarecrows were confederates of the eminent murderer. But this theory was soon shattered. At any rate, if confederates they were, Mr. Thompson seemed to have little use for them at the moment. Without a word of warning he suddenly ran boot first at one of these wretches and sent him spinning into the mud. The man fell with a howl and rose with a curse, and then made off into the darkness muttering imprecations, in the wake of his companions who had disappeared already.

The boy could only feel that murderers of Mr. Thompson's cla.s.s act according to their tastes in these little matters; but the cabman was rather impressed. He had made up his mind to stand out for "eight and a kick," but he now took what was given him without a word. As a matter of fact, he was given five shillings, which was considerably under his legal fare, but he did not venture to question Mr. Thompson's arithmetic. He moved off at once, but proceeded to take it out of his wretched horse as soon as he got through the dock gates.

In the meantime, Mr. Thompson was left standing beside his sea chest in the rain, and Henry Harper stood beside it also, convulsively clutching in one hand the bundle Mother had made up for him and in the other the apple she had given him.

Should he run for it? What was the use? All at once Mr. Thompson shouldered his sea chest with an air of quiet ferocity, and growled something that sounded like, "Git forrard, bye."

XI

Expecting to be kicked into the sea if he didn't do as he was told, the boy got forrard at once. Mr. Thompson and his sea chest followed close upon his heels. Henry Harper crossed a couple of crazy planks with water lying far down underneath them, Mr. Thompson and his sea chest always just behind him, and then to his wonder and dismay he suddenly realized that he was on the deck of a ship.

He hadn't time to take his bearings, or to make out at all clearly what the deck of a ship was like, before he was descending a ladder into total darkness which smelled like a sewer. A n.i.g.g.e.r with rings in his ears came forward with a light, and Mr. Thompson asked if the Old Man was in the cabin, and the n.i.g.g.e.r said, "Yessah."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "A n.i.g.g.e.r with rings in his ears came forward with a light."]

Mr. Thompson led Henry Harper to the cabin, which was a kind of room, about twelve feet by ten, miserably lit by a single dirty oil lamp.

Here the smell of sewage that pervaded the vessel was rather genteelly mingled with an odor of rum. The Old Man was in the cabin right enough. He was not a very prepossessing old man to look at; to begin with, he hardly looked old at all. He was just a rough, middle-aged seaman, with a sodden, half-savage face, with a peculiar light in it that somehow reminded the boy of Auntie when she had been to the public. It might almost have been taken for humor, had not humor some little reputation as a Christian quality.

"Bye, sir," said Mr. Thompson, briefly.

"Bye," said the Old Man, with equal brevity. He then pa.s.sed half a bloodshot eye over the shrinking figure in Johnnie's overcoat and father's trousers cut down, and said, "Git forrard, bye," in a tone that no boy of judgment would ever hesitate for a single moment to obey.

Henry Harper got forrard at once, although he didn't know where. He found his way out of the cabin somehow, and made ahead for a light that was suspended in an iron bracket. Under this he stood a moment trying to collect himself, or as much of himself as he had managed to bring aboard the ship, when Mr. Thompson came along and led him through various queer sorts of pa.s.sages and up a flight of stairs to a place which he called the cook's galley.

The cook, a fearful looking Chinaman, received Henry Harper with a scowl, which, however, was merged at once in an extreme servility towards Mr. Thompson who was clearly a person of high consequence aboard the _Margaret Carey_. In deference to Mr. Thompson's wishes, the cook, whose name was Sing, showed the boy a sort of small manhole between the copper and the galley stairs where he could put his gear, and also where he could creep in and rest whenever his duties permitted.