BLACKBEARD VISITS THE BAKER
The astonishing discovery that Mr. Seymour and Blackbeard, as he called the stranger to himself, had dealings in common kept Martin awake for a good many hours.
He acknowledged that there was no reason why they should not have business relations, but there seemed to be something underhand in these stealthy visits by night.
When he got up in the morning he went straight into Dick Gollop’s room, and roused him.
“What do you want?” asked the constable, sleepily. “It’s not my watch yet.”
“Wake up and listen!” replied Martin.
“Been fighting again, eh?”
“No. Do wake up; it’s something you ought to know.”
“Well, spin your yarn, and don’t be long about it, or my eyes’ll shut, and then my ears won’t be no manner of good.”
Martin wasted no words in recounting the story of Blackbeard’s two midnight visits and the conveying up to Mr. Seymour’s room of the two brass-bound boxes. Gollop began to snore in the middle of it, but was roused again by a vigorous shake.
“And you spoil a man’s sleep for that!” the constable grumbled. “I wouldn’t have thought it of you!”
“But surely——”
“Now, look here, my lad!” said Gollop, raising himself on one elbow, “don’t you go for to teach me anything about the law.”
“I wasn’t going——”
“Stow your gab and hark to me! Ain’t I a constable, and therefore a man of law? Well, then, I tell you there’s nothing in the law to prevent a man, two men, forty men, bringing a box, two boxes, forty boxes, into a house at any watch o’ the night, dog-watch included.”
“But——”
“Don’t interrupt. If so be I was to run athwart the course of a man conveying a box in the middle watches it ’ud be my bounden duty to hail him and ask where he was bound for—if ’twas in the street, mind you, and I was on my rounds. But when a man has got across his own threshold—set his foot on his own deck in a manner of speaking—then I question him at my peril.”
“Couldn’t you search the house?”
“Not being an inward-bound ship, nor me a customs officer, I couldn’t, not without a warrant.”
“Why not get a warrant?” asked Martin.
“Why not? Because there’s no reason to think there’s anything contraband in them boxes; and, what’s more, because I’m dead sleepy. So just you set a course for your baker’s shop, my lad; what you can’t help, make the best of.”
Martin was by no means satisfied that the constable’s exposition of the law was sound, but it was clearly impossible to do anything more with him until he had finished his sleep.
That morning, Martin, in the course of his duty, boarded a vessel moored near Wapping which he had already visited several times, and where he had established friendly relations with the cook.
“Two quarterns to-day, and mind they’re not stale,” said the cook.
“We never have any stale; our bread sells like hot cakes,” said Martin.
“Well, there’s a new customer for you astern there.”
The cook pointed to a vessel at anchor a few cables’ lengths down the river.
“Why, isn’t that the Portugal ship that was repairing at Deptford?” Martin asked.
“Ay, that’s her. She came up out of the yard on the tide yesterday.”
“I saw her in the yard not long ago. She’s had her mainmast shot away by the French, they said.”
“True, that was the yarn. She’s a queer sort of vessel, by all accounts. The crew are all black-haired men, but that you’d expect, being Portugals or Levantines, or summat outlandish. What’s queer is that they’re never allowed leave on shore. Even in Deptford, when the ship was being overhauled, they had to sling their hammocks in an old warehouse on the riverside. They was marched about like a lot of prisoners—conveyed there and back by the officers—and a dark-looking lot they are too.
“The captain’s a white man—white, says I, meaning he’s not a nigger, for his face is the colour of beer, and his hair as black as coal, and his beard like a horse’s mane. And it’s well his crew are foreigners, for true-born Englishmen wouldn’t stand that sort of treatment; there’d be mutiny aboard, trust me. But there’s no proper spirit in those Portugals; I don’t call ’em men.”
“They’re men enough to eat English bread, I expect,” said Martin.
“See that you get English money. I wouldn’t trust ’em far,” declared the cook.
Martin laughed as he went down the side. He had already got one or two new customers for his master, and he was so much interested in this Portugal vessel that he felt rather excited at the prospect of boarding her.
But as he rowed towards her he began to have qualms. It was members of her crew that had chased him that night when he had rowed Boulter’s wherry down to Deptford and picked up the fugitive boy. He remembered their wild looks and savage cries; above all, he remembered the face of the man who had urged them on—the man who had been his passenger—Blackbeard himself. What if he were recognised when he ran alongside the vessel?
This idea daunted him, and swinging the boat round, he headed up the river. But before he was half-way back to London Bridge he wished he had taken the risk. After all, what had he to fear? Blackbeard might not be aboard the ship; the crew had seen him only indistinctly in the dusk, and they had been more intent on the boy he had taken into the boat than on himself.
Further, suppose Blackbeard did recognise him, what then? He would know him only as the rower of the wherry, who had allowed a boy swimming in the river to climb into his boat for safety. There was nothing in that; anyone else might have done the same. Blackbeard could not know that he lived in the same house as Mr. Seymour, and was aware of his mysterious visits to that gentleman.
But though he repented his timidity, he felt that he had come too far to return now. As it turned out, he was glad of his decision, for in the evening, just before closing time at the shop, when he was sweeping up the flour and breadcrumbs that littered the floor, and had his back to the door, he was startled to hear behind him the husky voice of the man he had been thinking about.
“Pardon, sir,” said the voice; and Martin noticed that it had a foreign accent, not at all like that in which Blackbeard had spoken to Mr. Seymour.
He glanced over his shoulder, thinking he might be mistaken; but no, he could not mistake that swarthy face and strangely-trimmed beard.
“Pardon, sir, are you the baker as send bread to the ships on the river?”
“I am, to be sure,” said Mr. Faryner.
“Then I beg you send three breads regular all the days to the Santa Maria what lie by Wapping.”
“Are you the captain?”
“I am so.”
“Very well, I will send the bread, and you will pay on the spot?”
“Without doubt, yes, I will pay. Good-night.”