‘I’d give half a dollar to any chap as can tell me where she hails from—and what port [p28 it is where they has ships o’ that cut,’ said middle-aged Haversham to the group that had now gathered.
‘George!’ exclaimed young Benenden from under his field-glasses, ‘she’s going.’ And she went. Her bow went down suddenly and she stood stern up in the water—like a duck after rain. Then quite slowly, with no unseemly hurry, but with no moment’s change of what seemed to be her fixed purpose, the ship sank and the grey rolling waves wiped out the place where she had been.
Now I hope you will not expect me to tell you anything more about this ship—because there is nothing more to tell. What country she came from, what port she was bound for, what cargo she carried, and what kind of tongue her crew spoke—all these things are dead secrets. And a dead secret is a secret that nobody knows. No other secrets are dead secrets. Even I do not know this one, or I would tell you at once. For I, at least, have no secrets from you.
Her bow went down suddenly.
When ships go down off Dungeness, things from them have a way of being washed up on the sands of that bay which curves from Dungeness to Folkestone, where the sea has bitten a piece out of the land—just such a half-moon-shaped piece as you bite out of a slice of [p29 bread-and-butter. Bits of wood tangled with ropes—broken furniture—ships’ biscuits in barrels and kegs that have held brandy—seamen’s chests—and sometimes sadder things that we will not talk about just now.
Now, if you live by the sea and are grown-up you know that if you find anything on the seashore (I don’t mean starfish or razor-shells or jellyfish and sea-mice, but anything out of a ship that you would really like to keep) your duty is to take it up to the coast-guard and say, ‘Please, I’ve found this.’ Then the coast-guard will send it to the proper authority, and one of these days you’ll get a reward of one-third of the value of whatever it was that you picked up. But two-thirds of the value of anything, or even three-thirds of its value, is not at all the same thing as the thing itself—if it happened to be the kind of thing you want. But if you are not grown-up and do not live by the sea, but in a nice little villa in a nice little suburb, where all the furniture is new and the servants wear white aprons and white caps with long strings in the afternoon, then you won’t know anything about your duty, and if you find anything by the sea you’ll think that findings are keepings.
Edward was not grown-up—and he kept everything he found, including sea-mice, till the [p30 landlady of the lodgings where his aunt was threw his collection into the pig-pail.
Being a quiet and persevering little boy he did not cry or complain, but having meekly followed his treasures to their long home—the pig was six feet from nose to tail, and ate the dead sea-mouse as easily and happily as your father eats an oyster—he started out to make a new collection.