“Here is our burrow,” announced the sergeant, opening the garden gate to admit us. Then, as I reeled rather than walked into the enclosure: “Is Mr. Askew’s love pat still fretting you, Captain?”
I said it was, and made light of it, though my head was buzzing like a hive of angry bees. I had no notion of where Champe was taking me; and, what with the pain and the desire to be warmed and at ease, I was not curious enough to inquire.
Quite as if he were the owner of the house, Champe strode to the door, fitted a key in the lock, clicked it and bade me enter. But since the room to which the door gave ingress was as dark as a pocket, I let him show me the way. The interior was cold and discomforting, with the dead chill which goes with closed doors and windows and long-extinguished fires; and when the sergeant had shut and locked the door we were in darkness thick enough to be cut with a knife.
“Hold hard for a minute until I make a light, Captain Dick,” said the voice of my companion, muffled, as it seemed to me, by the tangible darkness. Then came the snicking of flint upon steel, a spark, a dull glow in the tinder, and, a little later, a flame for a candle which, when it was lighted, showed us a scantily furnished living-room in some disorder, a table with dishes and the remainder of a meal standing in the middle of the floor, and a hearth cold, but with the kindlings laid ready for lighting.
Champe thrust the candle flame among the dry pine splinters, and when the blaze began to murmur in the chimney, he filled a kettle from the water bucket bracketed on the wall and hung it on the crane. At this juncture my curiosity came to life.
“Give it a Dutch name, Champe; whose house is this you’re making so free with?” I demanded, drawing a chair up to the table and sitting down to hold my buzzing head in my hands.
“You’ve guessed it at the first word,” chuckled the sergeant. “It’s the Dutch boat-builder’s house, sure enough—or it was before I buried him in the cellar and took possession in the name of General Washington and the Continental Congress. That’s my dinner you’re looking at—or what remains of it. And there’s more where that came from—such as it is.”
“But the man?” I exclaimed in honest horror. “You didn’t murder him, Champe?”
“That’s as it may be. I wrapped him up in some of his own boat cordage, with a knotted turn of it between his teeth for quietness’ sake, and lowered him into the hold. Alive or dead, he’ll be there now, if the rats haven’t eaten him.”
“This won’t do at all, Sergeant!” I protested in shocked deprecation. “The fact that the man happened to own a boat which we needed is no reason why we should turn rawhead-and-bloody-bones pirates. Bring the candle and show me where you have put him.”