Doctor Syn by Russell Thorndyke (7 ebook reader TXT) ๐
"Come, now," giggled the landlady, "not to us, Mister Mipps. Not the way we gets it."
"I don't know what you means," snapped the wary sexton. "But I do wish as how you'd practise a-keepin' your mouth shut, for if you opens it much more that waggin' tongue of yours'll get us all the rope."
"Whatever is the matter?" whimpered the landlady.
"Will you do as I tell you?" shrieked the sexton.
"0h, Lord!" cried Mrs. Waggetts, dropping the precious teapot in her agitation and running out of the back door toward the school. Mipps picked up the teapot and put it on the table; then lighting his short clay pipe he waited by the window.
In the bar sat Denis Cobtree, making little progress with a Latin book that was spread open on his knee. From the other side of the counter Imogene was watching him.
She was a tall, sli
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- Author: Russell Thorndyke
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Dymchurch is very quiet again, and the wild adventures of the few days recorded in this book were forgotten after Trafalgar, but the Doctor was never forgotten by those who knew him, and it would bring tears to their eyes did anybody chance to sing his quaint old capstan song:
โHereโs to the feet wot have walked the plank;
Yo ho! for the dead manโs throttle.
And hereโs to the corpses floating round in the tank;
And the dead manโs teeth in the bottle.
โFor a pound of gunshot tied to his feet,
And a ragged bit of sail for a winding sheet;
Then the signal goes with a bang and a flash.
And overboard you go with a horrible splash.
โAnd all that isnโt swallowed by the sharks outside,
Stands up again upon its feet upon the running tide;
And it keeps a bowinโ gently, and a lookinโ with surprise
At each little crab a scramblinโ from the sockets of its eyes.โ
OFF the Malay peninsula lies the island of Penang. Upon the mountain outside the little town, and overlooking the sea, stands an ancient Chinese monastery. Every evening when the dusk hour falls, and when English sextons go to ring the evensong, an odd little man throws sacred crackers into the red-hot stomach of the Chinese God of Plenty. After this office is performed he repairs to the great pool, where the sacred turtles live, to enjoy an evening pipe of opium. And there, as the turtles crawl upon the flat slab rocks that fringe the pool, he delights his colleagues, the yellow priests, with horrific tales of demons and ghosts that inhabit the old parts of Britain.
All the priests in that far-off temple know of Romney Marsh by reputation, and they would never go to England for fear of it. If a traveller from Kent ever reached that far-off temple in his journey through the world he would think it strange and homely to hear the yellow priests discussing horror tales of Romney Marsh, but he would understand if he could recognize in the odd little man, dressed in the dirty blue robe of the yellow race, the Dymchurch sexton, Mr. Mipps.
Whatโs he doing there, how did he get there, and how long will he stop there? Who knows!
Perhaps the ancient fellow has still unfulfilled ambitions and dangerous, profitable enterprises tucked away under that Chinese sleeve. But it is pretty certain that Dymchurch-under-the-Wall will see him no more.
THE END
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