The Black Cargo by John P. Marquand & Karl Wurf

Author:John P. Marquand & Karl Wurf
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: mystery
Publisher: Wildside Press
Published: 2021-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 15

I often think the dead in our town lie in a fairer place than the living. It is often so along our coast. They are on a high bit of ground close to the harbor, so that you can see their resting places from the decks as soon as you pass the first buoy, and when you climb from the street the dunes and the ocean catch your eye, and there is hardly a tombstone that does not stare blindly out to sea. Even in midsummer the grass is brown about them, for it is a sandy place and swept by the wind. It was quiet as I climbed up the West Hill that morning. The sun was already high and I was quite alone. It was beating down on the rows of slate headstones, making their inscriptions as clear as the letters of the judgment book, terse and austere summaries of vanished endeavors. In the days those stones were reared few people cared for pretense, and seldom strove to hide the grimness of the end of man. As I walked through the gate at West Street, life lay before me like a page to read as I liked between the lines. Up and up the hill they stood in silent rows, the last memorial of names already forgotten, of frail humanity that had vanished in the air, leaving nothing but a few letters surmounted by a skull and wings. Deep as their names were carved, hardly one was more than a vague myth. Nothing they had done in their years of life remained to tax the memory.

I picked my way past their stones. The Nickersons I knew lay buried just over the rise of the hill. I had just come to the first of the family, old Jacob Nickerson, who once had a mill on the marshes, when I heard a sound which made me stop. It came to me on the wind, the sharp ringing sound of a hammer. I moved forward more quietly until I could see further down the slope.

Not thirty feet in front of me, where the hill inclined more gradually, was an imposing tomb of brick with a marble top. A man was leaning over it, a man with a spotted blue coat. It was Mr. Richard Parton. He was bending over the tomb with a hammer and chisel in his hand. As I looked, he dealt the chisel a series of deft blows, and then bent closer to blow off the marble dust. I could see the wind blow a touch of it back in his face, so that he coughed and half closed his eyes, but immediately he was at it again. I could see his profile contorted and intent. Something in the hasty pecking of his chisel, something in the way he was smiling, warned me it was better not to interrupt him then. I wished to move back, but I was afraid he might hear, so instead I crouched down beside old Jacob Nickerson’s stone, and continued to watch.

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