At the head of a diminutive creek of the Tamar River, a little above Saltash on the Cornish shore, stands the village of Botusfleming, or Bloflemy, and in early summer, when the cherry orchards come into bloom, you will search far before finding a prettier.

The years have dealt gently with Botusfleming.  As it is today, so, or nearly so, it was on a certain sunny afternoon in the year 1807, when the Rev. Edward Spettigew, curate in charge, sat in the garden before his cottage and smoked his pipe while he meditated a sermon.  That is to say, he intended to meditate a sermon.  But the afternoon was warm; bumblebees hummed drowsily among his wallflowers and tulips.  From his bench the eye followed the vale’s descent between overlapping billows of cherry blossom to a gap wherein shone the silver Tamar: not, be it understood, the part called Hamoaze, where lay the warships and the hulks containing the French prisoners, but an upper reach seldom troubled by shipping.

Parson Spettigew laid the book face downward on his knee while his lips murmured a part of the text he had chosen: “A place of broad rivers and streams . . . wherein shall go no galley with oars, neither shall gallant ship pass thereby. . . .”  His pipe went out.  The book slipped from his knee to the ground.  He slumbered . . .

p. 244The garden gate rattled, and he awoke with a start.  In the pathway below him stood a sailor, a middle-sized, middle-aged man, rigged out in best shore-going clothes: shiny tarpaulin hat, blue coat and waistcoat, shirt open at the throat, and white duck trousers with broad-buckled waistbelt.

“Beggin’ your reverence’s pardon,” began the visitor, touching the brim of his hat, and then upon second thought uncovering, “but my name’s Jope, Ben Jope—”

“Eh?  What can I do for you?” asked Parson Spettigew, a trifle flustered at being caught napping.

“—of the Vesoovious bomb, bos’n,” pursued Mr. Jope, with a smile that disarmed annoyance: so ingenuous it was, so friendly, and withal so respectful; “but paid off at eight this morning.  Maybe your reverence can tell me whereabouts to find an embalmer in these parts?”

“A—a what?”

“Embalmer.”  Mr. Jope chewed for a moment or two upon a quid of tobacco, and began a thoughtful explanation.  “Sort of party you’d go to supposin’ your reverence had a corpse by you and wanted to keep it for a permanency.  You take a lot of gums and spices, and first of all you lays out the deceased, and next—”

“Yes, yes,” the parson interrupted, hurriedly; “I know the process, of course.”

“What—to practice it?”  Hope illumined Mr. Jope’s countenance.

“No, most certainly not. . . .  But, my good man, an embalmer!—and at Botusfleming, of all places!”

The sailor’s face fell.  He sighed patiently.  p. 245“That’s what they said at Saltash, more or less.  I got a sister living there—Sarah Treleaven her name is—a widow woman, and sells fish.  When I called on her this morning, ‘Embalmer?’ she said; ‘go and embalm your grandmother!’  Those were her words, and the rest of the population wasn’t scarcely more helpful.  But as luck would have it, while I was searchin’, Bill Adams went for a shave, and inside o’ the barber’s shop what should he see but a fair-sized otter in a glass case.  Bill began to admire it, careless like, and it turned out the barber had stuffed the thing.  Maybe your reverence knows the man?  ‘A. Grigg and Son’ he calls his-self.”

“Grigg?  Yes, to be sure; he stuffed a trout for me last summer.”

“What weight?—making so bold.”

“Seven pounds.”

Mr. Jope’s face fell again.  “Well-a-well,” he suggested, recovering himself, “I daresay the size don’t matter, once you’ve got the knack.  We’ve brought him along, anyway; an’ what’s more, we’ve made him bring all his tools.  By his talk, he reckons it to be a shavin’ job, and we agreed to wait before we undeceived him.”

“But—you’ll excuse me—I don’t quite follow—”

Mr. Jope pressed a forefinger mysterious to his lip, then jerked a thumb in the direction of the river.  “If your reverence wouldn’ mind steppin’ down to the creek with me?” he suggested, respectfully.

Parson Spettigew fetched his hat, and together the pair descended the vale beneath the dropping petals of the cherry.  At the foot of it they came p. 246to a creek, which the tide at this hour had flooded and almost overbrimmed.  Hard by the water’s edge, backed by tall elms, stood a dilapidated fish store, and below it lay a boat with nose aground on a beach of flat stones.  Two men were in the boat.  The barber, a slip of a fellow in rusty top hat and suit of rusty black, sat in the stern sheets face to face with a large cask: a cask so ample that, to find room for his knees, he was forced to crook them at a high, uncomfortable angle.  In the bows, boathook in hand, stood a tall sailor, arrayed in shore-going clothes, similar to Mr. Jope’s.  His face was long, sallow, and expressive of taciturnity, and he wore a beard, not where beards are usually worn, but as a fringe beneath his clean-shaven chin and lantern jaw.

“Well, here we are!” asserted Mr. Jope, cheerfully.  “Your reverence knows A. Grigg and Son, and the others you can trust in all weathers, bein’ William Adams, otherwise Bill, and Eli Tonkin: friends o’ mine an’ shipmates both.”

The parson, perplexed, stared at the tall seaman, who touched his hat by way of acknowledging the introduction.

“But—but I only see one!” he protested.

“This here’s Bill Adams,” said Mr. Jope, and again the tall seaman touched his hat.  “Is it Eli you’re missin’?  Eli’s in the cask.”

“Oh!”

“We’ll hoick him up to the store, Bill, if you’re ready.  It looks a nice cool place.  And while you’re prizin’ him open, I’d best explain to his reverence and the barber.  Here, ship out the shore plank; and you, A. Grigg and Son, lend a hand to heave. . . .  Aye, you’re right; it weighs more’n p. 247a trifle—bein’ a quarter-puncheon, an’ the best proof sperrits.  Tilt her this way. . . .  Ready? . . .  Then w’y-ho! and away she goes!”

With a heave and a lurch that canted the boat until the water poured over her gunwale, the huge tub was rolled overside into shallow water.  With a run and a tremendous lift they hoisted it up to the turfy plat, whence Bill Adams steered it with ease through the ruinated doorway of the store, while Mr. Jope returned, smiling and mopping his brow.

“It’s this-a-way,” he said, addressing the parson.  “Eli Tonkin his name is, or was; and, as he said, of this parish.”

Here Mr. Jope paused, apparently for confirmation.

“Tonkin?” queried the parson.  “There are no Tonkins surviving in Botusfleming parish.  The last of them was a poor old widow I laid to rest the week after Christmas.”

“Belay there! . . .  Dead, is she?”  Mr. Jope’s face exhibited the liveliest disappointment.  “And after the surprise we’d planned for her!” he murmured ruefully.  “Hi, Bill!” he called to his shipmate, who, having stored the cask, was returning to the boat.

“Wot is it?” asked Bill Adams, inattentively.  “Look ’ere, where did we stow the hammer an’ chisel?”

“Take your head out o’ the boat an’ listen.  The old woman’s dead!”

The tall man absorbed the news slowly.  “That’s a facer,” he said at length.  “But maybe we can fix her up, too?  I’ll stand my share.”

“She was buried the week after Christmas.”

p. 248“Oh!”  Bill scratched his head.  “Then we can’t—not very well.”

“Times an’ again I’ve heard Eli talk of his poor old mother,” said Mr. Jope, turning to the parson.  “W’ch you’ll hardly believe it, but though I knowed him for a West-country man, ’twas not till the last I learned what parish he hailed from.  It happened very curiously—Bill, rout up A. Grigg and Son, an’ fetch him forra’d here to listen; you’ll find the tools underneath him in the stern sheets.”

Bill obeyed, and, possessing himself of a hammer and chisel, returned to the shore.  The little barber drew near and stood at Mr. Jope’s elbow; his face wore an unhealthy pallor and he smelt potently of strong drink.

“Brandy it is,” apologized Mr. Jope, observing a slight contraction of the parson’s nostril.  “I reckoned ’twould tauten him a bit for what’s ahead. . . .  Well, as I was sayin’, it happened very curiously.  This day fortnight we were beatin’ up an’ across the Bay o’ Biscay, after a four months’ to-an’-fro game in front of Toolon Harbor.  Blowin’ fresh it was, an’ we makin’ pretty poor weather of it—the Vesoovious bein’ a powerful wet tub in anything of a sea, an’ a slug at the best o’ times.  Aboard a bombship everything’s got to be heavy.

“Well, sir, for a couple of days she’d been carryin’ canvas that fairly smothered us, an’ Cap’n Crang not a man to care how we fared forra’d, so long’s the water didn’ reach aft to his own quarters.  But at last the first mate, Mr. Wapshott, took pity on us an’—the Cap’n bein’ below, a-takin’ a nap after dinner—sends the crew o&rsqu............