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CHAPTER III

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MELDON mounted his bicycle and rode towards Ballymoy even more rapidly than he had ridden out in the afternoon. It was a moonless night and the road in some places was difficult to see. About three miles from the town Meldon ran into a donkey, which, after a fashion common among donkeys in Connacht, was lying asleep in the middle of the road. The creature was greatly startled but not much hurt. It floundered over the bank into the nearest field as quickly as its hobbled forelegs allowed it. Meldon was pitched over his handle-bars and cut the palms of both his hands. He picked himself up and found that the front forks of his bicycle were badly bent. It was impossible to ride and almost impossible to wheel the machine. With the perfect confidence in everybody's honesty which residence in the West of Ireland begets in a man, he laid the machine in the ditch and walked on. His card was in the tool-bag, and he felt sure that some carter would bring the thing into the town in the morning. He whistled cheerfully as he tramped along. The Rev. J. J. Meldon had an excellent temper. It took more than a trifling accident and a few cuts to upset it. He didn't even use unkind language about the donkey.

It was late when he arrived in Ballymoy. The windows of most of the houses were dark and the people were in bed. A light still burned in an upper window of Mr. Doyle's hotel. Before the days of the Land League it had been called the "Buckley Arms." Mr. Doyle's father, recognising the fact that politicians and farmers were his best customers, had taken down the old sign, which might have been offensive, and put up in large gilt letters, "The Imperial Hotel." Some day, perhaps, if patriotism becomes the motive power of Irish agitation, another Doyle will change the name again and call his house "The National." In the meanwhile "The Imperial" is a good name. It suggests a certain spacious sumptuousness and justifies the price which Mr. Doyle charges for beds, dinners, and breakfasts.

The prospect of the large fortune which he expected to get on Inishgowlan Island did not in the least modify Meldon's eagerness to make the best possible bargain with the stranger. Even if he had actually secured all the Spanish gold, he would still have been keenly anxious to get the most he could for his boat. Like all Irishmen, he found a pleasure in bargaining, and haggled for shillings without being particularly covetous, in the spirit of the sportsman who hunts foxes which he doesn't want to eat. Meldon looked forward to being able to brag afterwards of having got the better of a stranger. That, and the delight of proving himself the better man, were the attractive things, not the mere acquisition of a pound or two.

He entered the hotel and found Mr. Langton sitting in lonely splendour in a room called the drawing-room. There was a bottle of whisky on a table before him and a jug of water. But Mr. Langton, perhaps because the visitor he expected was a clergyman, had drunk very little. The bottle was almost full. The carpet was littered with tobacco ash and the ends of cigarettes. All the books which usually adorned Mr. Doyle's solitary bookshelf were on the floor. Mr. Langton had been trying to read them and had failed. There were four sixpenny novels, three biographies of saints with gilt tops to their leaves, a prayer-book with an imitation ivory cross on its cover, a copy of Moore's "Melodies" with the music, and several very old magazines. There was also a tattered book called "Speeches from the Dock," which Mr. Langton seemed to have found more interesting than the others, for he held it in his hand.

"Good-evening to you, sir," said Meldon, "I called with reference to the boat about which we were speaking this afternoon."

"Quite so. I'm glad to see you. Sit down. Do you mind if I ring the bell for Mr. Doyle? He kindly promised to give me the benefit of his advice."

"I don't believe that bell acts," said Meldon, as Langton tugged at a knob beside the chimneypiece. "For the matter of that I don't know a bell in Ballymoy that does act, barring, of course, the church bell and the chapel bell, which are different."

"Stupid of me," said Langton. "I ought to have guessed that, except those of the various churches, which are, as you say, different, the bells in this country wouldn't be meant to ring. It is, if I may say so, characteristic of Ireland that they don't."

Meldon looked at the man in front of him. It crossed his mind that the stranger might possibly be poking fun at him. He dismissed the idea at once as absurd.

"If you want Doyle," he said, "the best thing to do is to go to the top of the stairs and shout. I told him not to go to bed till after I'd called."

Langton shouted as he was bidden, and in a few minutes Doyle entered the room.

"Good-evening to you, Mr. Meldon," he said. "I suppose now you didn't succeed in persuading the Major to change his mind about the boat."

"I did not," said Meldon.

"I wouldn't wonder now if you didn't try very hard." Doyle cast a knowing look at Langton out of the corners of his eyes as he spoke. "Nor it couldn't be expected that you would, seeing as how you have a boat of your own that might suit."

"I don't know yet that she would suit," said Meldon. "What do you want her for?"

"My friend and I want to cruise about your bay," said Langton. "We are spending our holiday here."

"She's a good boat," said Doyle. "And what's more than that, she's a safe boat. I never heard tell yet of any man being drowned out of her, long as I'm living here; and there's many a boat you couldn't say that for."

"Is she for hire," said Langton, "and at what price?"

But this direct method of arriving at the point of the negotiation did not commend itself either to Doyle or Meldon.

"I mind well," said Doyle, "when old Tommy Devoren used to be sailing her for the R.M. that was in it them times, he'd say how divil a safer nor a drier boat for a lady ever he come across, and him taking the R.M.'s two daughters out in her maybe as often as twice in a week."

"Is there a cabin in the boat," asked Langton, "in which my friend and I could sleep?"

"Cabin! What would hinder there to be a cabin? Tell the gentleman what kind of a cabin there is in her, Mr. Meldon. Sure you know it better than me."

"There is a cockpit and a small cabin," said Meldon. "She's a five-ton boat."

"That would suit. Now what do you want for her by the month?"

"Can you sail a boat?" said Meldon. "I don't want to be giving my Aureole to a man that would knock the bottom out of her on some rock. And let me tell you there are plenty of rocks in this bay."

"Sail her!" said Doyle. "Why wouldn't he be able to sail her? Is it likely now, Mr. Meldon—I put it to you as a gentleman who knows a boat when he sees one—is it likely that Mr. Langton would come all the way to Ballymoy to look for a boat if he couldn't sail her when he got her? Sail her! I'll answer for it he can sail her right enough."

Mr. Doyle was anxious to preserve an air of fine impartiality. He praised Mr. Langton's seamanship, of which he knew nothing, with an air of profound conviction, just as he praised Meldon's boat, of which he knew all there was to know. His argument was powerful and unanswerable. Why should a man travel all the way to Ballymoy, which is twenty miles! from the nearest railway station, to look for a boat, unless he felt himself able to make some use of her?

"I'm not much of a sailor myself," said Langton, "but my friend is. I give you my word that he's well able to look after your boat."

"Who is your friend?" said Meldon.

"I don't see what business that is of yours," said Langton, displaying a certain irritation for the first time. "If you won't hire your boat without seeing our baptismal certificates and our mothers' marriage lines you may keep her. I'm prepared to pay for what I want, and nothing else matters to you."

"Good-evening," said Meldon, rising.

"Gentlemen," said Doyle, "gentlemen both, this is no way to do business. Mr. Meldon, you've no right to be asking the gentleman questions about his mother. Isn't his money just as good as if he never had a mother at all? Mr. Langton, sir, you'll excuse me, but Mr. Meldon is a clergyman, and it's only right that he shouldn't want his boat to fall into bad hands."

"Will you hire the boat or not?" asked Langton.

"You can have her for a month," said Meldon, still standing hat in hand, "for thirty pounds, money down in advance, and I'll have no more talk about the matter. You may take it or leave it."

"Thirty pounds!" said Doyle. "Come now, Mr. Meldon, it's joking you are."

"Considering the risk I run, I'll not take a penny less."

"Thirty pounds!" said Doyle, "is a big lump of money."

"Take it or leave it."

"I don't deny that she's a good boat and well suited to what Mr. Langton wants her for. But thirty pounds! Come now. The gentleman here is a friend of mine. You mustn't be hard on him. Say twenty pounds."

"Thirty," said Meldon. "After all, I don't want to let the boat at all. I'd just as soon keep her for my own use."

Like every one else in Ballymoy, Doyle knew exactly what Meldon had paid for the boat, and was very well aware of the rottenness of her hull and the dilapidated condition of her rigging.

"You're a hard man, so you are," he said. "I never knew priest nor parson yet but was desperate hard to get the better of in a matter of money. I'll tell you now what you ought to do. Split the differ and say twenty-five pounds."

"Well, rather than stop here all night talking about it," said Meldon, "I'll call it twenty-five pounds."

"And a pound back out of that for luck," said Doyle.

"No, not a penny back. Twenty-five, money down."

Doyle drew his chair over to Langton and whispered.

"It's a fair offer. You'll find it hard to better it. The Major now would have asked fifty for his old Spindrift. It's my advice to you, Mr. Langton, to close on it this minute before he has time to sleep on the offer. Maybe to-morrow morning he might be asking the advice of some one that would be for putting up the price on you. What do you say now?"

"I'll give it," said Langton, "on your assurance that the boat is as represented."

"The gentleman takes your offer, Mr. Meldon," said Doyle. "Twenty-five pounds down and the boat to be returned in good condition, all damages to be made good. What do you say now to a drop of something to wet the bargain?"

But Meldon would not drink. He went home to his lodgings and meditated, as he smoked a final pipe, on the glories and splendours which would be his when he had found the treasure on Inishgowlan. His conscience was quite untroubled by the thought of his bargain with Langton. The boat was rotten—so rotten that a man who knew anything about boats would hesitate to go to sea in her. If Langton's friend knew no more about boats than Langton did, some kind of accident was certain to happen. Meldon consoled himself with the thought that it would happen before they got far enough away from land to run any serious risk of drowning. Moy Bay was full of islands, and the water was always calm in summer time inside the bay. If the Aureole did go to pieces Langton and his friend could row to one of the islands in the punt. Meldon's punt was a good one.