“Well, o’ course they all thought it very wonderful, and, provided with more money by my friend, the priest went off to sleep the night with the coffin. Well, I had pretended to be tired that night and had retired to my sleepin’-room early, so they thought, for we were spendin’ that night with the friends of my friend. But no sooner had I fastened the entrance to my room than I had got out of the window, which looked out upon the city wall, and climbin’ along the parapet I safely reached the ground and set off at a good run to the empty house, gettin’ there well before the priest. Now I had told the merchant to be sure and see the priest safe at the house himself, for I feared that fright might keep the rascal away. The merchant promised to do this, for I believe that by this time he was losin’ confidence in the family confessor. As soon as I got into my old bedroom I opened the coffin, lifted out the corpse, strippin’ him of his funeral clothes, which I donned. Then I hid the corpse in a dark corner of the room behind a screen and got into the great coffin. Now the lids are not screwed down in China, but merely allowed to rest upon the coffin, so I left a very little chink so that I should not have any fear of suffocation. Presently I hears the priest arrive, and my friend bids him goodnight and leaves him. Well, the fellow possessed more courage than I had credited him with, ’cos he comes promptly into the room, counts out his fresh money on the top of the coffin itself, and then curls himself up alongside it upon the mattress. Just as soon as I heard him beginnin’ to breathe heavy I pushed open the coffin lid, callin’ upon him by name in most sepulchral tones. He woke up, o’ course, and sits up on his side of the bed and looked at the coffin; and then he beheld me a-sittin’ up inside the coffin a-lookin’ at him, only, o’ course, he didn’t think it was me, but the dead uncle. Well, he was so frightened that I just had an easy walk over him. I jumped at him, I kicked him, I made him swear that he would return every penny of his false-gotten gains to the merchant, and that if the merchant refused he was to give it to the white stranger that sojourned there, and finally, after thrashing the stuffin’ out of him, I popped him bodily into the coffin, jammed the corpse from behind the screen in on top of him, and over ’em both I closed the lid. Then seein’ as how he was unconscious through the drubbin’ he had had, and the awful fright, I left him and went home to bed at the house of the friends of my friend, gettin’ in as I had got out—through the window. Well, next morning the sly dog turned up and said that the gods had visited him in the night and that the coffin was to be buried twelve feet deep in the merchant’s field, and that he was so overjoyed at having conversed so very pleasantly with the gods that he must insist on returning the gold to the merchant. This the good merchant, of course, refused to accept, so the priest was obliged, according as he had been commanded, to hand it to the white stranger wot sojourned with the merchant and who was your humble servant, Captain. That day I went back to Shanghai loaded with presents, not only from my friend, but from the friends of my friend, at whose house we had sojourned, and with every gold piece out of that sly dog’s pocket, for although a sly dog he certainly was, he was also a cowardly dog, too, and didn’t dare to go against the will of that terrible late lamented uncle of the bereaved one wot was now, and still is, I expect, lying twelve foot down in the field of my inestimable smug-faced merchant who was my friend. And that’s the story of the funniest funeral I was ever at, and there ain’t many wot ever seed a funnier one, I should say.”
“I should think not,” said the captain, and filling their glasses once more they pledged each other, and the captain left the sexton to his hammering, and walked out over the Marsh. He had taken good stock of that coffin shop while Mr. Mipps had been chatting, and he was putting two and two together, and the result was four black marks against the sexton, for he knew him to be out of his own mouth an adventurer, and, when it came to the push, an unscrupulous one. Also he had confessed to having had dealings with buccaneers, and the captain was quick enough to see that he must have been hand in glove with the ringleaders, probably
