I RIDE BY NIGHT ACROSS SCOTLAND, AND MEET A MARINER WITH A GLEED EYE
That night was like the day, with a full moon shining. The next
afternoon I rode into Borrowstounness, my horse done out and myself sore
from head to heel; and never in all my life have I seen a place with a
more unwelcome aspect, for the streets were over the hoof in mud; the
natives directed me in an accent like a tinker's whine; the Firth of
Forth was wrapped in a haar or fog that too closely put me in mind of my
prospects. But I had no right to be too particular, and in the course of
an hour I had sold the mare for five pounds to a man of much Christian
profession, who would not give a farthing more on the plea that she was
likely stolen.
The five pounds and the clothes I stood in were my fortune: it did not
seem very much, if it was to take me out of the reach of the long arm of
the doomster; and thinking of the doomster I minded of the mole upon
my brow, that was the most kenspeckle thing about me in the event of a
description going about the country, so the first thing I bought with
my fortune was a pair of scissors. Going into a pend close in one of the
vennels beside the quay, I clipped off the hair upon the mole and felt a
little safer. I was coming out of the close, pouching the scissors, when
a man of sea-going aspect, with high boots and a tarpaulin hat, stumbled
against me and damned my awkwardness.
“You filthy hog,” said I, exasperated at such manners, for he was
himself to blame for the encounter; “how dare you speak to me like
that?” He was a man of the middle height, sturdy on his bowed legs in
spite of the drink obvious in his face and speech, and he had a roving
gleed black eye. I had never clapped gaze on him in all my life before.
“Is that the way ye speak to Dan Risk, ye swab?” said he, ludicrously
affecting a dignity that ill suited with his hiccough. “What's the good
of me being a skipper if every linen-draper out of Fife can cut into my
quarter on my own deck?”
“This is no' your quarter-deck, man, if ye were sober enough to ken it,”
said I; “and I'm no linen-draper from Fife or anywhere else.”
And then the brute, with his hands thrust to the depth of his pockets,
staggered me as if he had done it with a blow of his fist.
“No,” said he, with a very cunning tone, “ye're no linen-draper perhaps,
but--ye're maybe no sae decent a man, young Greig.”
It was impossible for me to conceal even from this tipsy rogue my
astonishment and alarm at this. It seemed to me the devil himself must
be leagued against me in the cause of justice. A cold sweat came on my
face and the palms of my hands. I opened my mouth and meant to give him
the lie but I found I dare not do so in the presence of what seemed a
miracle of heaven.
“How do you ken my name's Greig?” I asked at the last.
“Fine that,” he made answer, with a grin; “and there's mony an odd thing
else I ken.”
“Well, it's no matter,” said I, preparing to quit him, but in great fear
of what the upshot might be; “I'm for off, anyway.”
By this time it was obvious that he was not so drunk as I thought him at
first, and that in temper and tact he was my match even with the
glass in him. “Do ye ken what I would be doing if I was you?” said he
seemingly determined not to let me depart like that, for he took a step
or two after me.
I made no reply, but quickened my pace and after me he came, lurching
and catching at my arm; and I mind to this day the roll of him gave me
the impression of a crab.
“If it's money ye want-” I said at the end of my patience.
“Curse your money!” he cried, pretending to spit the insult from his
mouth. “Curse your money; but if I was you, and a weel-kent skipper like
Dan Risk--like Dan Risk of the _Seven Sisters_--made up to me out of a
redeeculous good nature and nothing else, I would gladly go and splice
the rope with him in the nearest ken.”
“Go and drink with yourself, man,” I cried; “there's the money for a
chappin of ate, and I'll forego my share of it.”
I could have done nothing better calculated to infuriate him. As I held
out the coin on the palm of my hand he struck it up with an oath and
it rolled into the syver. His face flamed till the neck of him seemed a
round of seasoned beef.
“By the Rock o' Bass!” he roared, “I would clap ye in jyle for less than
your lousy groat.”
Ah, then, it was in vain I had put the breadth of Scotland between me
and that corpse among the rushes: my heart struggled a moment, and sank
as if it had been drowned in bilge. I turned on the man what must have
been a gallows face, and he laughed, and, gaining his drunken good
nature again he hooked me by the arm, and before my senses were my own
again he was leading me down the street and to the harbour. I had never
a word to say.
The port, as I tell, was swathed in the haar of the east, out of which
tall masts rose dim like phantom spears; the clumsy tarred bulwarks
loomed like walls along the quay, and the neighbourhood was noisy with
voices that seemed unnatural coming out of the haze. Mariners were
hanging about the sheds, and a low tavern belched others out to keep
them company. Risk made for the tavern, and at that I baulked.
“Oh, come on!” said he. “If I'm no' mistaken Dan Risk's the very man
ye're in the need of. You're wanting out of Scotland, are ye no'?”
“More than that; I'm wanting out of myself,” said I, but that seemed
beyond him.
“Come in anyway, and we'll talk it over.”
That he might help me out of the country seemed possible if he was not,
as I feared at first, some agent of the law and merely playing with me,
so I entered the tavern with him.
“Two gills to the coffin-room, Mrs. Clerihew,” he cried to the woman in
the kitchen. “And slippy aboot it, if ye please, for my mate here's been
drinking buttermilk all his life, and ye can tell't in his face.”
“I would rather have some meat,” said I.
“Humph!” quo' he, looking at my breeches. “A lang ride!” He ordered the
food at my mentioning, and made no fuss about drinking my share of the
spirits as well as his own, while I ate with a hunger that was soon
appeased, for my eye, as the saying goes, was iller to satisfy than my
appetite.
He sat on the other side of the table in the little room that doubtless
fairly deserved the name it got of coffin, for many a man, I'm thinking,
was buried there in his evil habits; and I wondered what was to be next.
“To come to the bit,” said the at last, looking hard into the bottom of
his tankard in a way that was a plain invitation to buy more for him.
“To come to the bit, you're wanting out of the country?”
“It's true,” said I; “but how do you know? And how do you know my name,
for I never saw you to my knowledge in all my life before?”
“So much the worse for you; I'm rale weel liked by them that kens me.
What would ye give for a passage to Nova Scotia?”
“It's a long way,” said I, beginning to see a little clearer.
“Ay,” said he, “but I've seen a gey lang rope too, and a man danglin' at
the end of it.”
Again my face betrayed me. I made no answer.
“I ken all aboot it,” he went on. “Your name's Greig; ye're from a
place called the Hazel Den at the other side o' the country; ye've been
sailing wi' a stiff breeze on the quarter all night, and the clime
o' auld Scotland's one that doesna suit your health, eh? What's the
amount?” said he, and he looked towards my pocket “Could we no' mak' it
halfers?”
“Five pounds,” said I, and at that he looked strangely dashed.
“Five pounds,” he repeated incredulously. “It seems to have been hardly
worth the while.” And then his face changed, as if a new thought had
struck him. He leaned over the table and whispered with the infernal
tone of a confederate, “Doused his glim, eh?” winking with his hale eye,
so that I could not but shiver at him, as at the touch of slime.
“I don't understand,” said I.
“Do ye no'?” said he, with a sneer; “for a Greig ye're mighty slow in
the uptak'. The plain English o' that, then, is that ye've killed a man.
A trifle like that ance happened to a Greig afore.”
“What's your name?” I demanded.
“Am I no tellin' ye?” said he shortly. “It's just Daniel Risk; and where
could you get a better? Perhaps ye were thinkin' aboot swappin' names
wi' me; and by the Bass, it's Dan's family name would suit very weel
your present position,” and the scoundrel laughed at his own humour.
“I asked because I was frightened it might be Mahoun,” said I. “It seems
gey hard to have ridden through mire for a night and a day, and land
where ye started from at the beginning. And how do ye ken all that?”
“Oh!” he said, “kennin's my trade, if ye want to know. And whatever way
I ken, ye needna think I'm the fellow to make much of a sang aboot it.
Still and on, the thing's frowned doon on in this country, though in
places I've been it would be coonted to your credit. I'll take anither
gill; and if ye ask me, I would drench the butter-milk wi' something
o' the same, for the look o' ye sittin' there's enough to gie me the
waterbrash. Mrs. Clerihew--here!” He rapped loudly on the table, and
the drink coming in I was compelled again to see him soak himself at my
expense. He reverted to my passage from the country, and “Five pounds is
little enough for it,” said he; “but ye might be eking it oot by partly
working your passage.”
“I didn't say I was going either to Nova Scotia or with you,” said I,
“and I think I could make a better bargain elsewhere.”
“So could I, maybe,” said he, fuming of spirits till I felt sick. “And
it's time I was doin' something for the good of my country.” With that
he rose to his feet with a look of great moral resolution, and made as
if for the door, but by this time I understood him better.
“Sit down, ye muckle hash!” said I, and I stood over him with a most
threatening aspect.
“By the Lord!” said he, “that's a Greig anyway!”
“Ay!” said I. “ye seem to ken the breed. Can I get another vessel abroad
besides yours?”
“Ye can not,” said he, with a promptness I expected, “unless ye wait on
the _Sea Pyat_. She leaves for Jamaica next Thursday; and there's no'
a spark of the Christian in the skipper o' her, one Macallum from
Greenock.”
For the space of ten minutes I pondered over the situation. Undoubtedly
I was in a hole. This brute had me in his power so long as my feet were
on Scottish land, and he knew it. At sea he might have me in his power
too, but against that there was one precaution I could take, and I made
up my mind.
“I'll give you four pounds--half at leaving the quay and the other half
when ye land me.”
“My conscience wadna' aloo me,” protested the rogue; but the greed was
in his face, and at last he struck my thumb on the bargain, and when
he did that I think I felt as much remorse at the transaction as at the
crime from whose punishment I fled.
“Now,” said I, “tell me how you knew me and heard about--about--”
“About what?” said he, with an affected surprise. “Let me tell ye this,
Mr. Greig, or whatever your name may be, that Dan Risk is too much of
the gentleman to have any recollection of any unpleasantness ye may
mention, now that he has made the bargain wi' ye. I ken naethin'
aboot ye, if ye please: whether your name's Greig or Mackay or Habbie
Henderson, it's new to me, only ye're a likely lad for a purser's berth
in the _Seven Sisters._” And refusing to say another word on the topic
that so interested me, he took me down to the ship's side, where I found
the _Seven Sisters_ was a brigantine out of Hull, sadly in the want of
tar upon her timbers and her mainmast so decayed and worm-eaten that it
sounded boss when I struck it with my knuckles in the by-going.
Risk saw me doing it. He gave an ugly smile.
“What do ye think o' her? said he, showing me down the companion.
“Mighty little,” I told him straight. “I'm from the moors,” said I, “but
I've had my feet on a sloop of Ayr before now; and by the look of this
craft I would say she has been beeking in the sun idle till she rotted
down to the garboard strake.”
He gave his gleed eye a turn and vented some appalling oaths, and wound
up with the insult I might expect--namely, that drowning was not my
portion.
“There was some brag a little ago of your being a gentleman,” said I,
convinced that this blackguard was to be treated to his own fare if he
was to be got on with at all. “There's not much of a gentleman in the
like of that.”
At this he was taken aback. “Well,” said he, “don't you cross my temper;
if my temper's crossed it's gey hard to keep up gentility. The ship's
sound enough, or she wouldn't be half a dizen times round the Horn and
as weel kent in Halifax as one o' their ain dories. She's guid enough
for your--for our business, if ye please, Mr. Greig; and here's my mate
Murchison.”
Another tarry-breeks of no more attractive aspect came down the
companion.
“Here's a new hand for ye,” said the skipper humorously.
The mate looked me up and down with some contempt from his own height of
little more than five feet four, and peeled an oilskin coat off him.
I was clad myself in a good green coat and breeches with fine wool
rig-and-fur hose, and the buckled red shoon and the cock of my hat I
daresay gave me the look of some importance in tarry-breeks' eyes.
At any rate, he did not take Risk's word for my identity, but at last
touched his hat with awkward fingers after relinquishing his look of
contempt.
“Mr. Jamieson?” said he questioningly, and the skipper by this time was
searching in a locker for a bottle of rum he said he had there for the
signing of agreements. “Mr. Jamieson,” said the mate, “I'm glad to see
ye. The money's no; enough for the job, and that's letting ye know. It's
all right for Dan here wi' neither wife nor family, but--”
“What's that, ye idiot?” cried Risk turning about in alarm. “Do ye tak'
this callan for the owner? I tell't ye he was a new hand.”
“A hand!” repeated Murchison, aback and dubious.
“Jist that; he's the purser.”
Murchison laughed. “That's a new ornament on the auld randy; he'll be
to keep his keekers on the manifest, like?” said he as one who cracks a
good joke. But still and on he scanned me with a suspicious eye, and
it was not till Risk had taken him aside later in the day and seemingly
explained, that he was ready to meet me with equanimity. By that time
I had paid the skipper his two guineas, for the last of his crew was on
board, every man Jack of them as full as the Baltic, and staggering at
the coamings of the hatches not yet down, until I thought half of them
would finally land in the hold.