"An' talkin' about outfits, Tom," says my uncle, "this here damn
little ol' Dannie, bein' a gentleman, haves his _best_--from Lon'on.
Ye can't blame un, Tom; they _all_ doos it."
'Twas all hands t' the pumps for poor Tom Bull. "Dear man!" he gasped,
his confusion quite accomplished.
"An' _paid_ for," says my uncle.
Tom Bull looked up.
"'Tis all," says my uncle, solemnly jerking thumb down towards the
bowels of the earth, "paid for!"
Tom Bull gulped the dregs of his whiskey.
* * * * *
By-and-by, having had his glass--and still with the puzzle of myself
to mystify his poor wits--Tom Bull departed. My uncle and I still kept
to the stall, for there was an inch of spirits in my uncle's glass,
and always, though the night was late and stormy, a large possibility
for new company. 'Twas grown exceeding noisy in a far corner of the
place, where a foreign captain, in from the north (Fogo, I take it),
loaded with fish for Italian ports, was yielding to his liquor; and I
was intent upon this proceeding, wondering whether or not they would
soon take to quarrelling, as often happened in that tap-room, when Tom
Bull softly came again, having gone but a step beyond the threshold of
the place. He stepped, as though aimlessly, to our place, like a man
watched, fearing the hand of the law; and for a time he sat musing,
toying with the glass he had left.
"Skipper Nicholas," says he, presently, "I 'low Dannie Callaway haves
a friend t' buy un all them jools?"
"This here little ol' Dannie," says my uncle, with another little
reassuring tug at my ear, "haves no friend in all the world but me."
'Twas true.
"Not one?"
"Nar a friend in all the world but ol' Nick Top o' Twist Tickle."
"An' _you_ give un them jools?"
"I did."
There was a pause. Tom Bull was distraught, my uncle quivering; and
I was interested in the rain on the panes and in the foreign
captain who was yielding to his liquor like a fool or a half-grown
boy. I conceived a contempt for that shaven, scrawny skipper--I
remember it well. That he should drink himself drunk like a boy
unused to liquor! Faugh! 'Twas a sickening sight. He would involve
himself in some drunken brawl, I made sure, when even I, a child,
knew better than to misuse the black bottle in this unkind way.
'Twas the passage from Spain--and the rocks of this and the rocks of
that--and 'twas the virtues of a fore-and-after and the vices of
an English square rig for the foremast. He'd stand by the square rig;
and there were Newfoundlanders at his table to dispute the opinion.
The good Lord only knew what would come of it! And the rain was on
the panes, and the night was black, and the wind was playing
devil-tricks on the great sea, where square-rigged foremasts and
fore-and-afters were fighting for their lives. A dirty night at sea--a
dirty night, God help us!
"Skipper Nicholas," says Tom Bull, in an anxious whisper, "I'm tied up
t' Judby's wharf, bound out at dawn, if the wind holds. I 'low you is
in trouble, lad, along o' them jools. An' if you wants t' cut an'
run--"
In the pause my uncle scowled.
--"The little _Good Omen_," says Tom Bull, under his breath, "is
your'n t' command!"
'Twas kind of intention, no doubt, but done in folly--in stupid (if
not befuddled) misconception of the old man's mettle. My uncle sat
quite still, frowning into his glass; the purple color crept into the
long, crescent scar of his scalp, his unkempt beard bristled like a
boar's back, the flesh of his cheeks, in composure of a ruddy hue,
turned a spotty crimson and white, with the web of veins swelling
ominously. All the storm signals I had, with the acumen of the child
who suffers unerring discipline, mastered to that hour were at the
mast-head, prognosticating a rare explosion of rage. But there was no
stirring on my uncle's part; he continued to stare into his glass,
with his hairy brows drawn quite over his eyes.
The blundering fellow leaned close to my uncle's ear. "If 'tis
turn-tail or chokee for you, along o' them jools," says he, "I'll put
you across--"
My uncle's eyes shifted to his staff.
--"T' the Frenchmen--"
My uncle's great right hand was softly approaching his staff.
--"Well," says the blundering Tom Bull, "give the old girl a wind with
some slap to it, I'll put you across in--"
My uncle fetched him a smart crack on the pate, so that the man leaped
away, in indignation, and vigorously rubbed his head, but durst not
swear (for he was a Methodist), and, being thus desperately situated,
could say nothing at all, but could only petulantly whimper and stamp
his foot, which I thought a mean thing for a man to do in such
circumstances. "A poor way," says he, at last, "t' treat an old
shipmate!" I thought it marvellously weak; my uncle would have had
some real and searching thing to say--some slashing words (and, may
be, a blow). "An you isn't a thief," cries Tom Bull, in anger, "you
_looks_ it, anyhow. An' the rig o' that lad bears me out. Where'd you
come by them jools? Eh?" he demanded. "Where'd you come by them
di'monds and pearls? Where'd you come by them rubies an' watches?
_You_--Nick Top: Twist Tickle hook-an'-line man! Buyin' di'monds for
a pauper," he snorted, "an' drinkin' Cheap an' Nasty! Them things
don't mix, Nick Top. Go be hanged! The police 'll cotch ye yet."
"No," says my uncle, gently; "not yet."
Tom Bull stamped out in a rage.
"No," my uncle repeated, wiping the sweat from his brow, "Tom Bull
forgotten; the police 'll not cotch me. Oh no, Dannie!" he sighed.
"They'll not cotch me--not yet!"
* * * * *
Then out of the black night came late company like a squall o' wind:
Cap'n Jack Large, no less! newly in from Cadiz, in salt, with a
spanking passage to make water-side folk stare at him (the _Last Hope_
was the scandal of her owners). He turned the tap-room into an uproar;
and no man would believe his tale. 'Twas beyond belief, with Longway's
trim, new, two-hundred-ton _Flying Fish_, of the same sailing, not yet
reported! And sighting Nicholas Top and me, Cap'n Jack Large cast off
the cronies he had gathered in the tap-room progress of the night, and
came to our stall, as I expected when he bore in from the rain, and
sent my uncle's bottle of Cheap and Nasty off with contempt, and
called for a bottle of Long Tom (the best, as I knew, the Anchor and
Chain afforded), which must be broached under his eye, and said he
would drink with us until we were turned out or dawn came. Lord, how I
loved that man, as a child, in those days: his jollity and bigness and
courage and sea-clear eyes! 'Twas grand to feel, aside from the
comfort of him, that he had put grown folk away to fondle the child on
his knee--a mystery, to be sure, but yet a grateful thing. Indeed,
'twas marvellously comfortable to sit close to him. But I never saw
him again: for the _Last Hope_ went down, with a cargo of mean fish,
in the fall of the next year, in the sea between St. John's and the
West Indies.