"You been havin' any trouble, shipmate?" he gently asked.
"Yes, sir," I groaned. "Trouble, God knows!"
"Along o' Judy?"
'Twas along o' Judy.
"A drop o' water," says he, setting the glass almost within my hand,
"will do you good."
'Twas so anxiously spoken that my courage failed me. I splashed water
into the glass and swallowed it.
"That's good," says he; "that's very good."
I pushed the glass away with contempt for its virtue of comfort; and I
laughed, I think, in a disagreeable way, so that the old man, unused
to manifestations as harsh and irreligious as this, started in
dismay.
"Good," he echoed, staring, unconvinced and without hope; "that's very
good."
And now, a miserable determination returning, I fixed my eyes
again on the square, black bottle of rum. 'Twas a thing that fairly
fascinated my attention. The cure of despair was legendary, the
palatable quality a thing of mere surmise: I had never experienced
either; but in my childhood I had watched my uncle's fearsome moods
vanish, as he downed his drams, one by one, giving way to a grateful
geniality, which sent my own bogies scurrying off, and I had
fancied, from the smack of his lips, and from the eager lifting of
the glasses at the Anchor and Chain, the St. John's tap-room we
frequented, that a drop o' rum was a thing to delight the dry tongue
and gullet of every son of man. My uncle sat under the lamp: I
remember his countenance, aside from the monstrous scars and
disfigurements which the sea had dealt him--its anxious regard of
me, its intense concern, its gathering purpose, the last of which I
did not read at that moment, but now recall and understand. 'Twas
quiet and orderly in the room: the geometrical gentlemen were
there riding the geometrically tempestuous sea in a frame beyond my
uncle's gargoylish head, and the tidied rocking-chair, which I was
used to addressing as a belted knight o' the realm, austerely abode
in a shadow. I was in some saving way, as often happens in our lives,
conscious of these familiar things, to which we return and cling in
the accidents befalling us and in the emergencies of feeling we must
all survive. The room was as our maid-servant had left it, bright
and warm and orderly: there was as yet no disarrangement by the
conviviality we were used to. 'Tis not at all my wish to trouble you
with the despair I suffered that night, with Judith gone from me: I
would not utter it--'twas too deep and unusual and tragical to
disturb a world with. But still I stared at that square, black bottle
of rum, believing, as faith may be, in the surcease it contained.