I
Just outside of Plymouth, in the English county of Devonshire, John
Avery kept a tavern, under the patronage for the most part of coastwise
and deep-sea sailormen. It was a comfortable place, was that inn of
good Master Avery, with its sanded floor, diamond-paned windows, clean
tankards, and the good ale and victuals that made the house synonymous
with home for the parched mariner off in Malabar or his brother
expectantly bumping homeward-bound around the bulk of Africa’s majestic
cape.
A good place with a good landlord, but, alas for perfect pleasure,
with a landlady not so good. For while mine host endeavored to drink
as much as his customer, leaving the score an amicable affair between
gentlemen, mine hostess tallied every drink and clawed every broad
penny laid upon the table. And how incompatible boozing and bookkeeping
are, every one may be presumed to know.
Jack and his wife had one child, a boy whom they called Harry. Perhaps
it was for the sake of her son that Mistress Avery was careful to
parsimoniousness, for the parents were resolved that Harry should
neither follow the sea nor pursue the occupation of a tavern keeper;
he was to be a scholar and a gentleman and thus raise the family at
least one higher rung on the social ladder. A straw, it is said by wise
people, may show which way the wind blows, and a circumstance which
occurred when Harry Avery was but six years old may perhaps suggest his
possible fulfillment of his parents’ hopes.
For it was when Harry was of those tender years that the ship _Revenge_
paid off at Plymouth, the boatswain of which, at the head of some
proper fellows, at once started for Avery’s tavern, to drink up a stout
wallet of extra allowance money. With Jack Avery’s company and Mrs.
Avery’s accounting they soon got through with ten pounds apiece.
During the sailormen’s besotted sojourn at the tavern little Harry
gamboled impishly among them, swinging sea slang back and forth with
them, dancing a mimic hornpipe and convulsing them with the expert
manipulation of the most approved sea swearing. They prophesied that he
would make a good sailor.
Unhappily all this cheeriness departed with their last groat. Mistress
Avery turned sour then and bade them begone or she would turn in a
riot call to the constable. Night was falling when the groggy seamen
piled out to the chilly street to seek the shelter of the gloomy
_Revenge_.
But that ship, alas, was not in the harbor. They huddled together and
stared first at the vacant harbor and then at each other. Marooned, by
tar!
They tacked back to Jack Avery’s, but that gentleman’s shrewish wife
met them at the door with the sharp refusal of even a poor night’s
lodging in the stable. Little Harry, in the prettiest way, interceded
for these interesting strangers, but in vain; they had to warm
themselves as best they might by stamping through the town the whole
night long.
With the morning, however, the _Revenge_ came back, and the boatswain
led his now embittered flock to the waterside. On their way they were
met by little Harry Avery, nimble and frolicsome as ever. He followed
them to the boat which had put off from the ship to fetch them, and
wished loudly that he might go aboard and away with them.
Whereupon the boatswain had a happy thought. Pushing back his
three-cornered hat, he scratched his mahogany forehead in deep
reflection. Why not take the boy aboard and thus get even with the
hard-hearted Mrs. Avery? Everybody roared with glee when this scheme of
revenge was broached. Harry was pulled by a great fist into the boat,
and his sea adventures were begun.
Safely on their way to the American plantations and well out of sight
of land, the boatswain produced his kidnapped pal, who apparently
accounted the whole thing the very best joke in the world. For a moment
the captain glowered down on his peculiar passenger; but when Harry
showed how he could roll out two oaths to the boatswain’s one, his fare
was paid, and the captain looked upon him almost with affection.
So bright a little blackguard was Harry that he stole more and more
into the grim captain’s heart and twined his wicked little fingers
still more firmly about the skipper’s starved emotions. A tiny hammock
was made for him close by the captain’s bunk; he was allowed the run of
the ship, and the cook was admonished to keep for him the least weevily
or oaken portions of the menu. It was a charming sight to see the small
chap, perched on a coil of rope, in blasphemous competition with the
admiring skipper.
There is no telling how far this friendship might have gone, or whether
the captain of the _Revenge_ might not even have adopted him for his
own son, had not an incident, as they neared Carolina, severed the
comradeship sharply in two. Harry was caught in the act of putting a
lighted match to the powder magazine; just an inch more and the ship
would have been nothing but a few broken spars and gratings drifting
haphazardly upon the sands of the Carolina beach.
The captain turned nasty right away. He banished his little pet into
the hold, down among the bilge and the rats, and kept him there
till they made port. Rather unkindly he gave the boy to a Carolina
planter,--unkindly, of course, not to the boy.
It took the planter three years--for he was a man of monumental
patience--fully to realize the nature of the gift; and as he could not
wish Harry off on anybody in the colony, the boy’s talents being pretty
commonly known, he did the best thing he could and sent him back to
England.
Old Jack Avery had died soon after the boy’s leaving England,--some
said of a broken heart. What contact Harry made with his mother is not
recorded, but it has become a matter of history that young Avery grew
up a rogue, and at length, finding the land too hot for him, sought the
cool and obscure promenades of his first element,--the sea.
If he belonged anywhere it was to the sea. He even qualified as a
navigator with the rank of first mate. In the sixteen-hundred and
nineties, the Spanish Government made a bargain with some English
merchants to hire coast-guard ships for its troubled South American
colonies. Sir James Houblon and several others outfitted a couple of
brigs, the _Charles the Second_ and the _James_, for the Spaniard’s
business, and it was on the former that Avery was signed as first mate.
Thereafter things came about which made a matter for the King’s court
of Old Bailey, sitting in admiralty. Among the persons involved was an
ancient mariner by the name of William May, who on his trial has left
us a story of the wickedness of Mr. Avery. Unfortunately Harry Avery
was not brought to account for his crime, nor, so far as we are aware,
for any piracy, but slips from the pages of history with these things
unrecorded, probably to end his life as one, not the least evil, among
the buccaneering hordes of the Caribbean.