The Cruise of the Shining Light Part 3

"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 gla.s.s; 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 ac.u.men 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 gla.s.s, 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 circ.u.mstances. "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 pa.s.sage 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.

But that night--

"Cap'n Jack," says I, "you quit that basket."

He laughed.

"You quit her," I pleaded. "But ecod, man!" says I, "please quit her.

An you don't I'll never see you more."

"An' you'll never care," cries he. "Not _you_, Master Callaway!"

"Do you quit her, man!"

"I isn't able," says he, drawing me to his knee; "for, Dannie," says he, his blue eyes alight, "they isn't ar another man in Newf'un'land would take that basket t' sea!"

I sighed.

"Come, Dannie," says he, "what'll ye take t' drink?"

"A nip o' ginger-ale," says I, dolefully.

Cap'n Jack put his arm around the bar-maid. "Fetch Dannie," says he, "the brand that comes from over-seas."

Off she went.

"Lord love us!" groans my uncle; "that's two."

"'Twill do un no harm, Nick," says Cap'n Jack. "You just dose un well when you gets un back t' the Tickle."

"I will," says my uncle.

He did....

And we made a jovial night of it. Cap'n Jack would not let me off his knee. Not he! He held me close and kindly; and while he yarned of the pa.s.sage to my uncle, and interjected strange wishes for a wife, he whispered many things in my ear to delight me, and promised me, upon his word, a sailing from St. John's to Spanish ports, when I was grown old enough, if only I would come in that basket of a _Lost Hope_, which I maintained I never would do. 'Twas what my uncle was used to calling a lovely time; and, as for me, I wish I were a child again, and Cap'n Jack were come in from the rain, and my uncle tipping the bottle of Long Tom (though 'twere a scandal). Ay, indeed I do! That I were a child again, used to tap-room bottles, and that big Cap'n Jack had come in from the gale to tell me I was a brave lad in whom he found a comfort neither of the solid land nor of water-side companionship. But I did not think of Cap'n Jack that night, when my uncle had stowed me away in my bed at the hotel; but, rather, in the long, wakeful hours, through which I lay alone, I thought of Tom Bull's question, "Where'd ye get them jools?"

I had never before been troubled--not once; always I had worn the glittering stones without question.

"Where'd ye get them jools?"

I could not fall asleep: I repeated the twenty-third psalm, according to my teaching; but still I could not fall asleep....

III

THE CATECHISM AT TWIST TICKLE

Of an evening at Twist Tickle Nicholas Top would sit unstrung and wistful in his great chair by the west window, with the curtains drawn wide, there waiting, in deepening gloom and fear, for the last light to leave the world. With his head fallen upon his breast and his eyes grown fixed and tragical with far-off gazing, he would look out upon the appalling sweep of sea and rock and sky, where the sombre wonder of the dusk was working more terribly than with thunder: clouds in embers, cliffs and mist and tumbling water turning to shadows, vanishing, as though they were not. In the place of a shining world, spread familiar and open, from its paths to the golden haze of its uttermost parts, there would come the cloud and mystery and straying noises of the night, wherein lurk and peer and restlessly move whatsoever may see in the dark.

Thus would he sit oppressed while night covered the world he knew by day. And there would come up from the sea its voice; and the sea has no voice, but mysteriously touches the strings within the soul of a man, so that the soul speaks in its own way, each soul lifting its peculiar message. For me 'twas sweet to watch the tender shadows creep upon the western fire, to see the great gray rocks dissolve, to hear the sea's melodious whispering; but to him (it seemed) the sea spoke harshly and the night came with foreboding. In the silence and failing light of the hour, looking upon the stupendous works of the Lord, he would repeat the words of the prophet of the Lord:

"_For behold the Lord will come with fire, and with his chariots like a whirlwind, to render his anger with fury, and his rebuke with the flames of fire._" And again, with his hand upon his forehead and his brows fallen hopelessly, "_With his chariots like a whirlwind, to render his anger with fury, and his rebuke with the flames of fire._"

Still repeating the awful words, his voice broken to a terrified whisper, "_His rebuke with the flames of fire!_" And in particular moods, when the prophets, however sonorous, were inadequate to his need, my uncle would have recourse to his own pithy vocabulary for terms with which to anathematize himself; but these, of course, may not be written in a book.

When the dusk was come my uncle would turn blithely from this melancholy contemplation and call for a lamp and his bottle. While I was about this business (our maid-servant would not handle the bottle lest she be d.a.m.ned for it), my uncle would stump the floor, making gallant efforts to whistle and trill: by this exhorting himself to a cheerful mood, so that when I had moved his great chair to the table, with the lamp near and turned high, and had placed a stool for his wooden leg, and had set his bottle and gla.s.s and little brown jug of cold water conveniently at hand, his face would be pleasantly rippling and his eyes all a-twinkle.

"Up with un, Dannie!" says he.

'Twas his fancy that he had gout in the tip of his wooden leg. I must lift the ailing bit of timber to the stool with caution.