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 22 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 23 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 24 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.”
25
“ ’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 passage 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; 26 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. …
27
III
THE CATECHISM AT TWIST TICKLE
Of
