The Cruise of the Shining Light

“He’ve got t’ be a gentleman!”

“You’ll never manage that, Nick Top,” says Tom Bull.

“Not manage it!” my uncle indignantly complained. “Why, look, Tom Bull–jus’ look– at them there jools! An’ that’s on’y a poor beginnin’!”

Tom Bull laid my hand very gingerly upon the table, as though ’twere a thing not lightly to be handled lest it fall to pieces in his grasp. He drew my left hand from my pocket and got it under the light.

“Two pearls,” says my uncle, “’longside a emerald. Aft o’ that you’ll be like t’ find two more di’monds. Them’s first-water Brazil, Tom.”

Tom Bull inquiringly touched my watch-guard.

“Eighteen karat,” says my uncle.

Tom Bull drew the watch from its pocket and let it lie glittering in his hand; the jewels, set shyly in the midst of the chasing, glowed in the twilight of the stall.

“Solid,” says my uncle.

Tom Bull touched my velvet jacket with the tip of his finger.

“Imported direck,” says my uncle, “from Lon’on. Direck, Tom–is you hearin’ me?–direck from Lon’on. Not,” says he, with quick consideration, “that we’ve no respeck for home talent. My, my, no! Dannie haves a matter o’ thirteen outfits done right here in St. John’s. You beat about Water Street for a week, Tom, an’ you’ll sight un. Fill your glass, Tom! We’re well met this night. Leave me talk t’ you, lad. Leave me talk t’ ye about Dannie. Fill up, an’ may the Lord prosper your smugglin’! ’Tis a wild night without. I’m glad enough t’ be in harbor. ’Tis a dirty night; but ’tis not blowin’ here, Tom–an’ that’s the bottle; pour your dram, lad, an’ take it like a man! God save us! but a bottle’s the b’y t’ make a fair wind of a head wind. Tom,” says he, laying a hand on my head–which was the ultimate expression of his affection–“you jus’ ought t’ clap eyes on this here little ol’ Dannie when he’ve donned his Highland kilts. He’s a little divil of a dandy then, I’m tellin’ you. Never a lad o’ the city can match un, by the Lord! Not match my little Dannie! Clap eyes,” says he, “on good ol’ little Dannie! Lord save ye, but of all the young fellers you’ve knowed he’s the finest figger of a lad–”

“Uncle Nick!” I cried, in pain–in pain to be excused (as shall be told).

“Hush, lad!” croons he. “Never mind!”

I could not help it.

“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.

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!”