We soon recovered the road, and in half-an-hour we were at Putney Bridge; cold, wet, and tired, but not so bad as when we were under the ; the quick walking restored the circulation. Tom went in for the bottle of spirits, while I went for the sculls and carried them down to the boat, which was high and dry, and nearly up to the with snow. When Tom joined me, he appeared with two bottles under his arms. “I have taken another upon tick, Jacob,” said he, “for I’m sure we want it, and so will father say, when he hears our story.” We launched our boat, and in a couple of minutes were close to the , on the deck of which stood old Tom.
“Boat ahoy! is that you, lads?” cried he.
“Yes, father, all’s right,” replied Tom, as we laid in our .
“Thank God!” replied the old man. “Boys, boys, how you frightened me? where have you been? I thought you had met with some disaster. How have I been peeping through the snow-storm these last two hours, watching for the boat, and I’m as wet as a shag and as cold as charity. What has been the matter? Did you bring the bottle, Tom?”
“Yes, father; brought two, for we shall want them to-night if we go without for a week; but we must all get on dry rigging as fast as possible, and then you shall have the story of our cruise.”
In a few minutes we had changed our wet clothes and were seated at the cabin-table, eating our supper, and our adventures to the old man. Tommy, poor fellow, had his share, and now lay snoring at our feet, as the bottles and pannikins were placed upon the little table.
“Come, Jacob, a drop will do you good,” said old Tom, filling me one of the pannikins. “A’ter all, it’s much better being here in this little cabin than shivering with fear and cold under old Abershaw’s gallows; and Tom, you scamp, if ever you go gunning again I’ll disinherit you.”
“What have you got to leave, father, except your wooden legs?” replied Tom. “Your’s would be but a wooden-leg-acy.”
“How do you know but what I can ‘post the coal?’”
“So you will, if I boil a pot o’ ’tatoes with your legacy—but it will only be char-coal.”
“Well, I believe you are about right, Tom; still, somehow or other, the old woman always picks out a piece or two of gold when I’m rather puzzled how to raise the wind. I never keeps no ’count with her. If I follow my legs before she, I hope the old soul will have saved something; for you know when a man goes to kingdom come, his pension goes with him. However, let me only hold on another five years, and then you’ll not see her want; will you, Tom?”
“No, father; I’ll sell myself to the king, and stand to be shot at, at a shilling a day, and give the old woman half.”
“Well, Tom, ’tis but natural for a man to wish to serve his country; so here’s to you, my lad, and may you never do worse! Jacob, do you think of going on board of a man-of-war?”
“I’d like to serve my first, and then I don’t care how soon.”
“Well, my boy, you’ll meet more fair play on board of a king’s ship than you have from those on shore.”
“I should hope so,” replied I, bitterly.
“I hope to see you a man before I die, yet, Jacob. I shall very soon be laid up in ordinary—my toes pain me a good deal lately!”
“Your toes!” cried Tom and I both at once.
“Yes, boys; you may think it odd, but sometimes I feel them just as plain as if they were now on, instead of being long ago in some shark’s maw. At nights I has the in them till it almost makes me halloo out with pain. It’s a hard thing, when one has lost the sarvice of his legs, that all the feelings should remain. The doctor says as how it’s narvous. Come, Jacob, shove in your pannikin. You seem to take it more than you did.”
“Yes,” replied I, “I begin to like grog now.” The now, however, might be comprehended within the space of the last twenty-four hours. My spirits were raised with the , and for a time I got rid of the eternal current of thought which pressed upon my brain.
“I wonder what your old gentleman, the Dominie, as you call him, thought, after he got on shore again,” said old Tom. “He seemed to be cut up. I suppose you’ll give him a hail, Jacob?”
“No,” replied I, “I shall not go near him, nor any one else, if I can help it. Mr Drummond may think I wish to make it up again. I’ve done with the shore. I only wish I knew what is to become of me; for you know I am not to serve in the lighter with you.”
“Suppose Tom and I look out for another craft, Jacob? I care nothing for Mr Drummond. He said t’other day I was a drunken old swab—for which, with my sarvice to him, he lies. A drunken fellow is one who can’t, for the soul of him, keep from liquor when he can get it, and who’s overtaken before he is aware of it. Now that’s not the case with me; I keep sober when there’s work to be done; and when I knows that everything is safe under hatches, and no fear of nothing, why then I gets drunk like a rational being, with my eyes open—’cause why?—’cause I chooses.”
“That’s exactly my notion of the thing,” observed Tom, draining his pannikin, and handing it over to his father for a fresh supply.
“Mind you keep to that notion, Tom, when you gets in the king’s sarvice, that’s all; or you’ll be sure to have your back scratched, which I understand is no joke after all. Yet I do remember once, in a ship I was in, when half-a-dozen fellows were all fighting who should be flogged.”
“Pray give us that , father; but before you begin just fill my pannikin. I shoved it over half-an-hour ago, just by way of a hint.”
“Well then,” said old Tom, pouring out some spirits into Tom’s pannikin, “it was just as follows. It was when the ship was lying at anchor in Bermuda harbour, that the purser sent a breaker of spirits on shore to be taken up to some lady’s house whom he was very anxious to , and I suppose that he found a glass of grog helped the matter. Now, there were about twenty of the men who had liberty to go on shore, to stretch their limbs—little else could they do, poor fellows for the first looked sharp after their to see that they did not sell any of their rigging; and as for money, we had been five years without a farthing of pay, and I don’t suppose there was a matter of threepence among the men before the mast. However, liberty’s liberty after all; and if they couldn’t go and get glorious, rather than not go on shore at all, they went ashore and kept sober perforce. I do think, myself, it’s a very bad thing to keep the without a farthing for so long—for you see a man who will be very honest with a few shillings in his pocket is often to help himself, just for the sake of getting a glass or two of grog, and the temptation’s very great, that’s sartain, ’ticularly in a hot climate, when the sun you, and the very ground itself is so heated that you can hardly bear the naked foot to it. (This has been corrected; the men have for some time received a portion of their pay on foreign stations, and this portion has been greatly increased during Sir James Graham’s administration.) But to go on. The yawl was ordered on shore for the liberty men, and the purser gives this breaker, which was at least half full, and I dare say there might be three gallons in it, under my charge as coxswain, to deliver to madam at the house. Well, as soon as we landed, I shoulders the breaker, and starts with it up the hill.
“‘What have you there, Tom?’ said Bill Short.
“‘What I wish I could share with you, Bill,’ says I; ‘it’s some of old Nipcheese’s eights, that he has sent on shore to bowse his jib up with, with his sweetheart.’
“‘I’ve seen the madam,’ said Holmes to me—for you see all the liberty men were walking up the hill at the same time—‘and I’d rather make love to the breaker than to her. She’s as fat as an ox, as broad as she’s long, built like a Dutch schuyt, and as yellow as a nabob.’
“‘But old Tummings knows what he’s about,’ said a lad of the name of M’Alpine; ‘they say she has lots of gold dust, more ducks and ingons, and more inches of water in her tank than any on the island.’
“You see, boys, Bermuda be a queer sort of place, and water very scarce; all they get there is a Godsend, as it comes from Heaven; and they look sharp for the rain, which is collected in large tanks, and an inch or two more of water in the tank is considered a great catch. I’ve often heard the ladies there talking for a shower:—
“‘Good morning, marm. How do you do this fine morning?’
“‘Pretty well, I tank you, marm. Charming shower hab last night.’
“‘Yes, so all say; but me not very lucky. Cloud not come over my tank. How many inches of water you get last night, marm?’
“‘I get good seven inches, and I tink a little bit more, which make me very happy.’
“‘Me no so lucky, marm; so help me God, me only get four inches of water in my tank; and dat nothing.’
............