Part 13 (2/2)

”Bless my eyes, but you have growed so. I shouldn't have knowed you if I had met you in Singapore!”

Without stopping to inquire, as I was tempted to do, why he was more likely to recognize me in Singapore than anywhere else, I invited him to come at once up to the Nutter House, where I insured him a warm welcome from the Captain.

”Hold steady, Master Tom,” said Sailor Ben, slipping the painter through the ringbolt and tying the loveliest knot you ever saw; ”hold steady till I see if the mate can let me off. If you please, sir,” he continued, addressing the steersman, a very red-faced, bow-legged person, ”this here is a little s.h.i.+pmate o' mine as wants to talk over back times along of me, if so it's convenient.”

”All right, Ben,” returned the mate; ”sha'n't want you for an hour.”

Leaving one man in charge of the boat, the mate and the rest of the crew went off together. In the meanwhile Pepper Whitcomb had got out his cunner-line, and was quietly fis.h.i.+ng at the end of the wharf, as if to give me the idea that he wasn't so very much impressed by my intimacy with so renowned a character as Sailor Ben. Perhaps Pepper was a little jealous. At any rate, he refused to go with us to the house.

Captain Nutter was at home reading the Rivermouth Barnacle. He was a reader to do an editor's heart good; he never skipped over an advertis.e.m.e.nt, even if he had read it fifty times before. Then the paper went the rounds of the neighborhood, among the poor people, like the single portable eye which the three blind crones pa.s.sed to each other in the legend of King Acrisius. The Captain, I repeat, was wandering in the labyrinths of the Rivermouth Barnacle when I led Sailor Ben into the sitting-room.

My grandfather, whose inborn courtesy knew no distinctions, received my nautical friend as if he had been an admiral instead of a common forecastle-hand. Sailor Ben pulled an imaginary tuft of hair on his forehead, and bowed clumsily. Sailors have a way of using their forelock as a sort of handle to bow with.

The old tar had probably never been in so handsome an apartment in all his days, and nothing could induce him to take the inviting mahogany chair which the Captain wheeled out from the corner.

The abashed mariner stood up against the wall, twirling his tarpaulin in his two hands and looking extremely silly. He made a poor show in a gentleman's drawing-room, but what a fellow he had been in his day, when the gale blew great guns and the topsails wanted reefing! I thought of him with the Mexican squadron off Vera Cruz, where,

'The rus.h.i.+ng battle-bolt sung from the three-decker out of the foam,'

and he didn't seem awkward or ign.o.ble to me, for all his shyness.

As Sailor Ben declined to sit down, the Captain did not resume his seat; so we three stood in a constrained manner until my grandfather went to the door and called to Kitty to bring in a decanter of Madeira and two gla.s.ses.

”My grandson, here, has talked so much about you,” said the Captain, pleasantly, ”that you seem quite like an old acquaintance to me.”

”Thankee, sir, thankee,” returned Sailor Ben, looking as guilty as if he had been detected in picking a pocket.

”And I'm very glad to see you, Mr.--Mr.--”

”Sailor Ben,” suggested that worthy.

”Mr. Sailor Ben,” added the Captain, smiling. ”Tom, open the door, there's Kitty with the gla.s.ses.”

I opened the door, and Kitty entered the room bringing the things on a waiter, which she was about to set on the table, when suddenly she uttered a loud shriek; the decanter and gla.s.ses fell with a crash to the floor, and Kitty, as white as a sheet, was seen flying through the hall.

”It's his wraith! It's his wraith!”' we heard Kitty shrieking in the kitchen.

My grandfather and I turned with amazement to Sailor Ben. His eyes were standing out of his head like a lobster's.

”It's my own little Irish la.s.s!” shouted the sailor, and he darted into the hall after her.

Even then we scarcely caught the meaning of his words, but when we saw Sailor Ben and Kitty sobbing on each other's shoulder in the kitchen, we understood it all.

”I begs your honor's parden, sir,” said Sailor Ben, lifting his tear-stained face above Kitty's tumbled hair; ”I begs your honor's parden for kicking up a rumpus in the house, but it's my own little Irish la.s.s as I lost so long ago!”

”Heaven preserve us!” cried the Captain, blowing his nose violently--a transparent ruse to hide his emotion.

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