‘Footpad in your teeth, Master Doctor,’ cried the highwayman. ‘I scorn the word. A rider, sir; a rider by moonlight, for the benefit of my health and my pocket.’
‘I tell you, Harris,’ Jerry here broke in, his roaring voice bearing down all before it—‘I tell you, Harris, he lied to you. Curse me! I know the roadstead well. I ought to, for I groped in there in as dark a night as ever lowered on this side of hell, and boarded a Spanish bark that was at anchor, and made all the fellows leap into the sea in their shirts. A rare sight, I promise you; like geese flying into a mill-pond. Those who could swim got ashore, and those who couldn’t were drowned; so that in some sort they were all provided for—ha! ha! ha! send the brandy this way. Care killed a cat!’
‘And so you made the dons jump into the salt water in their night gear?’ cried an old man, with a villanous looking face above a grey beard, and whose name was Cole. ‘It was prettily devised; but not such good sport as I have seen in the plantations. Od rot it, man! that be the place for your true sportsman. Why, I mind me, about a dozen years since, when there comes a cargo of cheat-the-gallows birds from over the water in a ship of old Lumper’s, he that hath the wharves by Rotherhithe, and behold you, some dozen of stout fellows being drinking on board, and getting the latest news of the bona robas down by Finsbury Pavement from old mother Black-i’-the-face, who came over then for shoplifting in the Poultry,—says Silas Blood, him who was killed in the Tortugas by Francy Doubledee, says he: “How’s the scurvy aboard this time, captain?” “Scurvy!” quoth the captain; “bad enough, I warrant thee. Here has been some dozen rogues put aboard, just after the gaol fever—and measly salt pork down among the bilge water there, plays the devil with them. Scurvy, say you? they are more like lepers than anything else.” “By God! then,” says Silas—he was ever a joking man, “they ought to be washed clean. Let’s duck the lepers from the yard-arm.” “Well, captain, you know, the rogues were not worth a sixpence to anybody; not a planter would buy such scabby dogs. So we had them up on deck, and it was the rarest sport, man, the rarest, since eggs brought forth chickens, to see the ragamuffins all screeching and yelling when they were triced up to the tackling and doused alongside, them being just all in a fever, as you may say, out of the hot blankets. We got the bona robas out of the fore hatch to see the game, and didn’t they shriek out for laughing, as the scurvy dogs went lick down into the sea!”
At the conclusion of this delectable tale, the old villain burst out a laughing, rubbing his hands, which were shaking as though with palsy, and chuckling with his toothless gums. It was relief to turn from him to the highwayman, who was recounting stories of his exploits.
‘“—But, good Mr. Robber, says she,” so was he continuing, as I caught his voice; ‘“but good Mr. Robber,” and she put her pretty face out of the coach window, taking from it a dainty vizard all fringed with lace of silk and gold, “leave me just one of the lockets, and I promise thee that when thou comest to be hanged I will send thee so gay a nosegay that all the pretty women from Holborn Hill to the Oxford Road shall cry,” “Ay, I warrant you, he hath that from his sweetheart!” And so I, shipmates, being the pink of gentlemen riders, could not but assent with a low bow, saying, “Madam, here be two miniatures, one set in gold, very massive and rich, and the other only in very ordinary stuff; I will, out of my admiration for you, leave you which you may decide on;” and with that I handed her the twain. I wish, comrades, you could have seen her holding a portrait of an old gentleman and a young gentleman in each hand: “Here be my husband,” quoth she, “very richly set and preciously adorned; and here be my lover, with no gold at all around him. Master Highwayman, affection is dearer than gold; I give thee my husband, and I keep my lover.”’
The highwayman’s story was even more applauded than old Cole’s reminiscence of the plantations, and then drinking went on very hard, Jerry, in particular, tossing off bumper after bumper of raw brandy, and laughing and shouting verses of loose songs, so that he might have been heard a league off. All the thorough brute in the man’s nature was now becoming apparent. Most of the others were bad enough in their liquor, telling such tales as I have given specimens of, but Jerry swilled down his draughts of fiery spirits, and, as a dog which hath so far derogated from his natural instincts as to get drunk might do, merely roared and yelled, and caught at the men who sat near him by the doublets, cuffing and shaking them, and shrieking out that that was what he loved, and that they would all be drunk! drunk! drunk! together! Of those who kept themselves soberest, I remarked Tommy Nixon, who, I noticed also, gradually edging his way round to Rumbold, who sat almost silent, his acute mind and far-extending knowledge disdaining to clothe his thoughts in words, and cast them before such swine.
‘Master Rumbold,’ said the worthy Nixon, ‘do you love oysters?’
At that question I saw very well what the man was driving at, and watched him narrowly—‘Because,’ he went on, ‘men say there are delicious ones on the banks of the Rio de la Hacha! Perhaps you dived and picked up a few during your recent voyagings in that half-decked piragua, from the dangers of which we were so kind as to rescue thee.’
‘Truly,’ replied Rumbold, ‘if by oysters you mean pearls—’
‘Hush! speak lower,’ said Nixon; ‘thou art a sensible fellow, and being a gentleman, knowest that thy passage on board the “Saucy Susan” must be paid. As for me, I am not greedy, as all the world can testify!’ and here he dropped his voice to a whisper. ‘None but the captain, Jerry, and I, know aught. Let me make thy terms; it will be the better for us all.’