CHAPTER FOUR
BACK PAY
Henry Avery
I
Just outside of Plymouth, in the English county of Devonshire, John Avery kept a tavern, under the patronage for the most part of coastwise and deep-sea sailormen. It was a comfortable place, was that inn of good Master Avery, with its sanded floor, diamond-paned windows, clean tankards, and the good ale and victuals that made the house synonymous with home for the parched mariner off in Malabar or his brother expectantly bumping homeward-bound around the bulk of Africa’s majestic cape.
A good place with a good landlord, but, alas for perfect pleasure, with a landlady not so good. For while mine host endeavored to drink as much as his customer, leaving the score an amicable affair between gentlemen, mine hostess tallied every drink and clawed every broad penny laid upon the table. And how incompatible boozing and bookkeeping are, every one may be presumed to know.
Jack and his wife had one child, a boy whom they called Harry. Perhaps it was for the sake of her son that Mistress Avery was careful to parsimoniousness, for the parents were resolved that Harry should neither follow the sea nor pursue the occupation of a tavern keeper; he was to be a scholar and a gentleman and thus raise the family at least one higher rung on the social ladder. A straw, it is said by wise people, may show which way the wind blows, and a circumstance which occurred when Harry Avery was but six years old may perhaps suggest his possible fulfillment of his parents’ hopes.
For it was when Harry was of those tender years that the ship Revenge paid off at Plymouth, the boatswain of which, at the head of some proper fellows, at once started for Avery’s tavern, to drink up a stout wallet of extra allowance money. With Jack Avery’s company and Mrs. Avery’s accounting they soon got through with ten pounds apiece.
During the sailormen’s besotted sojourn at the tavern little Harry gamboled impishly among them, swinging sea slang back and forth with them, dancing a mimic hornpipe and convulsing them with the expert manipulation of the most approved sea swearing. They prophesied that he would make a good sailor.
Unhappily all this cheeriness departed with their last groat. Mistress Avery turned sour then and bade them begone or she would turn in a riot call to the constable. Night was falling when the groggy seamen piled out to the chilly street to seek the shelter of the gloomy Revenge.