I opened my eyes, sure now that the fever had got to my brain.
“Who be you?” I asked, not believing that my ears heard English from a native negro.
He leaned back with his hands on his hips and laughed at my astonishment.
“You know Bednal Green,[9] Jack?”
[9] Bethnal Green, now in the limits of London.
Bednal Green? Aye, Green’s the name and green’s the word. Green! Oh, for the leaves, the grass, the young buds of spring; just one handful of those was worth more than all of those yellow sands, glaring waters and banana skies! Bednal Green! The very word—the name—was like cold water on a gritted tongue! Bednal Green! Aye, had I the choice between the eating room of the “White Duck” Tavern and the palace of the Grand Mogul across the water in India, there would be no bargaining. Did I know Bednal Green!
“Aye,” said I, “very well.”
“You have ale at him White Duck?”
Ale at the White Duck—the very place that was running in my mind! I knew then that I was dreaming; that I was out of my head and that I would surely soon die. Verily I had drunk ale in the White Duck; drunk it often of winter mornings when Mistress Brown, in a clean apron, kept the coal fire bright in the grate, and the carters from the country, leaving their wains outside, came stamping in, blowing upon their finger tips and shouting the gossip of the frozen roads. I lost myself in a sort of swoon.
When I came back to my senses I was lying in the old hut of a fisherman, and the big black fellow was fanning my head with a bundle of broad leaves. He must have carried me in from the beach; an easy job, for I was all skin and bones, and he was a giant.