PADDY DOYLE’S BOOTS
A FORECASTLE YARN
YOU know that junk store on the Sandoval waterfront? A Chink keeps it—Charley Something or other, don’t remember the rest of his name. If you don’t know the place I mean, you know plenty more just like it. The sort of place where you can buy pretty well anything under the sun, everything second-hand, that is; any mortal thing in the seagoing line that you can think of, and then some. That’s Charley’s!
Well, once Larry Keogh (every one used to call him Mike, because his name wasn’t Michael), and Sandy MacGillivray from Glasgow, and a Dutchman called Hank were in want of one or two things for a Cape Horn passage. Their ship was the old “Isle of Skye.” Did you ever meet with any of them “Isle” barques? They were very fine ships. There was the “Isle of Skye,” “Isle of Arran,” “Isle of Man,” and a whole lot more I just forget—all “Isles.” You wouldn’t find any of them now. Some were lost, some broken up, some went under the Russian or Chilian flag, and the firm that owned them (MacInnis, the name was) went out of business at the finish. And as for the old “Isle of Skye” herself, she piled up on Astoria a little more than a year ago—foreign-owned then, of course.
Round these three chaps I was speaking about went to Charley’s joint. Larry and Hank got what they wanted soon enough. At least, they got what they had money for, which wasn’t very much, Charley not being in the humour to treat Larry as handsome over some lumps of coral Larry wanted to trade for clothes.
This Sandy MacGillivray I mentioned, however, was a bit of a capitalist, and he was also of an economical disposition; and what with wanting to lay out his money the best way and not being able to bear the feel of parting with the cash when he’d found what he wanted to buy, he had his pals with the one thing and the other teetering about first on one foot and then on the other, and sick to death of him and his shilly-shallying.
At long last he got through; and then nothing would fit but Charley must give him something in for his bargain.
“No good, no good!” says the Chink, looking ugly the way only a Chink can. “You pay me, you go ’long!... P’laps I give you somet’ing you no like.”
He grinned and showed his dirty yellow teeth.
“Ut’s not possible,” said Larry. “Sandy’s the one that’ll take it, if it’s neither too hot nor too heavy.”