Tom Pagdin, Pirate

by E. J. Brady

A hunter who has mortally wounded an old man lion with his last cartridge could not have claimed possession with greater emphasis.

“He’ll get away,” pleaded the red-headed boy in extenuation. “You’ve only broke his leg.”

“’E won’t get away,” shouted Tom. “’E’s mortal wounded. You let up, Dave Gibson, or I’ll punch yer ’ead when I get acrost.”

The punt swung in close to the bank. Tom Pagdin let go the handle, stripped off pants and shirt, and plunged in after his quarry.

Now this was a dangerous thing to do, inasmuch as the water was not only deep enough to drown a boat’s crew, but the long brown stalks of the giant lilies growing up from the bottom in netted confusion might tangle the stoutest swimmer. Many a good swimmer, in sooth, has lost his life in that fashion by the banks of the Northern rivers.

But young Tom Pagdin thought not of depth nor danger; the wounded coot was a prize of as great importance at the moment as a kingdom to Alexander. All the primal instincts of the chase were aroused in him. He floundered and kicked and splashed among the flat leaves, turning up their red undersides, making many bubbles, and frightening the perch and eels from their feed. At last, puffing and almost exhausted he got within reach of his game, grabbed it triumphantly by the neck, and turned about to swim back. And just then old Tom Pagdin, with his pipe in his mouth, stepped on to the punt. The old man had been thrice wakened out of his sleep the previous night to go across stream and bring late travellers over and even the solace of the extra sixpences over and above his legitimate toll had not soothed his anger.

The animosity of Pagdin, senior, to men and things was chronic. His grievance was general. The world was against him, as it is against all puntmen, and, like all puntmen, he was against the world.

In the first place he proclaimed loudly that the Government gave him no chance—the yearly rent exacted by the Department for the right of the crossing was too high; it was an imposition, an outrage, a robbery. The victim wailed cursefully at the windlass from morn to eve. The Member for the district had promised him that the yearly charge should be reduced. He was convinced in some indefinite way that the Member was in the conspiracy against him—that he personally pocketed some of the plunder. Then the tolls which the Department allowed him to exact from travellers were too low. Threepence a head for foot travellers, sixpence for horsemen, and ninepence for vehicles did not pay. Then he never got his proper night’s rest, mainly because the public house was on the North Side, and the fellows who went across in the evening never thought about him. They hardly ever thought about bringing him a toothful, either. They could come and hail angrily across the water at one and two o’clock in the morning for the punt, but they seldom remembered when they were leaving the Rising Sun that the puntman had a mouth on him.

The fishermen who came down to the Broadstream on Saturdays and Sundays were no better. The picnic crowds were worse, and, as for the swagmen and fellows looking for work along the river, they were an utter abomination—a poor, struggling cove—to take them over for nothing, and sometimes even swimming the Broadstream to avoid paying toll—taking the bread directly out of a poor cove’s mouth.

When old Tom reached this climax he usually spat in the water and looked up and down the bank with a smouldering eye to see if young Tom was doing anything that merited punishment.