Again Smoke-Jack pondered, and took a pull at his punch.
“A flaxen-haired chap,” inquired he, “with a red nose and a pair of cunning eyes? As thirsty as a sand-bank, and hails ye in a voice like the boatswain’s whistle?”
“That’s about the trim, all but the hair,” answered his friend. “To be sure, he may have hoisted a wig. This beggar’s got the gift of the gab, though, and pays ye out a yarn as long as the maintop bowline.”
“It must be the same,” said Smoke-Jack, and proceeded to relate his grievances, which were as follows:—
Paid off from a cruise, and finding he was pretty well to do in the world, Smoke-Jack had resolved to amuse himself in London, by studying life in a more enlarged phase than was afforded at his usual haunts near the river-side. For this purpose he had dressed himself in a grave suit, which made him look like some retired merchant captain, and in that character frequented the more respectable ordinaries about the Savoy and such civilised parts of the town. Here he made casual acquaintances, chiefly of sedate exterior, especially affecting those who assumed a wise port and talked heavy nonsense in the guise of philosophy.
Not many weeks ago he had met a person at one of these dinner-tables with whose conversation he was much delighted. Flaxen-haired, dark-eyed, red-nosed, with a high voice, and of quasi-military appearance, but seeming to be well versed in a spurious kind of science, and full of such grave saws and aphorisms as made a deep impression on a man like Smoke-Jack, reflective, uneducated, and craving for intellectual excitement. That he could not understand half the captain said did but add to the charm of that worthy’s discourse, and for two days the pair were inseparable. On the third they concluded a dry argument on fluids with the appropriate termination of a debauch, and the landsman drugged the sailor’s liquor, so as to rob him of his purse, containing twenty-five broad pieces, with the utmost facility, whilst he slept.
Waking and finding his companion and his money gone, while the score was left unpaid, Smoke-Jack remembered to have seen the captain stroke the neck of a bay mare held by a boy at the door of the tavern they entered, though he denied all knowledge of the animal. After this the sailor never expected to set eyes on his scientific friend again.
The mention of the bay mare proved beyond a doubt that the two shipmates owed a grudge to the same individual. They laid their heads together to pay it off accordingly, and called Alice, who was nowise unwilling, into council.
Her feminine aversion to violence dissuaded them from their first intention of avenging their grievances by the strong hand.