“Forty-five years’ boy and man, I’ve been a sailor,” he’d say; “rated AB, I am; and AB I hope to keep till I’m sewed up in my hammock and sent overboard; for none of your rotting in harbour for me, thanky.”
Uncle Joe ran away to sea when quite a boy, and he had served enough years in the Royal Navy to have been an admiral, but what with our scheme of promotion, and some want of ability on the old fellow’s part, he was a first-rate able seaman, but he never got a step farther. One can always picture him in his blue trousers and loose guernsey, with its wide turn-down collar, his cap set right back on his head, and the name of his ship on the band, in gilt letters, while his big clasp-knife hung by the white lanyard round his waist. Clean, neat, and active, the sinewy old chap came rolling in after my father; neck open, eyes bright, and face shining and good-humoured.
“Cold, cold, cold,” said my father, entering the room where we were clustered round the fire. “Freezes sharp; and, bless my heart, there’s a great ball of snow sticking to my boot,” saying which, the old gentleman, who had just been round the farmyard for the last time that night, went back into the passage and rubbed off the snow, while Uncle Joe, chuckling and laughing, walked up to the fireplace and scraped his shoes on the front bar, so that the pieces of hard snow began sputtering and cissing as they fell in the fire.
“Cold?” said Uncle Joe, filling his pipe, and then shutting his brass tobacco-box with a snap; “Cold? ’taint cold a bit, no more nor that’s hot,” and then, stooping down, he thrust a finger and thumb in between the bottom bars, caught hold of a piece of glowing coal and laid it upon the bowl of his pipe, which means soon ignited the tobacco within. “My hands are hard enough for anything,” he growled, taking the place made for him beside the fire, when he tucked his cap beneath the chair, and then took one leg upon his knee, and nursed it as he smoked for awhile in silence.
“Now, come, Christmas-night,” cried my father, “and you’re all as quiet as so many mice. What’s it to be, Joe—the old thing?”
“Well, yes,” growled my uncle; “I won’t say no to a tot o’ grog,” and then he smoked on abstractedly, while my father mixed for the wanderer whom he had not seen for five years.
“Wish to goodness I’d brought a hammock,” said my uncle, at last. “I did try whether I couldn’t lash the curtains together last night, but they’re too weak.”
“I should think so, indeed,” exclaimed my mother. “That chintz, too. How can you be so foolish, Joe?”
My uncle smoked on, apparently thinking with great disgust of the comfortably-furnished bedroom in which he had to sleep, as compared with the main-deck of his frigate.
“But ’taint cold,” he all at once burst out.