"That's Billy Pengelly, our coastguard. The gentlemen do make a lot of him, and he's none the better for't, for Billy's one as likes his drop. Still, he goes and sleeps it off, and he belong to be strong as a bull. And in these lone parts there's not often anyone to see if he's on the watch or not."
A tall boy with a banjo took up his instrument and twanged the chords.
"Now, gentlemen!" he shouted in a clear fresh tenor, "a chorus!" And without further preliminary he dashed into nothing less than the "Pirate's Chanty" from "Treasure Island":
"Fifteen men on the dead man's chest!
Yo, ho! and a bottle of rum!"
The inn rocked with the volume of sound. I stood there fascinated, with a sort of horror. The thing—knowing what I knew—was so daring and grim that, more than anything else, it showed me with whom we had to deal.
The application was lost upon Danjuro, but I told him what it meant in French, and he nodded with contracted eyes.
"Drink, and the devil had done for the rest,
Yo, ho! and a bottle of rum!"