Patroon van Volkenberg

by Henry Thew Stephenson

Captain Donaldson and I soon came to terms about my passage. As I left the ship in his company—for he would go part way along the dock to point out less favored ships and make comparisons to their disadvantage—as we walked along he told me what he knew of the lass at the Mariner’s Rest. She had come of better folk, he told me, and could no longer endure her present occupation. Her determination was to go to the colonies and take service in some respectable family till she could save enough to buy her a little home in one of the Huguenot settlements.

“But that is not what she will really do,” said the Captain. “She is too pretty a wench for that. Who knows but that you—tut, tut, man, you are not married, are you?”

He had recalled my fearfulness of the night before and there was particular force in its being put into words by a perfect stranger. He continued to chaff me about the girl till, when I left him, I half repented the bargain I had made to sail in his ship. Yet for all that, and in spite of myself, when night came I was sitting in the corner of the Mariner’s Rest. I fretted inwardly that I was there; but I persuaded myself that I had better get used to her face amid the distractions of other interests than to wait and make her acquaintance in the lonely isolation of the ship.

I found the inn, if possible, more noisy than on the night before. During the day two or three ships had come in from distant parts and many of their crews were carousing heavily after the long voyage. Some of the sailors had already drunk themselves into a stupor, but by far the greater number swore and shouted lustily in their cups. The cry of wench, wench, rose repeatedly, and at times the accompaniment of jocose obscenity was disgusting.

The maid shrank pitifully from contact with the rude atmosphere about her; yet there was a hopeful look in her bright, sparkling eyes. This expression I set down as due to the fact that to-morrow she would be free of all this and once more in the way of a decent life. There were plenty of respectable homes to be had in the colony of New York, and I had no doubt but that the good captain would look out for her to the best of his ability.

Two or three times during the evening the drinkers fell to brawling. Once at a game of cards a Portuguese sailor clapped his cutlass across a comrade’s head and threatened to lop off his pate if he said a word more. His opponent was a sniveling bit of a coward who whined at this threat, but swallowed it as best he could, which, however, he did with a bad grace, being neither a bully nor a thorough-going jelly fish of a coward.

I could hardly stand the vile smell of their tobacco, or the look of the sloppy pools upon the floor where they splattered the foam from their ale. I was minded once to quit the room altogether, and had even risen from my feet to go; but I noticed that the clatter of mugs and the din of voices and the stamping of feet was growing louder with every minute. The hopeful look had crowded out of the girl’s face, and at that moment the cry of wench was thundered out, together with an indecent oath that made me wince. She cast a scared glance of appeal in my direction. I sat down again, minded to wait and be on hand in case she should need my protection.

She approached timidly the table of the boor who had summoned her. She set down the contents of her tray and was about to retreat when he caught her roughly by the arm. He tried to pull her down upon his knee and made as if to kiss her. I was on my feet in an instant; but before I could stir a step the landlord had taken her part. He fetched the drunken sailor a blow in the face that stretched him on the ground with the blood dripping from his nose.

“I guess she’s my brat, not yours,” cried the landlord angrily. “Wench, get back to your place.”

The sailors are such clannish folk that I fully expected a desperate brawl to follow the landlord’s attack. There was some violent shuffling of feet in the corner, and one or two men started up and took a step or two in the direction of the affray, eager for a row. But before the mob’s anger could come to a focus, someone cried out in a mocking voice: