“Who said ye had!” he cried. “Did I say ye had, you rum-peddling lubber?”
“No; but you asked me,” said the cunning old rogue of a landlord.
“I am damned if I did!” said the angry mariner.
“Well, you didn’t then,” said the landlord, with a soft smile, “but I thought you did.”
The sailor turned his ugly face full on the landlord’s. He looked him over steadily and fiercely. He then put down his pipe, spread out the palm of one hand, and tapped upon it with two fingers of the other to lend an emphasis to what he was about to say. And he chose his words with a most particular and deliberate care.
“Now look you here, mate,” said he, “I know the sort you are. I’ve not followed the sea and run cargoes on this coast for twenty year without getting a wind as to the repitation of Gamaliel Hooker. I know the kind o’ man you are, my hearty. But I’m just going to sing a word in your ear. I’m a plain-dealing man, I am: rough, you’ll say, almighty rough; but I’m a man o’ my word, and you can lay to that. Now, if a young man comes to your lousy, rat-ridden old hulk of a tavern, and asks for Diggory Fargus, you just have the goodness to tell him he’ll find me showing a light from the boat, at twelve o’clock at midnight, a short sea-mile up the shore at Pyler’s Cove. You just tell him that. And if he should come, you are to keep him snug, d’ye see, here in this house till nightfall. He must not be seen by a living soul. Do this, my hearty, and you may have such a reward one day as will go beyond your dreams. But you just play me false, mate; you just send the young man to the wrong place, or set it abroad that he’s at your tavern, and as surely as Diggory Fargus hath followed the sea for twenty years, he will twist your head off your body with these two hands.”
To the deliberation of the seaman’s words was added a fierceness of countenance that made the landlord quail. Gamaliel grew terrified. He was fascinated by that unpleasant face. When Diggory Fargus pointed his threat by expanding his great gnarled brown paws, sweat sprang out of the landlord’s hair. When his eyes fell on the knife that gleamed at the seaman’s waist, he was held in the paralysis of fear. And, in the height of his sufferings, the mariner bestowed a kind of dramatic poignance upon them, by laughing aloud at poor Gamaliel’s fat, pale face; by striding to the door, flinging it wide, and disappearing into the wintry darkness.
CHAPTER II
The quest of the King
IT was not easy for the landlord to recover of his terror. Your rogue is a nervous creature. How often does he anticipate his doom! When the wind sighs through the branches, he hears the creakings of the gallows tree. Long after his visitor’s departure, Gamaliel felt two strong hands upon his throat. Why he should have been so conscious of them it is not easy to know. He had certainly done nothing as yet to provoke the wrath of Diggory Fargus. He had not so much as encountered the mysterious youth, let alone betray him. Perchance the innkeeper had no command of his own integrity. He may have distrusted himself. Perchance he had that grim insight into his own character that could foresee his instincts leading him into a course of action that he knew to be fraught with peril. A man who all his life long had first sought his own pecuniary advantage in any circumstance that might arise, did well to fear that his rapacity in any given case might get the better of his judgment.