“Well, well,” again interrupted the landlord of the ‘Foul Anchor,’ with his unseasonable voice, “I never before heard the good-man suspected of roguery, though the neighbourhood was ever backward in calling him chicken-hearted.”
The old seaman looked the publican full in the face, with much meaning in his eye, as he answered,—
“If the honest tailor never robbed any but that virago, there would be no great thieving sin to be laid to his account; for every bead he had about him wouldn’t serve to pay his ferryage. I could carry all the gold on his neck in my eye, and see none the worse for its company. But it is a shame to stop the entrance into a licensed tavern, with such a mob, as if it were an embargoed port; and so I have sent the woman after her valuables, and all the idlers, as you see, in her wake.”
Joe Joram gazed on the speaker like a man enthralled by some mysterious charm; neither answering nor altering the direction of his eye, for near a minute. Then, suddenly breaking out in a deep and powerful laugh, as if he were not backward in enjoying the artifice, which certainly had produced the effect of removing the crowd from his own door to that of the absent tailor, he flourished his arm in the way of greeting, and exclaimed,—“Welcome, tarry Bob; welcome, old boy, welcome! From what cloud have you fallen? and before what wind have you been running, that Newport is again your harbour?”
“Too many questions to be answered in an open roadstead, friend Joram; and altogether too dry a subject for a husky conversation. When I am birthed in one of your inner cabins, with a mug of flip and a kid of good Rhode Island beef within grappling distance, why, as many questions as you choose, and as many answers, you know, as suits my appetite.”
“And who’s to pay the piper, honest Bob? whose ship’s purser will pay your check now?” continued the publican, showing the old sailor in, however, with a readiness that seemed to contradict the doubt, expressed by his words, of any reward for such extraordinary civility.
“Who?” interrupted the other, displaying the money so lately received from Wilder, in such a manner that it might be seen by the few by-standers who remained, as though he would himself furnish a sufficient apology for the distinguished manner in which he was received; “who but this gentleman? I can boast of being backed by the countenance of his Sacred Majesty himself, God bless him!”
“God bless him!” echoed several of the loyal lieges; and that too in a place which has since heard such very different cries, and where the words would now excite nearly as much surprise, though far less alarm, than an earthquake.
“God bless him!” repeated Joram, opening the door of an inner room, and pointing the way to his customer, “and all that are favored with his countenance! Walk in, old Bob, and you shall soon grapple with half an ox.”
Wilder, who had approached the outer door of the tavern as the mob receded, witnessed the retreat of the two worthies into the recesses of the house, and immediately entered the bar-room himself. While deliberating on the manner in which he should arrive at a communication with his new confederate, without attracting too much attention to so odd an association, the landlord returned in person to relieve him. After casting a hasty glance around the apartment, his look settled on our adventurer, whom he approached in a manner half-doubting, half-decided.