“You’ll be just off your ship, I suppose, you’re looking so fresh and smart,” said Turnbull at a venture. “Your sweetheart will be pleased to see you, but she’d be more pleased if you brought her a good portrait to leave with her.”
The sailor laughed heartily.
“Sweetheart?” he echoed between his convulsions of merriment. “Why, I’m a married man.”
“So much the better,” returned the photographer, not to be daunted. “She’ll want your portrait exactly as you stand—not as you were before this voyage, or when you were courting her. Folks’ faces change so soon.”
“Maybe they do, but their hearts remain the same,” returned the sailor cheerily.
“Well, not always—they change, too, sometimes,” said Turnbull, with the air of one who had bitterly experienced the truth of his words; “but with your portrait always beside her, her heart couldn’t change. Just step in—I won’t keep you a moment, and you can take it with you. You’ll have it, and she’ll have it, long after the races are forgotten.”
The sailor easily yielded, and followed him into the tent, and then Turnbull, having now a professional interest in the man, took notice of his dress and appearance particularly for the first time. The man was low in stature, thick set, and evidently a powerful fellow. He wore an ordinary sailor’s suit of dark blue, but had for a neckerchief a red cotton handkerchief loosely rolled together, and so carelessly tied that the ends hung down over his breast.
In order to get all the sailor’s face into the portrait, Turnbull with some difficulty persuaded him to remove his cap, and then drew from him an admission that his objection arose from the fact that there was a flesh mark on one side of his forehead which he did not wish to appear in the portrait. The difficulty was got over—as it was with Hannibal—by taking a side-view, and the first attempt came out all right, so far as the portrait was concerned. But the sailor wished to appear as if he had just removed his cap, and with that in his hand, so the first was put aside as spoilt, and another taken, which, though not so successful, pleased the owner better, as in that the cap appeared in his hand. The portrait was finished and framed, and so free and good-natured was the owner that he insisted on paying for the spoilt one, which, however, he refused to take with him. While Turnbull had been putting a frame on the portrait, the sailor took out a long piece of tobacco and a pocket knife and cut himself a liberal quid, at the same time offering a piece to the photographer, which was accepted. The knife with which the tobacco was cut was a strong one, with a long, straight blade and a sharp point.
The whole transaction over, they bade each other good-day, and the sailor disappeared among the crowds of spectators and betting men on the course with the avowed intention of enjoying himself, and scattering some money before he went home.
Six or seven hours later a man was found lying in one of the narrow back lanes of the town, so inert, and smelling so strongly of drink, that more than one person had passed him under the impression that he was drunk, and without putting out a hand to help. At length the ghastly hue of his face attracted attention, and it was found that he was lying in a pool of blood, which had flowed from two deep wounds in his breast and side, and thence oosed out at the back of his clothes on the ground below.