of them he caught sight of his Christian passenger.
The Sparrowhawk took no freight from Swatow. She sailed for Rangoon speedily; but there it was just as bad. The joke was too good not to circulate. In every eastern port she and her people were greeted with volleys of ‘quacks’ by the native population both on land and water. Legions of imps, black and copper-coloured, and all quacking with might and main, formed the skipper’s retinue if he went ashore anywhere between Yokohama and Bombay.
Native masters of country wallahs, lying within hail, would grin, and ask him for the protection of the Sparrowhawk to their next port of call. It became unbearable. India, China and Japan seemed to turn into duck-pens at his approach.
So he took the Sparrowhawk out of those waters altogether, and shortly afterwards gave up the sea. But, although there are no ducks within a mile of his house on the Aythen, there are urchins—Scotch urchins—and he has not perfect peace. The story is too well known.
As for his crew, even yet, if one should, with intent, imitate the cry of that fowl disastrous where two or three of them happen to be foregathered, they will come at you with the weapons nearest.
[105]
]THE DUKE OF SILVERSHEEN.
Quæ amissa, salva.
The parlour of the ‘Woolpack’ was full of men in from their stations for ‘Land Court Day.’ A babel of talk was toward—mostly ‘shop.’ ‘Footrot!’ shouted a small energetic looking man, ‘I’ll tell you how I cure my sheep! You boil vinegar, and arsenic, and blue-stone up—No, Polly, I ordered lager. And then—’ ‘Worms,’ my dear fellow, another was saying, ‘You can’t cure ’em! Don’t tell me! You go and make an infernal chemist’s shop of your sheep’s stomach, ruin the wool and constitution; and, after all your trouble, up bobs the little worm serenely as ever.’ ‘Strike,’ came from another corner of the big room. ‘No fear! No strike this year if we hang together like we mean to do. I think we’re pretty right in this district, anyhow. Everybody’s joined, bar M‘Pherson, and he’ll come-to presently. By jingo, here he is! Touch the bell, Bob, and let’s have ’em again.’ As the speaker finished, a burly, grey-whiskered man entered with, in his wake, another person who had evidently been closely pressing his [106] ]companion with argument and persuasion, for the latter was saying irritably,—
‘Once for a’, I tell ye, no. I’ll nae join. I’ll just stan’ on my ain bottom, an’ employ wha I like. When I want my wool aff, aff it comes; an’ wha takes it aff I dinna care a damn, so it’s taken off to my satisfaction! Will that do ye?’
‘The gospel of selfishness according to M‘Pherson,’ said a voice from out the smoke-clouds. ‘The assessment ’d drive him mad.’ ‘Bang went saxpence!’ sang out someone else, as the Scotch squatter turned angrily round with a dim idea that he was being baited.