To avoid such a terrible contingency I there and then gave my hearty consent to the arrangement he and Janet, with my mother’s concurrence, had thus planned without my knowledge; although, really, if I had been inclined to grumble at not being informed previously of what now so unexpectedly transpired, I had only time and distance to blame, not the parties concerned, for the engagement was of so recent a date that the news of it, though on the way through the post, had not reached Venezuela when I left.
After I had answered a lot of Garry O’Neil’s questions concerning myself and the time I had passed in South America, speaking, too, of poor Colonel Vereker, whose death he had learnt from my mother, I began again, asking in my turn all about my old shipmates, and, of course, his own also.
“Faith, the skipper is foine and flourishin’,” he informed me, “an’ the ould barquey as good an’ as sound as ivver she was. Do you ricollict ould Stokes?”
“Of course I do,” I said. “Is he still chief?”
“No, no; he retired a year ago or more on a pinsion which the company gave him for his long service; an’ little Grummet—ye rimimber him?—well, he’s promoted, sure, to ould Stokes’ billet. The ould chap, though, is alive an’ hearty, an’ as asthamataky as ivver!”
“What’s become of Mr Fosset?”
“Och, be jabbers! he’s a big man now. He’s a skipper on his own hook, jist loike Cap’en Applegarth. He’s got the ould Fairi Quane, the sicond best boat but one to the line. D’ye ricollict that ould thaife of a bo’sun we had on the Star of the North?”
“Why, you must mean poor old Masters! I should think I did.”
“That same, alannah. He wasn’t a bad sort of chap, an’ a good sayman, ivvry inch of him, though I used for to call him an ould thaife just ‘for fun an’ fancy’—as the old song says—well, he’s lift the ould barquey an’ gone with Cap’en Fosset in the Fairi Quane. But ye haven’t axed me onst afther yer ould fri’nd Spokeshave! Sure, now, ye haven’t forgot little ‘Conky,’ faith!”
“No, indeed,” said I, amused at his query and the funny wink that accompanied it. “What has become of that spiteful little beggar?”