“Begorrah, ye’ll laugh an’ be amused, but he’s marri’d to a wife as big as one of thim grannydeers we onst took in the ould barquey to Bermuda, d’ye rimimber? Faith, she’s saix feet hoigh, an’ broad in the b’ame in proporshi’n. They make a purty couple, bedad! an’ they do say she kapes him in order. Do ye rickolict what an argufyin’ chap Spokeshave was aboard?”
“I should think I did, indeed,” replied I. “I think he was the most cantankerous little beast I ever came across in my life, either afloat or ashore!”
“Faith, ye wouldn’t say that same now, Dick,” rejoined Garry with much earnestness. “The poor little beggar’s as make as a cat, for he daren’t call his sowl his own!”
I asked after some of the other men belonging to my old ship, including Accra Prout, whom the colonel wished to accompany us to Venezuela, the mulatto refusing on the plea that, though he should always love his “old massa,” he could not go with him for one insurmountable reason.
“Guess I’d hav’ ’sociate wid dem tam black raskels daan thaar, massa, an’ dis chile no like dat nohow. I’se nebbah ’sparrage my famerly by ’sociatin’ wid niggahs, massa, nebbah. De Prouts ’long good old plantation stock, an’ raise in Lousianner!”
This supercilious autocrat, it must be borne in mind, all the time being more than half a negro himself, though, for that matter, his heart was better and his disposition braver than many a white man who would have despised his coloured skin.
Some of the other hands about whom I inquired had left the old barquey and shipped aboard other vessels, so Garry told me; but at this I was not much surprised, sailors as a rule being fond of change and very unconservative in their habits.
With suchlike conversation my old mess-mate and I beguiled our long railway journey to Liverpool, which we reached the same evening, but before we had quite exhausted our respective questions and answers respecting everybody we had ever met or known during the time he and I had been to sea together.
My meeting with my dear mother and sister after so long an absence abroad can be well imagined, and so too my first interview with Elsie, whom I should hardly have known again, for how can I describe her beauty and grace, and though I had been prepared in some measure from accounts my mother had sent me, still they exceeded my expectations.
It would be impossible if I tried to picture her for “a month of Sundays,” as Captain Applegarth used to say on board the old barquey when he thought a fellow spent too much time over a job.