“I don’t think I shall ever tire of this, sir,” Hi said. “It’s the kind of place I have dreamed of all my life.”
“Pretty scenery,” the captain said. “But give me Sefton Park.”
* * * * * * *
After breakfast, Hi was rowed ashore from the Recalde, to begin his new life. He saw the Recalde, which linked him with home (for his mother had walked her deck and leaned over her rail), now drop away into the past. In front of him was a new world, to which he had at present three keys, his friendship with the Piranhas, a letter to Mr. Roger Weycock of the Sugar Company, and a letter to Mr. Allan Winter, a sugar-planter (not far from the city) whom Bill had known in the past. These were his keys, but his father had told him not to trust to them. “The thing you’ve got to trust to, and the only thing, is just you yourself. That’s the only key that will open doors to a man, of any kind worth getting open.”
With some distrust of this key and some anxiety about his boatman’s fare, he drew near to the landing stairs, where pirates of five colours, in turbans and kerchiefs of every colour, showed their teeth at him and offered him all things, from brothels to the new cathedral. As the boat sidled up to the steps, he heard his name shouted: “Mr. Highworth. Mr. Ridden. Mr. Highworth.” He caught sight of a little man diving down the stairs at him and crying, “Dammy, dammy, dammy, I’ll get drunk to-night.”
“O, Mr. Highworth, Mr. Highworth, Mr. Ridden,” he cried. “Don’t ’ee know me? I knew you, sir; the minute I seen ’ee.” Here he turned on the other pirates who were laying hold of Hi’s baggage. “Get out of this,” he said, in the seaport language made up of the oaths of all civilised lands. “Get out of this, heekoes de pooters. I take all the Señor’s gear. Don’t ’ee know me, Mr. Highworth? I know thee, soon’s I seen ’ee.” He was weeping like a child and sucking his tears into his mouth with twitches of his face: he had all Hi’s baggage in his hands. “Pay the boatman, sir,” he said. “One of the big ones and a small one. This sort is sharks. You’d ought to have took a licensed boat, which would have been only one peseta.” He led the way up the stairs and shoved through the crowd on the Mole. “O, dammy, dammy,” he kept saying, “I’ll break into my burial money, but I’ll get drunk to-night.” He was dressed in an old pair of English riding breeches, a black velvet coat, much too tight at the shoulders and elbows, a tall black sombrero, and part of a yellow serape. Hi didn’t like the look of the man, nor his display of emotion.
“Look at me, Master Highworth,” he said. “Don’t ’ee know me?”
“No, I don’t,” Hi said. “Who are you?”
“Don’t ’ee know ’Zekiel Rust?” the man said. “I did use to beat for Squire William Ridden, many’s the time, till I had to run for it. I knowed you and your father and Mr. Rowton and Miss Mary. But you were young, Mr. Highworth. You might never have heard tell. They may have kept it from you, the deed of gore I done. I’m not an ordinary man, you understand. I had to run for it; I’m Rust, the murderer. It was I killed old Keeper Jackson. I’d a-been hung, if they’d a-took me. Now you remember me? You remember how I killed Keeper Jackson?”
“Good Lord,” Hi said. “Yes; now I remember. And you have been here ever since.”