'Why he was an African,' I interposed, my sense of accuracy offended.
'I don't care a curse what he was,' rejoined Mark; 'he was exactly like the picture in the story-books. And as we were lying off—I forget the cursed name of it—he begged me to put him ashore. He could not speak a word of English, but one of the fellows with him interpreted, and they were all anxious to get ashore. Poor devils, they had a notion, I believe, we were going to sell them for slaves, and he made me a present of a ring, and told me a long yarn about it. It was a talisman, it seems, and no one who wore it could ever be lost. So I took it for a keepsake; here it is,' and he extended his stumpy, brown little finger, and showed a thick, coarsely-made ring of gold, with an uncut red stone, of the size of a large cherry stone, set in it.
'The stone is a humbug,' said Wylder. 'It's not real. I showed it to Platten and Foyle. It's some sort of glass. But I would not part with it. I got a fancy into my head that luck would come with it, and maybe that glass stuff was the thing that had the virtue in it. Now look at these Persian letters on the inside, for that's the oddest thing about it. Hang it, I can't pull it off—I'm growing as fat as a pig—but they are like a queer little string of flowers; and I showed it to a clever fellow at Malta—a missionary chap—and he read it off slick, and what do you think it means: "I will come up again;"' and he swore a great oath. 'It's as true as you stand there—our motto. Is not it odd? So I got the "resurgam" you see there engraved round it, and by Jove! it did bring me up. I was near lost, and did rise again. Eh?'
Well, it certainly was a curious accident. Mark had plenty of odd and not unamusing lore. Men who beat about the world in ships usually have; and these 'yarns,' furnished, after the pattern of Othello's tales of Anthropophagites and men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders, one of the many varieties of fascination which he practised on the fair sex. Only in justice to Mark, I must say that he was by no means so shameless a drawer of the long-bow as the Venetian gentleman and officer.
'When I got this ring, Charlie, three hundred a year and a London life would have been Peru and Paradise to poor Pill Garlick, and see what it has done for me.'
'Aye, and better than Aladdin's, for you need not rub it and bring up that confounded ugly genii; the slave of your ring works unseen.'
'So he does,' laughed Wylder, in a state of elation, 'and he's not done working yet, I can tell you. When the estates are joined in one, they'll be good eleven thousand a year; and Larkin says, with smart management, I shall have a rental of thirteen thousand before three years! And that's only the beginning, by George! Sir Henry Twisden can't hold his seat—he's all but broke—as poor as Job, and the gentry hate him, and he lives abroad. He has had a hint or two already, and he'll never fight the next election. D'ye see—hey?'
And Wylder winked and grinned, with a wag of his head.
'M.P.—eh? You did not see that before. I look a-head a bit, eh? and can take my turn at the wheel—eh?'
And he laughed with cunning exultation.