“What, Mr Winter?” says Murch. “This is indeed an unexpected meeting. Why, I thought I saw you no later than this morning, but my eyes are older than they were, and I believed they had deceived me. Well, and how do you do, sir?”
He held out his hand, and what could I do but take it? He ordered supper for me, and mulled wine, and what could I do but accept his hospitality? I have often asked myself these questions; and although my conduct may have presented a lamentable weakness, I have never repented it. Mr Murch plied me with food and wine, using the most dignified courtesy; when I had well eaten and drunk, he offered me a cigarro; and still he talked of the weather, and the state of the roads, and the prospects of the country, and what else I forget, but never a word of nearer import. And so long as he chose to maintain reserve, I was in no mood to break it.
“I am truly sorry, Mr Winter,” says Murch, at length, “that I cannot ask you to be my guest for the night. But the truth is, I have affairs of some urgency that call me farther, and I must be jogging even now.”
“The regret would be mine,” I said, “were it not, by a singular chance, that I must be going forward likewise.”
“Dear me!” cried Murch. “And which way lies your road, sir?”
“Along the coast, all down into Devon. And which way lies yours, sir?”
“Why, the very same,” says Murch, heartily. “But what an extraordinary chance, as you say, Mr Winter, that has brought us together from the ends of the earth. We are to be fellow-travellers, again, it seems. What do you say? Shall we be jogging?”
“With all my heart,” I said.
And so it was that Mr Murch and I took the road together, and you may judge of my emotions in this dilemma. How could I quarrel with this extraordinary man? The thing were difficult enough, though we were at open enmity; and now, stuffed as I was with Mr Murch’s victuals, and treated by my host as a long-lost friend, ’twas merely impossible. I had been but a spectator of the comedy of the three buccaneers throughout, and content enough to be no more; it seemed I was to remain a spectator to the end of the piece. Some hazy notion of putting off in a shore-boat to warn the schooner, arose in my labouring mind; but, of what use would that be, even supposing I could escape from Mr Murch, since Pomfrett and Dawkins, that redoubtable navigator, were already cramming the Willing Mind main-chains under? Still, they would be the better prepared had they due warning, and I resolved to attempt this feat did the opportunity arise. But it never arose, as I shall proceed to show, and I do but mention this futile scheme, in justice to Henry Winter; who would fain appear as a man not so utterly destitute of resource in emergency as events would seem to indicate. And, although it cannot be denied that the said personage was never cast for a hero, I have never remarked that he was the less happy for that. Heroism is a fine profession: but it entails a deal of riding and riving, hard knocks and hard fare, and discomfortable tumults of passion, and little enough in the upshot to show for them, very likely. And so to my tale.
“I’ll neither ride nor sail on the private account any more,” says Murch, as we plashed forward in the dark. “This is the last cast. Strange, how we spend our lives getting and saving, and go down quick into the grave at the last. We’re all at knuckle-bones with Signor Death, Mr Winter. I’ve seen many a tall fellow swinging in chains on Gallow’s Point, who would have made an ornament to his country had he lived; the birds feeding on the head of many a fine man who was ready to become a member of Parliament or a Doctor of Divinity. But his repentance came too late, you see—his log was never kept posted. I took warning early by those poor dangling memorials, Mr Winter. You know my rule—a clean ship, alow and aloft, fit for the Great Commander’s inspection by day or night. So I count upon a little leisure in the evening of my days—a clear conscience, no regrets, a good house out of sound of the sea, a cellar of good wine, a library of the classics. For it may surprise you, Mr Winter, to hear that I’ve never read the literature of the ancients. The time to gain that learning which is given to fortunate young men like yourself, sir, must be bought with many a painful year by those who do their business in the great waters.”