I
Shows how a Simple Bait will serve to hook the willing Fish
One dark, moist winter afternoon, in the year of our Lord 1708, I chanced upon Brandon Pomfrett, as he was on his way to visit me. Brandon, who was my school-fellow, was now clerk in his uncle’s warehouse in Bristol. I was an humble schoolmaster in the same famous city; not discontented with my lot, and not contented, either. But Pomfrett chafed in his shackles; ’twas chiefly his dislike of tedium that drove him to seek my society—for want of a better—and that was presently to drive us both farther, perhaps, than we ever thought to go.
We turned down the narrow alley, with the ancient houses leaning foreheads across, that led to my lodging. A strong, hoarse voice arose out of the dusk, singing:
“All a-sailing to the stars,
Ye gentlemen Jack-tars;
We’ll meet again at Fiddler’s Green,
All up among the stars,”
bellowed the voice, and a burly man, with something of a seafaring air about him, came rolling up the causeway. We drew aside to let him pass, but he halted abruptly in front of us.
“Asking your pardon, gentlemen,” says he, “but could you tell me if I was shaping my course anyways near right for the Burning Bush, kept by a man of the curi’s name of Gamaliel? Not,” said the stranger, “that I ain’t been here before, nor that I don’t know the course—but if a man’s liquor runs from his legs to his head, what’s that poor seaman to do? I reckon I could fetch him in time, but time is—well, now, shipmates, you know what time is, no one better, by the looks of you,” ended the mariner, apparently with some obscure design of complimenting us. The stranger laying his thick, brown hand familiarly on Pomfrett’s arm as he spoke, we could not but remark a great ruby that glowed in a gold setting upon his little finger; a strange ornament for a merchant seaman.