“Well, it's no matter,” said I, preparing to quit him, but in great fear of what the upshot might be; “I'm for off, anyway.”
By this time it was obvious that he was not so drunk as I thought him at first, and that in temper and tact he was my match even with the glass in him. “Do ye ken what I would be doing if I was you?” said he seemingly determined not to let me depart like that, for he took a step or two after me.
I made no reply, but quickened my pace and after me he came, lurching and catching at my arm; and I mind to this day the roll of him gave me the impression of a crab.
“If it's money ye want-” I said at the end of my patience.
“Curse your money!” he cried, pretending to spit the insult from his mouth. “Curse your money; but if I was you, and a weel-kent skipper like Dan Risk—like Dan Risk of the Seven Sisters—made up to me out of a redeeculous good nature and nothing else, I would gladly go and splice the rope with him in the nearest ken.”
“Go and drink with yourself, man,” I cried; “there's the money for a chappin of ate, and I'll forego my share of it.”
I could have done nothing better calculated to infuriate him. As I held out the coin on the palm of my hand he struck it up with an oath and it rolled into the syver. His face flamed till the neck of him seemed a round of seasoned beef.
“By the Rock o' Bass!” he roared, “I would clap ye in jyle for less than your lousy groat.”
Ah, then, it was in vain I had put the breadth of Scotland between me and that corpse among the rushes: my heart struggled a moment, and sank as if it had been drowned in bilge. I turned on the man what must have been a gallows face, and he laughed, and, gaining his drunken good nature again he hooked me by the arm, and before my senses were my own again he was leading me down the street and to the harbour. I had never a word to say.
The port, as I tell, was swathed in the haar of the east, out of which tall masts rose dim like phantom spears; the clumsy tarred bulwarks loomed like walls along the quay, and the neighbourhood was noisy with voices that seemed unnatural coming out of the haze. Mariners were hanging about the sheds, and a low tavern belched others out to keep them company. Risk made for the tavern, and at that I baulked.