Cap’n Jack put his arm around the bar-maid. “Fetch Dannie,” says he, “the brand that comes from over-seas.”
Off she went.
“Lord love us!” groans my uncle; “that’s two.”
“’Twill do un no harm, Nick,” says Cap’n Jack. “You just dose un well when you gets un back t’ the Tickle.”
“I will,” says my uncle.
He did....
And we made a jovial night of it. Cap’n Jack would not let me off his knee. Not he! He held me close and kindly; and while he yarned of the passage to my uncle, and interjected strange wishes for a wife, he whispered many things in my ear to delight me, and promised me, upon his word, a sailing from St. John’s to Spanish ports, when I was grown old enough, if only I would come in that basket of a Lost Hope, which I maintained I never would do. ’Twas what my uncle was used to calling a lovely time; and, as for me, I wish I were a child again, and Cap’n Jack were come in from the rain, and my uncle tipping the bottle of Long Tom (though ’twere a scandal). Ay, indeed I do! That I were a child again, used to tap-room bottles, and that big Cap’n Jack had come in from the gale to tell me I was a brave lad in whom he found a comfort neither of the solid land nor of water-side companionship. But I did not think of Cap’n Jack that night, when my uncle had stowed me away in my bed at the hotel; but, rather, in the long, wakeful hours, through which I lay alone, I thought of Tom Bull’s question, “Where’d ye get them jools?”
I had never before been troubled––not once; 26 always I had worn the glittering stones without question.