My uncle would not heed him.
“I’m a reasonable man, Top,” the stranger protested. “You know I’m not a hard man.”
They moved, now, into the dining-room, whence no word of what they said came to my ears. I listened, lying wide-eared in the dark, but heard only a rumble of voices. “And you, too––you hound!” the man had said; and ’twas spoken in the hate that forebodes murder. My uncle? what had that childlike, tenderhearted old rascal accomplished against this man to make the penalty of ungodly wrath a thing meet to the offence? “And you, too––you hound!” I lay in grave trouble and bewilderment, fearing that this strange guest might work his hate upon my uncle, in some explosion of resentment, before my arm could aid against the deed. There was no sound of laughter from 129 below––no hint of conviviality in the intercourse. Voices and the clink of bottle and glass: nothing mellow in the voices, nothing genial in the clink of glass––nothing friendly or hospitable. ’Twas an uneasy occupation that engaged me; no good, as I knew, came from a surly bout with a bottle of rum. ’Twas still blowing high; the windows rattled, the sea broke in thunder and venomous hissing upon the rocks, the wind screamed its complaint of obstruction; ’twas a tumultuous night, wherein, it seems to me, the passions of men are not overawed by any display of inimical power, but break restraint in evil company with the weather. The voices below, as I hearkened, rose and fell, like the gusts of a gale, falling to quiet confidences, lost in the roar of the night, swiftly rising to threat and angry counter-threat.
It ended in a cry and a crash of glass....
I was by this brought out of bed and pattering down the stair to my uncle’s help. It seemed they did not hear me, or, having heard, were enraged past caring who saw them in this evil case. At the door I came to a stand. There was no encounter, no movement at all, within the room; ’twas very quiet and very still. There had fallen upon the world that pregnant silence, wherein men wait appalled, which follows upon the irrevocable act of a quarrel. A bottle of rum was overturned on the table, and a glass lay in splinters on the hearth at my uncle’s back, as though cast with poor aim. The place reeked with the stench of rum, which 130 rose from a river of liquor, overflowing the table, dripping to the floor: a foul and sinister detail, I recall, of the tableau. My uncle and the gray little man from St. John’s, leaning upon their hands, the table between, faced each other all too close for peaceful issue of the broil. Beyond was my uncle’s hand-lamp, where I had set it, burning serenely in this tempest of passion. The faces were silhouetted in profile against its quiet yellow light. Monstrous shadows of the antagonists were cast upon the table and ceiling. For the first time in my life I clapped eyes on the man from St. John’s; but his face was in shadow––I saw dimly. ’Twas clean-shaven and gray: I could tell no more. But yet, I knew, the man was a man of some distinction––a gentleman. ’Twas a definite impression I had. There was that about him––clothes and carriage and shaven face and lean white hands––that fixed it in my memory.
I was not observed.
“Out there on the Devil’s Teeth,” my uncle impassively began, “when I laid hold––”
“But,” the stranger protested, “I have nothing to do with that!”
“Out there on the Devil’s Teeth, that night,” my uncle repeated, “when the seas was breakin’ over, an’ the ice begin t’ come, an’ I laid hold o’ that there Book––”