“Well, your honor, we goes on decorous, as our old quartermaster used to give the word; and we tried him first with the usual tipple, and several other hands dropped in. But my son and me never took a blessed drop, except from a gin-bottle full of cold water, till we see all the others with their scuppers well awash. Then Bob he findeth fault—Lor' how beautiful he done it!—with the scantling of the stuff; and he shouteth out, 'Mother, I'm blest if I won't stand that old guinea bottle of best Jamaica, the one as you put by, with the cobwebs on it, for Lord Admiral. No Lord Admiral won't come now. Just you send away, and hoist it up.'
“Rickon Goold pricked up his ugly ears at this; and Mother Tapsy did it bootiful. And to cut a long yarn short, we spliced him, captain, with never a thought of what would come of it; only to have our revenge, your honor. He showed himself that greedy of our patent rum, that he never let the bottle out of his own elbow, and the more he stowed away, the more his derrick chains was creaking; but if anybody reasoned, there he stood upon his rights, and defied every way of seeing different, until we was compelled to take and spread him down, in the little room with sea-weeds over it.
“With all this, Bob and me was as sober as two judges, though your honor would hardly believe it, perhaps; but we left him in the dark, to come round upon the weeds, as a galley-raker ought to do. And now we began to have a little drop ourselves, after towing the prize into port, and recovering the honor of the British navy; and we stood all round to every quarter of the compass, with the bottom of the locker still not come to shallow soundings. But sudden our harmony was spoiled by a scream, like a whistle from the very bottom of the sea.
“We all of us jumped up, as if a gun had broke its lashings; and the last day of judgment was the thoughts of many bodies; but Bob he down at once with his button-stump gun-metal, and takes the command of the whole of us. 'Bear a hand, all on you,' he saith, quite steadfast; 'Rickon Goold is preaching to his own text to-night.' And so a' was, sure enough; so a' was, your honor.
“We thought he must have died, although he managed to claw off of it, with confessing of his wickedness, and striking to his Maker. All of us was frightened so, there was no laugh among us, till we come to talk over it afterward. There the thundering rascal lay in the middle of that there mangerie of sea-stuff, as Mother Precious is so proud of, that the village calleth it the 'Widow's Weeds.' Blest if he didn't think that he were a-lying at the bottom of the sea, among the stars and cuttles, waiting for the day of judgment!
“'Oh, Captain McNabbins, and Mate Govery,' he cries, 'the hand of the Lord hath sent me down to keep you company down here. I never would 'a done it, captain, hard as you was on me, if only I had knowed how dark and cold and shivery it would be down here. I cut the plank out; I'll not lie; no lies is any good down here, with the fingers of the deep things pointing to me, and the black devil's wings coming over me—but a score of years agone it were, and never no one dreamed of it—oh, pull away, pull! for God's sake, pull!—the wet woman and the three innocent babbies crawling over me like congers!'
“This was the shadows of our legs, your honor, from good Mother Tapsy's candle; for she was in a dreadful way by this time about her reputation and her weeds, and come down with her tongue upon the lot of us. 'Enter all them names upon the log,' says I to Bob, for he writeth like a scholar. But Bob says, 'Hold hard, dad; now or never.' And with that, down he goeth on the deck himself, and wriggleth up to Rickon through the weeds, with a hiss like a great sea-snake, and grippeth him. 'Name of ship, you sinner!' cried Bob, in his deep voice, like Old Nick a-hailing from a sepulchre. 'Golconda, of Calcutta,' says the fellow, with a groan as seemed to come out of the whites of his eyes; and down goes his head again, enough to split a cat-head. And that was the last of him we heard that night.
“Well, now, captain, you scarcely would believe, but although my nob is so much older of the pair, and white where his is as black as any coal, Bob's it was as first throwed the painter up, for a-hitching of this drifty to the starn of your consarns. And it never come across him till the locker was run out, and the two of us pulling longer faces than our legs is. Then Bob, by the mercy of the Lord, like Peter, found them guineas in the corner of his swab—some puts it round their necks, and some into their pockets; I never heard of such a thing till chaps run soft and watery—and so we come to this here place to change the air and the breeding, and spin this yarn to your honor's honor, as hath a liberal twist in it; and then to take orders, and draw rations, and any 'rears of pay fallen due, after all dibs gone in your service; and for Bob to tip a stave in the Minister.”
“You have done wisely and well in coming here,” said Mr, Mordacks, cheerfully; “but we must have further particulars, my friend. You seem to have hit upon the clew I wanted, but it must be followed very cautiously. You know where to lay your hand upon this villain? You have had the sense not to scare him off?”
“Sarten, your honor. I could clap the irons on him any hour you gives that signal.”