“My dear, I can not tell. How should I know? He may have lapsed, of course, as a good many of them do, from the heat of the climate, and bad surroundings. But that happens mostly from their marrying native women. And this gentleman never has done that, I do believe.”
“They tell me that he is a very handsome man, and of most commanding aspect—the very thing Janetta likes so much. But what became of those unhappy sadly tipsy sailors?”
“Well, they managed very cleverly, and made success of tipsiness. As soon as it was dark that night, and before the child had crawled away, they pushed out of the cave, and let the flood-tide take them round the Head. They meant to have landed at Bridlington Quay, with a tale of escape from a Frenchman; but they found no necessity for going so far. A short-handed collier was lying in the roads; and the skipper, perceiving that they were in liquor, thought it a fine chance, and took some trouble to secure them. They told him that they had been trying to run goods, and were chased by a revenue boat, and so on. He was only too glad to be enabled to make sail, and by dawn they were under way for the Thames; and that was the end of the Golconda.”
“What an awful crime! But you never mean to tell me that the Lord let those men live and prosper?”
“That subject is beyond our view, my dear. There were five of them, and Rickon Goold believed himself the last of them. But being very penitent, he might have exaggerated. He said that one was swallowed by a shark, at least his head was, and one was hanged for stealing sheep, and one for a bad sixpence; but the fate of the other (too terrible to tell you) brought this man down here, to be looking at the place, and to divide his time between fasting, and drinking, and poaching, and discoursing to the thoughtless. The women flocked to hear him preach, when the passion was upon him; and he used to hint at awful sins of his own, which made him earnest. I hope that he was so, and I do believe it. But the wooden-legged sailors, old Joe and his son, who seem to have been employed by Mordacks, took him at his own word for a 'miserable sinner'—which, as they told their master, no respectable man would call himself—and in the most business-like manner they set to to remove him to a better world; and now they have succeeded.”
“Poor man! After all, one must be rather sorry for him. If old Joe came stumping after me for half an hour, I should have no interest in this life left.”
“My dear, they stumped after him the whole day long, and at night they danced a hornpipe outside his hut. He became convinced that the Prince of Evil was come, in that naval style, to fetch him; and he drank everything he could lay hands on, to fortify him for the contest. The end, as you know, was extremely sad for him, but highly satisfactory to them, I fear. They have signified their resolution to attend his funeral; and Mordacks has said, with unbecoming levity, that if they never were drunk before—which seems to me an almost romantic supposition—that night they shall be drunk, and no mistake.”
“All these things, my dear,” replied Mrs. Upround, who was gifted with a fine vein of moral reflection, “are not as we might wish if we ordered them ourselves. But still there is this to be said in their favor, that they have a large tendency toward righteousness.”