Big Chief nodded and looked very sad. “You go home?” he asked, softly.
Jarwin was deeply touched, he seized the big man’s hand, and, not being strong, failed to restrain a tear or two. Big Chief, being very strong—in feelings as well as in frame—burst into tears. Cuffy, being utterly incapable of making head or tail of it, gave vent to a prolonged, dismal howl, which changed to a bark and whine of satisfaction when his master laughed, patted him, and advised him not to be so free in the use of his “spanker boom!”
Four weeks later, and Jarwin, with Cuffy by his side, stood, “himself again,” on the quarterdeck of the Nancy of Hull, while the “Yo, heave ho!” of the sailors rang an accompaniment to the clatter of the windlass as they weighed anchor, Big Chief held his hand and wept, and rubbed noses with him—to such an extent that the cabin boy said it was a perfect miracle that they had a scrap of nose left on their faces—and would not be consoled by the assurance that he, Jarwin, would certainly make another voyage to the South Seas, if he should be spared to do so, and occasion offered, for the express purpose of paying him a visit. At last he tore himself away, got into his canoe, and remained gazing in speechless sorrow after the homeward-bound vessel as she shook out her topsails to the breeze.
Despite his efforts, poor Jarwin was so visibly affected at parting from his kind old master, that the steward of the ship, a sympathetic man, was induced to offer him a glass of grog and a pipe. He accepted both, mechanically, still gazing with earnest looks at the fast-receding canoe.
Presently he raised the glass to his lips, and his nose became aware of the long-forgotten odour! The current of his thoughts was violently changed. He looked intently at the glass and then at the pipe.
“Drink,” said the sympathetic steward, “and take a whiff. It’ll do you good.”
“Drink! whiff!” exclaimed Jarwin, while a dark frown gathered on his brow. “There, old Father Neptune,” he cried, tossing the glass and pipe overboard, “you drink and whiff, if you choose; John Jarwin has done wi’ drinkin’ an’ whiffin’ for ever! Thanks to you, all the same, an’ no offence meant,” he added in a gentler tone, turning to the astonished steward, and patting him on the shoulder, “but if you had suffered all that I have suffered through bein’ a slave to the glass and the pipe—when I thought I was no slave, mark you, an’ would have larfed any one to scorn who’d said I wos—if you’d see’d me groanin’, an yearnin’, an’ dreamin’ of baccy an’ grog, as I have done w’en I couldn’t get neither of ’em for love or money—you wouldn’t wonder that I ain’t goin’ to be such a born fool as to go an’ sell myself over again!”
Turning quickly towards the shore, as if regretting that he should, for a moment, have appeared to forget his old friend, he pulled out his handkerchief and waved it over the side. Big Chief replied energetically with a scrap of native cloth—not having got the length of handkerchiefs at that time.
“Look at ’im, Cuff” exclaimed Jarwin, placing his dog on the bulwarks of the ship, “look at him, Cuff, and wag your ‘spanker boom’ to him, too—ay, that’s right—for he’s as kind-hearted a nigger as ever owned a Breetish tar for a slave.”