"By no means," said he. "Let the girl know that her lover is suspected and she will be sure to get word to him somehow and he'll be off. Not a word about it to anybody. Leave me to work it out my own way, and my name isn't Richard Turner if I don't soon lay my hand on the shoulder of Dorman Hackett."
XIV.
A JOLLY, JOLLY SHIPMATE.
"The Whaler's Haven" was in those days a place of no small pretensions and of no mean fame among the sailormen of New London, which was then quite an important shipping town, especially for the whaling interest.
Railroad tracks now cover the ground it then occupied, and the cutting away of the bluff in that vicinity, to give place for some heavy industries that require to be near the water and the iron road, has completely changed the appearance of all the surroundings, even, of that once favorite resort of the marine element of the population of the town, so that not one trace of it remains, save in memory. But it is not of the present we have to treat, or the many changes—some of them very sad ones—that have been wrought in the maritime interests of our coast. Our story dates back to a time when a big American flag floated above a long and wide two-story frame building where those railroad tracks now lie; a building that was further adorned, as to its peak, by a carved and painted wooden statue of the goddess of liberty, that seemed to have been the figurehead of some vessel; and as to its front, by a very widely-spread and gayly-gilded American eagle, holding in its beak, over the door, a huge and brilliantly red scroll, upon the flaming convolutions of which, in brightest blue, one might read the legend "The Whaler's Haven."
By day, there was little, except its size, to distinguish the Haven, to the eye of the casual observer, from several other establishments of kindred character in the vicinity; but at night, in the figurative language of Jonathan Schoolcraft, its proprietor, "the eagle screamed." Then, until hours that were at once late and early—late for revel and early for labor—the fiddle squeaked out jigs and reels; the thumps and shuffles of dancing feet made the walls vibrate and the windows jingle; glasses clinked merrily; noisy laughter, cheers, and sometimes—but not often—sounds of quarrel, broke upon the night. It was Schoolcraft's boast "that a sailor never was robbed in this house;" and, truth to tell, he made the claim good, farther than most men do who keep such establishments and make like affirmations. Over the little bar, near the front door was a sign in letters so prominent that they might have been regarded as a sort of painted shout, commanding patrons of the house: "Have your fun in a decent way;" and Jonathan was never weary of repeating that counsel to his guests. He would not let a sailor in his house get too drunk—that is, too drunk to be able to find his money, when the liquor was to be paid for—and he was sternly opposed to fights in the Haven; for, as he said, "they break the peace, and break heads, and sometimes break glasses, which is worst of all."
One sultry evening in July, when it was too hot to dance and almost too warm to drink rum, a cloud of dullness seemed to settle down upon the Whaler's Haven. Jonathan himself went out for a walk, to get cool; the barkeeper languidly leaned over the bar and yawned; only four or five sailors—boarders in the Haven when on shore—lounged between the door and the bar, "swapping yarns" concerning their seagoing experiences, and all feeling so depressed and spiritless, through the heat, that they almost stuck to the truth in their narrations; and two or three of them were talking of going to bed, when a stranger, who was evidently not a sailor, entered, called for a drink, and invited all present to join him. A stranger who was not a sailor was always the object of a little suspicion in the Haven; still none present cared about offending one who introduced himself so courteously, and the waiting sailors took their rum just as naturally as if liking, and not simply complaisance, gave it its relish. Then one of them returned the stranger's treat and soon another; and another, so that in a little while the heat was forgotten, tongues began to wag freely, the yarns became much more spirited, and the impression gained ground that the stranger was a right good fellow.
And so it was that, without his ever being able to tell exactly how it came about, Billy Prangle, a stout old sailor, found himself in almost confidential conversation with the pleasant stranger—a smooth-shaven, gray-eyed, ruddy man of forty or forty-five years—upon the subject of his friend and ex-shipmate, Dorn Hackett.
"A nobler, braver lad never signed articles," said he, "nor a better sailorman. We messed together for three years; and take him by and large, alow and aloft, I make bold to say that of the sixteen men in the fo'cas'le,—and all good men, too, mind you—he was the best."
"I'm delighted to hear you speak so highly of him," replied the stranger, with apparent heartiness, "How long is it since you sailed with him?"
"Only a little better than four months ago. We came off the cruise together, fishing in the North Pacific."