It was, as has been said with reference to contemporary events at Carbery, sultry August weather, and if it was hot even on the spurs of breezy Dartmoor, assuredly it was hotter in the east of London. The strong sun brought out with great effect the combined perfumes of pitch and paint, of gas refuse and train-oil, of tide-mud and fried flat-fish, of old tarpaulins, rotten timber, and animal and vegetable refuse, never so pungent as beside the Thames. Society, gasping for air of purer quality than that town-made article which during the season and the parliamentary session it had respired perforce, had left London. But the captains who patronised Plugger’s bore the loss of Society with philosophical equanimity, and were content to incur, by stopping where they were, a reputation for being wholly unfashionable.
A controversy might have been waged with reference to Old Plugger’s as to which was the back and which the front of that hospitable mansion. The main-door certainly opened on the street, or rather row, named in honour of Dampier, and by the position of a main-door that of a house-front is commonly to be determined. But then Plugger’s turned all its smiles, all its attractions towards the river. The best rooms were on that side, with their bow-windows and lumbering balconies; and there was even a narrow strip of garden, where snails ran riot among the neglected cabbages and tall sunflowers, and where the half of an old boat, set on end and festooned with sweet-pea and the inevitable scarlet-runner, did duty for an arbour, perilously near to the wash and ripple of the flood-tide.
In the broad wooden balcony that projected from the low first-floor of Plugger’s and in part overhung this delectable garden, were some six or seven men in their shirt sleeves mostly, for coolness’ sake, but otherwise not ill clad. Through the open bow-windows of the long room of which the balcony was an appendage, glimpses might be caught of some ten or twelve other customers, very similar in garb and bearing to those outside. It was early as yet, and breakfast—as betokened by the empty cups, empty bottles, and confusion of knives and forks and dirty plates—was already over. Some of the company were smoking a solemn morning pipe of the yard-long ‘churchwarden’ variety, affected by sea-going persons when on shore; two seated at a round-table were engaged in a game at cards; and one copper-visaged and gray-haired captain, with a glass of steaming rum-and-water at his elbow, sat on the flat top of the wooden balustrade itself, and alternately swept the waters with the aid of a gleaming brass-bound telescope, or glanced critically at the cards and the players. In all this there was nothing to distinguish Plugger’s from many another long-shore boarding-house, wherein mates and skippers take their spell of rest, as it were, between the hardships of the last voyage and those of the next; and those who have seen much of men of this class are aware how much of sterling worth is apt to underlie the harmless peculiarities traditional to the calling. But a physiognomist who should have, himself unseen, accompanied some Asmodeus bent on taking a bird’s-eye view of the company, could scarcely have failed to draw his own deductions from the countenances thus beheld. There were faces there in plenty which would have seemed in keeping with their surroundings had they been seen above the bulwarks of a long, black-hulled schooner, rakish as to her masts, and clean and sharp as to her run and cut-water, beating to windward off the Isle of Pines, or within sight of the mountain mass of Cuba. There were others, newly shaven, that would have harmonised well with a shaggy beard and tattered cabbage-palm hat, surmounting the red shirt and pistol-studded belt of the Australian bushranger. And again, others which might be conceived to have been tanned to their mahogany hue by the reflection of the sun from the tawny surface of some African river, where, behind the mangrove swamp, might be seen the cane-thatched top of the barracoon, where the cargo of ‘live ebony’ lay shackled. A very dangerous set of scamps, unless their looks belied them, were the bulk of Plugger’s patrons, and the more dangerous perhaps because they were not reckless—because they knew how to abstain from the overdose of liquor that sets the brain afloat and loosens the tongue.
‘Let me tell yew, mister, yew’d be riddled, yew would, like any catamount treed, ef yew played thet sorter game in Georgia, whar I war raised, yew would,’ suddenly exclaimed one of the card-players, whose nasal drawl would of itself have revealed his nationality. ‘Thet’s three times I’ve seen yew try to pass the king.’
‘Don’t cry afore you ’re hurt,’ retorted his adversary, whose air and tone were those of a sailor, and whose muscular wrists, emerging from shirt-cuffs linked by heavy sleeve-buttons of silver, were ornamented by mermaids and anchors and true-lovers’ knots in blue tattooing of the true salt-water pattern. ‘Guess this child wasn’t born last week, shipmate! Haven’t I sported the pasteboard at New York with Dead Rabbits; at New Orleans with Plug-uglies; and in California with fellows that stuck the points of their bowies in the table afore they set to a hand at poker! You’re a nice hand to tax a man with cheating, you, with two court cards up your sleeve now!’
The American, who was spare and lightly built, compared with the opposite player, scowled as he thrust his bony right hand into an inner pocket of the loose coat which he alone of all the occupants of the balcony wore. It may have been for the concealment of the cards alluded to; it may have been to get a grasp of some hidden weapon. The latter was the supposition that the most commended itself to the other gamester.
‘Shew your hand, Sam Barks!’ he said roughly, grasping a Dutch bottle, probably containing Schiedam, which stood in company with two glasses on the table, ‘or I’——
‘Belay there, you brace of babies!’ interrupted the copper-visaged captain, thrusting his flashing telescope and his metallic face betwixt the disputants. ‘Dog don’t eat dog, my mates! I always was agin play between friends.—Sam, my lad, you won’t make much out of Captain Hold.—Dick, my Trojan, you’ll not find the American quite as green as spinach. Draw your stakes, my heroes, and let’s shake hands and have a drink all round, for the renewal of friendship!’ And this singular specimen of a peacemaker flourished his glass, swallowed its contents, and rattled the teaspoon against its sides until this substitute for a bell attracted the notice of a watchful attendant, wearing a striped cotton jacket, such as cabin-boys in hot latitudes affect.
‘Three grogs, steward, and a goodish squeeze of lemon in mine, d’ye hear?’ called out he of the copper countenance; and the dark-skinned mulatto lad who was called ‘steward,’ as factotums in The Traveller’s Rest were called Deputy, nodded his woolly head, and was not long in bringing the desired refreshment. The kettle must have been kept always boiling, even on hot August mornings, at Plugger’s, so ready was the supply of steaming spirits and water.
‘Ah! my boys,’ said the venerable founder of the feast, as he took a second sip at the potent liquor, ‘here’s a blue blazing day for ye—puts me in mind, and you too mayhap, of a morning in the doldrums, where sun is sun, and the very sea seems to simmer like a can of hot broth. I’d like to smell blue water again, I would. I’d an offer, Monday, to command a decentish brig, West Ingies and Demerary way; regular molasses wagon; but old as I am, I’d rather have another bout in the South Seas. Black-birding for the Fiji and Queensland labour market is about the best sport a man can have, since they spoiled the fun we used to have off the West Coast.’