“Indeed, my lord, I believe that is the first time that ever my flute was taken for a bird.”
“Yes,” he murmured, more to himself than to me, “yes, I heard that whistle forty days out from Sierra Leone, and the next day we was flinging half-cooked niggers into the sea and——”
He stopped suddenly and looked me full in the face, but I thought his mind was wandering and paid small attention to his wild words.
“And I heard it again when we were careening in the Pearl Islands off Panama just before I was took with Yellow Jack, but I’ve never heard it since till to-night. Ecod, I don’t like being my Lord Cannebrake, with ghosts thick as seagulls round about. I was happier before; I was happier in the pleasant Isle of Thanet with the sea-wind singing day and night round my cottage. I used to do nothing mostly, except sight the craft beating round the Foreland, and think of ’em so white and handsome in the Downs, a-stroking all the while my little daughter’s light-brown hair. And now look at me, stuck in a low, dirty swamp ten miles from the sound of breakers, wi’ nothing to think of but ghosts. That’s bad for a man who, mark you, was a-seafaring once. But there came an ague and took one; and another broke his neck out hunting; and the third, he fell into the pool fishing for carp; and so I became Lord Cannebrake.”
I was at a loss to know why this elderly nobleman honoured me with his confidence, but ascribed it to the influence of the old sea-songs and my own insignificance, for I doubt he never thought me a person of much importance, and he went on with his monologue without seeming to expect any comment from me.
“Then there’s Cynthia. Cannebrake’s no place for a high-spirited young woman. London’s the place for her, where she can meet women of quality and learn the ways of fashion. She’s a sweet maid. I never knew a sweeter. But what’s to become of her, buried alive, in a manner of speaking, and like to grow into a mumbling, fumbling old maid with nothing to watch all her life but the sun’s rise and set, and winter coming in cold, and the spring-time rain, and a few flowers of summer?”
Here I made bold to offer a suggestion that he should go back to the Isle of Thanet.
“Ah, why don’t I, Mr. Flute-player? I’ll tell you why,” and he leaned over, whispering in my ear:
“Because I dare not. Because I lived a vile, bad life when I was young, and I’m afraid. That’s a terrible thing for you to ponder, Mr. Tripconey—an old man living alone in a dip of these wild moors—afraid. Listening to the clock tick-ticking, and all the time fast afraid. You’ve seen me, white and shaking, when you tapped on the window: me—Captain Starling—afraid.”
Springle’s entrance with rum enough for half a dozen put an end to further reminiscence.