I was cleaning my rifles at the moment, and I had a splendid new .450 bore in my hand while I stood at the door and talked with the old fellow.
"No, really," said I, "I don't think I could guess it, Nick."
"That you never would, Master Mark, nor any proper gentleman neither. I had addressed but a civil word to them, when the leader, a lame man with a single eye, cried, 'Ahoy, old Thunder, and what monkey-house let you loose?' To me, sir, who have been constable of this parish off and on for more than forty years."
I would not let old Nick see me laughing, and so I turned my face from him to ask a question:
"Where do they hail from, Nick? Some ship in Falmouth, I suppose?"
"And a precious queer sort of ship, Master Mark, and a crew we can very well dispense with. If I judge by their songs they are rascally Americans everyone."
I looked up at this, interested perhaps for the first time.
"Their songs, Nick—oh, they carol in their cups, then?"
"Indeed and they do so—some nonsense about Boston town and pistols three and other silly stuff a grown man has no patience to speak about. It's my opinion they'll burn the inn down before nightfall. I should be wanting in my duty if I did not express that opinion."
"Then," said I shortly, "the opinion is expressed, Nick, and I am the witness. And if opinions will do them any good, which seems unlikely, observing their condition, I will put it down upon paper and you may sign it. Now, seriously, my good fellow, what do you want me to do?"
"Why, Master Mark, to step down to 'The Falmouth Arms' yourself and to tell me if I should be wise to send to the town for help or to leave it where it is. You are a gentleman, and will know what to make of it better than we poor folk who see so little company. Why, sir, you can hear them singing for yourself if you will come to the stairs' head with me. Did mortal man ever hear a song which spoke so surely of the devil as that?"
He took me by the lapel of the coat and led me across the terrace on the cliff-side to the head of the steep flight of wooden stairs by which you go down to the harbour of Dolphin's Cove. It was about three o'clock of an April afternoon, the sun shining aslant across the headland at the river's mouth and a warm glow upon the bright red roofs and stone facings of the cottages below. Looming large above this was the two-gabled building they called "The Falmouth Arms," and I could see a crowd of the meaner sort before its doors and perceive very plainly that something more than a common affair had called the people from the ships and the houses. But it was the talk of the song which impelled me chiefly; and although I would not have confessed all my thoughts to Nick Venning for a thousand guineas, they were wild thoughts none the less.
Well, we stood a little while upon the platform at the stairs' head, and, sure enough, the strangers, who had come to the cove, seemed in no mind to leave it. I heard a shout of laughter from the inn; then a great crash of glass or china, as though all host Benson's mugs had come tumbling down together; upon which a pewter pot came flying out of the window like a cannon shot, and immediately afterward a brawny, sun-tanned seaman showed himself at the door, and made a pass with a monstrous clasp-knife which scattered the honest folk and sent them running along the quay as though the devil had been at their heels.
"Now look at that, Master Mark; please to look at that!" cried Nick Venner at the sight. "In the daytime, too, and no excuse of what a man might do who had taken a glass with his supper. Did anyone ever hear of such behaviour in an honest township before? Upon my word, they deserve the lock-up if ever rogues did!"
I had it upon my tongue to suggest that they were unlikely people to submit to the lock-up quietly; but I did not tell him so, for the tarry seaman had gone into the inn again by this time, and I could hear him singing with as much music as a bull that bellows in a byre. Vainly I listened for any word of a song which would awaken those wild and whirlling thoughts Nick Venning had aroused with his talk of Boston town. But they were bawling a common chantey, such as seamen lift at the capstan; and presently the song died away altogether, and you might have been unaware that the rogues were in the town at all.
"Well," said I, "there is a truce, at any rate. Let's go down and have a look at them, Nick. A cat may look at a king, you know; and these fellows hardly have a regal appearance. Did they come in a boat, by the way, or walk across the cliff? You didn't tell me that, Nick."
I began to go down the stairs as I spoke, and he followed after me with less majesty than the law might have desired. I could see he had no stomach for the job at the inn, and I laughed at his perplexity. When he told me that the three men had come into the cove in a ship's launch, apparently of French build, and that they had put all sorts of questions to host Benson concerning the yacht and our voyage, he interested me more than he knew. But I said very little about it, and when we arrived at the inn I went in immediately and hailed old Tom as though nothing whatever were the matter.
"Good afternoon, Benson, and what's fresh to-day?" I asked him. Whimsically enough, he replied that) the three seamen in the kitchen parlour were fresh. "Though that's a manner of speaking," he added, "for a dirtier lot I never clapped eyes upon."
"Oh," said I, "then they are making themselves at home, are they? Have you learned where they hail from, Tom?"
He laughed gruffly, pulling at the stubbly beard on his chin, and seeming to think about it. "Most likely part of a ship's crew out of Falmouth, sir—come along for a bit of a spree, and having of it surely. Why, they broke two windows, to say nothing of dancing with the kitchen clock before they'd drunk the first round. I niver see such folk."
"Ah," said I, "faint hearts never won fair ladies—it's Martha, the cook, that's doing it, Tom. Who knows but what you'll have a marrying before nightfall? Well, stranger things might happen—and I'll just have a peep at them through the window if you don't think they'll see me."
"No fear of that, sir," said he; "they see nothing but the bottom of a mug." And with that he led me to the private parlour where a little glass window gave upon the kitchen, and I could see two of the men as plainly as though I sat beside them.
They were an odd contrast; one a great burly fellow, full six feet in height, with a face of leather and many a scar for its ornament—a full, round man, with a bully's countenance and a bully's manner of raising his voice and then listening to hear if he were contradicted; the other, a little fellow who had the air and nice deportment of a Frenchman—but a very dirty one and by no means a beauty. This "Froggy," as host Benson called him in a whisper, drank brandy out of an old-fashioned beer glass, while the tall man's fancy was for gin and porter, of which he drank prodigious draughts, shouting his questions between-whiles and hardly waiting for any one to answer them. The third of the trio I could not see, for a corner of the counter hid him from my sight; but plainly some deference was paid to him, both by the big and the little man; and I did not fail to remark that even the bully dropped his eyes when he happened to turn them in that direction.
"In 'seventy-eight it were, by—," the fellow bawled as I came in. "I tell you the ship put out from Savannah with a crew of forty-five, and she fired off Cape Lookout ten days afterward. I was bos'un and Dave Starlight second officer. Him and me stood by when all the boys went over, and sailed her into Chesapeake Bay, by thunder. There aren't a man, livin' or dead, of you lousy lot of Britishers as could do the same, not nohows, so help me. Show me the man as could do it, and I'll knock his—head off. Does he stand in this dive?—no, he don't, nor anywheres else that I can see. Then, why for deny it, mates, when argiment ain't in question?"
He banged his pot upon the table and looked round about him fiercely enough. To my surprise and also to my annoyance, he was answered almost immediately, not by one of his own fellows, but by Bill Eightbells, promoted to be third officer of the Celsis, and as smart a seaman as ever trod ship's deck. I had not seen Billy come into the room, and I was the more astonished when he pushed his way up to the counter and, calling for a glass of beer, turned