I stood awhile and thought. Once there, I believed I could force on the visit to the lawyer, even if my uncle were now insincere in proposing it; and, perhaps, in the bottom of my heart, I wished a nearer view of the sea and ships. One thing with another, I made up my mind.
‘Very well,’ says I, ‘let us go to the Ferry.’
Uncle Ebenezer never said a word the whole way; and I was thrown for talk on the cabin-boy. He told me his name was Ransome, and that he had followed the sea since he was nine, but could not say how old he was, as he had lost his reckoning. He showed me tattoo marks; and boasted of many wild and bad things that he had done: stealthy thefts, false accusations, ay, and even murder; but all with such a dearth of likelihood in the details, and such a weak and crazy swagger in the delivery, as disposed me rather to pity than to believe him.
I asked him of the brig (which he declared was the finest ship that sailed) and of Captain Hoseason, in whose praises he was equally loud. It was a man that minded for nothing either in heaven or earth; rough, fierce, unscrupulous, and brutal; and all this my poor cabin-boy had taught himself to admire as something seamanlike and manly. He would only admit one flaw in his idol. ‘He ain’t no seaman,’ he admitted. ‘That’s Mr. Shuan that navigates the brig; he’s the finest seaman in the trade, only for drink; and I tell you I believe it! Why, look’ere;’ and turning down his stocking he showed me a great, raw, red wound that made my blood run cold. ‘He done that – Mr. Shuan done it,’ he said, with an air of pride.
‘What!’ I cried, ‘You are no slave, to be so handled!’
‘No,’ said the poor moon-calf, changing his tune at once, ‘and so he’ll find. See’ere;’ and he showed me a great case-knife, which he told me was stolen.
I have never felt such pity for anyone in this wide world as I felt for that half-witted creature, and it began to come over me that the brig Covenant (for all her pious name) was little better than a hell upon the seas.
‘In Heaven’s name,’ cried I, ‘can you find no reputable life on shore?’
‘O, no,’ says he, winking and looking very sly, ‘they would put me to a trade!’
I asked him what trade could be so dreadful as the one he followed, where he ran the continual peril of his life, not alone from wind and sea, but by the horrid cruelty of those who were his masters. He said it was very true; and then began to praise the life, and tell what a pleasure it was to get on shore with money in his pocket, and spend it like a man, and buy apples, and swagger, and surprise what he called stick-in-the-mud boys.
Just then we came to the top of the hill, and looked down on the Ferry and the Hope. I could see the building which they called the Hawes Inn.
The boat had just gone north with passengers. A skiff, however, lay beside the pier, with some seamen sleeping on the thwarts; this, as Ransome told me, was the brig’s boat waiting for the captain; and about half a mile off, and all alone in the anchorage, he showed me the Covenant herself. There was a sea-going bustle on board; yards were swinging into place; and as the wind blew from that quarter, I could hear the song of the sailors as they pulled upon the ropes. After all I had listened to upon the way, I looked at that ship with an extreme abhorrence; and from the bottom of my heart I pitied all poor souls that were condemned to sail in her.
We had all three pulled up on the brow of the hill; and now I marched across the road and addressed my uncle. ‘I think it right to tell you, sir.’ says I, ‘there’s nothing that will bring me on board that Covenant.’
‘Well, well,’ he said, ‘we’ll have to please ye, I suppose. But what are we standing here for? It’s perishing cold; and if I’m no mistaken, they’re busking the Covenant for sea.’
Chapter VI
What Befell at the Queensferry
As soon as we came to the inn, Ransome led us up the stair to a small room, with a bed in it, and heated like an oven by a great fire of coal. At a table hard by the chimney, a tall, dark, sober-looking man sat writing. In spite of the heat of the room, he wore a thick sea-jacket, buttoned to the neck, and a tall hairy cap drawn down over his ears; yet I never saw any man, not even a judge upon the bench, look cooler, or more studious and self-possessed, than this ship-captain.
He got to his feet at once, and coming forward, offered his large hand to Ebenezer. ‘I am proud to see you, Mr. Balfour,’ said he, in a fine deep voice, ‘and glad that ye are here in time. The wind’s fair, and the tide upon the turn; we’ll see the old coal-bucket burning on the Isle of May[33] before tonight.’
Though I had promised myself not to let my kinsman out of sight, I was both so impatient for a nearer look of the sea, and so sickened by the closeness of the room, that when he told me to ‘run down-stairs and play myself awhile,’ I was fool enough to take him at his word. Away I went, therefore, leaving the two men sitting down to a bottle.
Even so far up the firth, the smell of the sea-water was exceedingly salt and stirring; the Covenant, besides, was beginning to shake out her sails, which hung upon the yards in clusters; and the spirit of all that I beheld put me in thoughts of far voyages and foreign places.
Ransome soon came out of the inn and ran to me, crying for a bowl of punch. I told him I would give him no such thing, for neither he nor I was of an age for such indulgences. ‘But a glass of ale you may have, and welcome,’ said I. He mopped and mowed at me, and called me names; but he was glad to get the ale, for all that; and presently we were set down at a table in the front room of the inn, and both eating and drinking with a good appetite.
Here it occurred to me that, as the landlord was a man of that county, I might do well to make a friend of him. I offered him a share, as was much the custom in those days; but he was far too great a man to sit with such poor customers as Ransome and myself, and he was leaving the room, when I called him back to ask if he knew Mr. Rankeillor.
‘Hoot, ay,’ says he, ‘and a very honest man. And, O, by-the-by,’ says he, ‘was it you that came in with Ebenezer?’ And when I had told him yes, ‘Ye’ll be no friend of his?’ he asked, meaning, in the Scottish way, that I would be no relative.
I told him no, none.
‘I thought not,’ said he, ‘and yet ye have a kind of gliff[34] of Mr. Alexander.’ I said it seemed that Ebenezer was ill-seen in the country.
‘Nae doubt,’ said the landlord. ‘He’s a wicked auld man, and there’s many would like to see him girning in the tow[35]. Jennet Clouston and mony mair that he has harried out of house and hame. And yet he was ance[36] a fine young fellow, too. But that was before the sough[37] gaed abroad about Mr. Alexander, that was like the death of him.’
‘And what was it?’ I asked.
‘Ou, just that he had killed him,’ said the landlord.
‘Did ye never hear that?’
‘And what would he kill him for?’ said I.
‘And what for, but just to get the place,’ said he.
‘The place?’ said I. ‘The Shaws?’
‘Nae other place that I ken,’ said he.
‘Ay, man?’ said I. ‘Is that so? Was my – was Alexander the eldest son?’
‘Deed[38] was he,’ said the landlord. ‘What else would he have killed him for?’ And with that he went away, as he had been impatient to do from the beginning.
Of course, I had guessed it a long while ago; but it is one thing to guess, another to know; and I sat stunned with my good fortune, and could scarce grow to believe that the same poor lad who had trudged in the dust from Ettrick Forest not two days ago, was now one of the