The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous. George Augustus Sala
of a few seconds, the noise as of a little peevish Terrier barking.
"True as Touchwood," cried Black Jowler. "In, Billy Boys, and hey for fat and flagons."
With this he takes me by the shoulders, telling me to fear naught, and spend my money like a gentleman, and bundles me before him till we came to something hard as board. This I presently found was a door; and in an instant I was in the midst of a kind of Tavern parlour, all lighted up with great candles stuck into lumps of clay, and face to face with the Fattest Woman I ever saw in my life.
"Mother Moll Drum," quoth my conductor, "save you, and give me a quart of three threads, or I faint. Body o' me, was ever green plover so pulled as I was?"
The Fat Woman he called Mother Moll Drum was to all seeming in no very blessed temper; for she bade Jowler go hang for a lean polecat, and be cursed meanwhile, and that she would draw him naught.
"Come, come, Mother," Jowler said, making as though to appease her, "what be these tantrums? Come, draw; for I'm as thirsty as an hour-glass, poor wretch, that has felt sand run through his gullet any time these twenty years."
"Draw for yourself, rogue," says Mother Drum; "there's naught I'll serve you with, unless, indeed, I were bar-woman at St. Giles's Pound, and had to froth you your last quart, as you went up the Heavy Hill to Tyburn."
"We shall all go there in time—good time," breaks in a deep solemn voice, drawn somehow through the nose, and coming from the Man-Dog they called Grumps; "meanwhile, O greasy woman, let the beverage our brother asked for be drawn, and I, even Grumps, will partake thereof, and ask a blessing."
"Woman yourself!" cries Moll Drum, in a rage. "Woman yourself, and T—— in your teeth, and woman to the mother that bore you, and sat in the stocks for Lightness! Who are you, quotha, old reverend smock with the splay foot? Come up, now, prithee, Bridewell Bird! You will drink, will you? I saw no dust or cobwebs come out of your mouth. Go hang, you moon-calf, false faucet, you roaring horse-courser, you ranger of Turnbull, you dull malt-house with a mouth of a peck and the sign of the swallow above."
By this time Mother Drum was well-nigh out of breath, and panted, and looked so hot, that they might have put her up by Temple Bar on Queen Bess's birthnight for a Bonfire, and so saved Tar Barrels. And as she spoke she brandished a large Frying Pan, from which great drops of hot grease—smelling very savoury by the way—dropped on to the sanded floor. The other Blacks seemed in nowise disturbed by this Dispute, but were rather amused thereby, and gathered in a ring round Jowler and Grumps and the Fat Woman, laughing.
"Never mind, Mother Drum," quoth one; "she was a pig-woman once in Bartlemy Fair, and lost her temper through the heat of a coal-fire roasting porkers. Was't not hot, Mother Drum? was not Tophet a kind of cool cellar to it?"
It was Surly who spoke, and Mother Drum turns on him in a rage.
"You lie, you pannierman's by-blow!" she cried; "you bony muckfowl, with the bony back sticking out like the ace of spades on the point of a small-sword! you lie, Bobchin, Changeling, Horseleech! 'Slid, you Shrovetide Cutpurse, I'll scald your hide with gravy, I will!"
"Ware the pan, ware the pan!" all the Blacks cried out; for the Good Woman made a flourish as though she would have carried out her threat; whereupon my Man-Dog, Jowler, thought it was time to interpose, and spoke.
"There's no harm in Mother Drum, but that her temper's as hot as her pan, and we are late to supper. Come, Mother, Draw for us, and save you still. I'll treat you to burnt brandy afterwards."
"What did he call me Pig-Woman for?" she grumbled, but still half mollified. "What if I did waste my youth and prime in cooking of porkers in a booth; I am no cutpurse. I, I never shoved the tumbler for tail-drawing or poll-snatching on a levee-day.[L] But I will draw for you, and welcome my guests of the game."
"And Supper, good Moll, Supper," added Jowler.
"An you had not hindered me, it would have been ready upstairs. There are more upstairs besides you that hunger after the fat and the lean. But can you sup without a cook? Will venison run off the spit ready roasted, think you, like the pigs in Lubberland, that jump down your throat, and cry wee wee?"
She began to bustle about, and summoned, by the name of Cicely Grip—adding thereto the epithet of "faggot"—a stout serving-lass, who might have been comely enough, but whose face and hands were very nearly as black as those of the Man-Dog's. This wench brought a number of brown jugs full of beer, and the Blacks took to drinking with much zest. Then Jowler, who seemed a kind of lieutenant, in some authority over them, gave the word of command to "Peel;" and they hastened to leave the room, which was but a mean sort of barn-like chamber, with bare walls, a wattled roof, and a number of rough wooden tables and settles, all littered with jugs and Tobacco pipes. So I and the Fat Woman and Jowler, Cicely Grip having betaken herself to the kitchen, were left together.
"Cicely will dish up, Mother Drum," he says; "you have fried collops enow for us, I trow; and if more are wanted for the Billy Boys, you can to your pan again. You began your brandy pottage too early tonight, Mother. Let us have no more of your vapours 'twixt this and day-break, prithee. What would Captain Night say?"
"Captain Night be hanged!"
"He will be hanged, as our brother Surly has it, in good time, I doubt it not. Meanwhile, order must be kept at the Stag o' Tyne. Get you and draw the dram I promised you; and, Mother, wash me this little lad's face and hands, that he may sit down to meat with us in a seemly manner."
"Who the Clink is he?" asked Mother Drum, eyeing me with no very Great Favour.
"He says he is little Boy Jack," answered Mr. Jowler, gravely. "We will give him another name before we have done with him. Meantime he has a guinea in his pocket to pay his shot, and that's enough for the fat old Alewife of the Stag o' Tyne."
"Fat again!" muttered Mother Drum. "Is it a 'Sizes matter to be full of flesh? I be fat indeed," she answered, with a sigh, "and must have a chair let out o' the sides for me, that these poor old hips may have play. And I, that was of so buxom a figure."
"Never mind your Figure, Mother," remarked my Conductor, "but do my bidding. I'll e'en go and peel too;" and without more ado he leaves us.
Madam Drum went into her kitchen and fetched forth a Tin Bowl full of hot suds, and with these she washed me as she had been directed. I bore it all unresistingly—likewise a scrubbing with a rough towel. Then, when my hair was kempt with an old Felting comb, almost toothless, I felt refreshed and hungrier than ever. But Mother Drum never ceased to complain of having been called fat.
"Time was, my smooth-faced Coney," she said, "that I was as lithe and limber as you are, and was called Jaunty Peg. And now poor old Moll cooks collops for those that are born to dance jigs in chains for the north-east wind to play the fiddle to. Time was when a whole army followed me, when I beat the drum before the great Duke."
"What Duke?" I asked, looking up at her great red face.
"What Duke, milksop! Why, who should I mean but the Duke that won Hochstedt and Ramilies:—the Ace of Trumps, my dear, that saved the Queen of Hearts, the good Queen Anne, so bravely. What Duke should I mean but John o' Marlborough."
"I have seen him," I said, with childish gravity.
"Seen him! when and where, loblolly-boy? You're too young to have been a drummer."
"I saw him," I answered, blushing and stammering; "I saw him when—when I was a little Gentleman."
"Lord save us!" cries Mother Drum, bursting into a jolly laugh. "A Gentleman! since when, your Lordship, I pray? But we're all Gentlefolks here, I trow; and Captain Night's the Marquis of Aylesbury Jail. A Gentleman! oho!"
Hereupon, and which, to my great relief, quitted me of the perturbation brought on by a Rash Admission, there came three knocks from above, and Mother Drum said hurriedly, "Supper, supper;" and opening a side-door, pushes me on to a staircase, and tells me to mount, and pull a reverence to the company I found at table.
Twenty steps brought me to another door I found on the jar, and I passed into a great room