The Sailor. Snaith John Collis
tone of deference had touched a chord in her. Moreover, he really was handsome, although attired as a very ordinary, not to say a very common, seaman, and evidently far more at home on the deck of a windjammer than in the American bar of an up-to-date public-house.
"Fourpence, please." The bar-lady set before him a pewter flagon of foaming fresh-drawn ale, also a liberal piece of bread and cheese, beautifully white to one accustomed to hard tack aboard the Margaret Carey.
In some confusion the Sailor produced a handful of silver coins from his amazing trousers, out of which he solemnly chose a Spanish fourpenny.
"Haven't you got anything English?" she asked, bursting suddenly into a laugh.
Not a little disconcerted, the Sailor began to struggle with a second handful of coins which he took from another pocket. Blushing to the tips of his ears, he finally tendered half a crown.
"Two-and-two change." With an intent smile she marked what he did with it.
Having stowed away the two-and-twopence, he was about to carry his plate of bread and cheese and tankard of beer to the marble-topped table where he had left his bundle, when the lady said, in a royal tone of gracious command, "Why not sit and eat it here?"
The Sailor would have been the last young man in the world to think of disobeying. He felt a little thrill creep down his spine as he climbed up on the high stool exactly opposite her. It was the sort of thrill he had had when under the ægis of Klondyke he had carried out this delicate social maneuver for the benefit of the bar-ladies of Frisco, Liverpool, and Shanghai.
At first, he was too shy to eat.
"Go on. Don't mind me," she encouraged him.
An intensive politeness caused him to cut his bread carefully with his knife. And then before he put it into his mouth he said, in an abrupt, but well modulated Klondyke manner, "'Scuse me, lady, won't yer 'ave a bite yerself?"
The deferential tone belonged to the mentor of his youth, yet the speech itself seemed to owe little to Eton College.
"No, thank you," said Miss Burton. "I'm not hungry." And then, seeing his look of embarrassment, "Now get on with it. Don't mind me."
This was a woman of the world. She was a ripe student of human nature, at least of the trousers-wearing section of human nature. Not for many a day had she been so taken by a specimen of an always remarkable genus as by this boy with the deep eyes, whose clothes and speech and behavior were like nothing on earth.
A true amateur of the male sex, she watched this quaint specimen eating bread and cheese. Presently he raised his tankard aloft, said, "Good 'ealth, lady," in a shy manner, and drank half of it at a gulp.
"When are you going to sea again?" asked Miss Burton, conversationally.
"Never going to sea no more," said the young man, with a strange look in his eyes.
"What – never?" She seemed surprised.
"Never no more. I'll never sail agen afore the mast. I'd sooner starve. It's – it's – "
"It's what?"
"It's hell, lady."
Miss Burton was taken aback by the tone of conviction. After all, this grotesque young sea monster was no true amphibian.
"Well, what are you going to do ashore?" she asked after a pause, while she gazed at him in astonishment.
"Dunno."
"No plans?"
The boy shook his head.
"Like another tankard of mild?"
"Yes, please, lady."
The impact of the bar-lady's easy and familiar style had caused a rather sharp relapse from the Klondyke standard of refinement, but not for a moment did the Sailor forget the dignity of her estate. In spite of the hybrid words he used, the note of subtle deference was never out of his voice; and Miss Burton, unconsciously intrigued by it, became even more interested in this strange product of the high seas.
"How long have you been afloat?" She handed him a second tankard of mild.
"Near six year."
"Six years. Gracious goodness! And you didn't like it?"
"No."
For some reason, the look in his eyes caused her to shiver a little.
"Why did you stick it, then?"
"Dunno."
A pause followed. Then he lifted his tankard again, said, "'Ere's lookin', lady," and drank it right off.
"Well, you are a rum one, you are, and no mistake," murmured Miss Burton, not to the Sailor, but to the beer engine at her side.
II
After the young man from the sea had drunk his second tankard of mild, he sat on the high stool silent and embarrassed. He was hoping that the gorgeous creature opposite would continue the conversation, but he didn't seem to know how to encourage her. However, as soon as a powerful feminine intelligence had told her the state of the case, she said abruptly, "Well, and what are you going to do for a living now you've retired from the sea?"
He gave his head a wistful shake.
The gesture, rather pathetic in its hopelessness, touched Miss Burton.
"Well, you can't live on air, you know."
"No, lady."
"Well, what are you going to do?"
Another shake of the head was the only answer, but as he met her sympathetic eyes, an inspiration came to him.
"Lady," he said humbly, "you don't happen to know of a shack?"
"Know of a what!" The touch of acerbity froze him at once. "Shack!" Coming to his assistance, "What on earth's that?"
"Lodgings, clean and decent, for a single man." The phrase was Klondyke's, and it came to him quite oddly at that moment in all its native purity. His mentor had a private collection of such phrases which he used to roll out for his own amusement when he went ashore. This was one. Henry Harper could see him now, pointing to a dingy card in a dingy window in a dingy street, in some miserable seaboard suburb, and he could hear him saying, "There you are, Sailor, lodgings, clean and decent, for a single man."
Miss Burton pondered. And then the slow smile came again.
"Well, if you really want lodgings clean and decent for a single man I suppose I must try and help you," she said graciously. "But I'm afraid I shan't be much use. They are not quite in my line."
"No, lady."
"Still, Fore Street is full of them. That's the second turn to the left and then the first on the right, and then the first on the right again."
"Yes, lady."
"You might try No. 5 – or No. 7 – or No. 9 – but Fore Street's full of them."
Miss Burton was really trying to be helpful, and the young seaman was very grateful to her, but Klondyke would have known at once that "she was talking out of the back of her neck."
Armed with this valuable information, the young man got off his high stool at last, raised his fur cap once more, with a little of the unconscious grace of its original owner, said, "So long, lady," collected his bundle and went out by the side door. And in the meantime, the bar-lady, who had marked every detail of his going, hardly knew whether to laugh or to shed tears. This was the queerest being she had ever seen in her life.
The Sailor managed to find Fore Street after taking several wrong turnings and asking his way three times. And then his difficulties really began.
Fore Street was very narrow, very long, very gloomy, very dirty. In each of these qualities it seemed well able to compare with any street he had seen in Frisco, in Sydney, in Liverpool, or even in Port Said. But it didn't discourage him. After all he had never been used to anything else.
The first house in Fore Street had a grimy card in a grimier window, exactly in the manner to rejoice the heart of Klondyke. Sailor, who had forgotten almost