Chapter 91

PEW; to him GAUNT

GAUNT. What brings you here?

PEW. Cap’n, do my ears deceive me? or is this my old commander?

GAUNT. My name is John Gaunt. Who are you, my man, and what’s your business?

PEW. Here’s the facks, so help me. A lovely female in this house was Christian enough to pity the poor blind; and lo and belold! who should she turn out to be but my old commander’s daughter! ‘My dear,’ says I to her, ‘I was the Admiral’s own particular bo’sun.’—‘La, sailor,’ she says to me, ‘how glad he’ll be to see you!’—‘Ah,’ says I, ‘won’t he just—that’s all.’—‘I’ll go and fetch him,’ she says; ‘you make yourself at ’ome.’ And off she went; and, Commander, here I am.

GAUNT (_sitting down_). Well?

PEW. Well, Cap’n?

GAUNT. What do you want?

PEW. Well, Admiral, in a general way, what I want in a manner of speaking is money and rum. (_A pause_.)

GAUNT. David Pew, I have known you a long time.

PEW. And so you have; aboard the old _Arethusa_; and you don’t seem that cheered up as I’d looked for, with an old shipmate dropping in, one as has been seeking you two years and more—and blind at that. Don’t you remember the old chantie?—

‘Time for us to go, Time for us to go, And when we’d clapped the hatches on, ’Twas time for us to go.

What a note you had to sing, what a swaller for a pannikin of rum, and what a fist for the shiners! Ah, Cap’n, they didn’t call you Admiral Guinea for nothing. I can see that old sea-chest of yours—her with the brass bands, where you kept your gold dust and doubloons: you know!—I can see her as well this minute as though you and me was still at it playing pût on the lid of her . . . You don’t say nothing, Cap’n? . . . Well, here it is: I want money and I want rum. You don’t know what it is to want rum, you don’t: it gets to that p’int, that you would kill a ’ole ship’s company for just one guttle of it. What? Admiral Guinea, my old Commander, go back on poor old Pew? and him high and dry? [Not you! When we had words over the negro lass at Lagos, what did you do? fair dealings was your word: fair as between man and man; and we had it out with p’int and edge on Lagos sands. And you’re not going back on your word to me, now I’m old and blind? No, no! belay that, I say. Give me the old motto: Fair dealings, as between man and man.]

GAUNT. David Pew, it were better for you that you were sunk in fifty fathom. I know your life; and first and last, it is one broadside of wickedness. You were a porter in a school, and beat a boy to death; you ran for it, turned slaver, and shipped with me, a green hand. Ay, that was the craft for you: that was the right craft, and I was the right captain; there was none worse that sailed to Guinea. Well, what came of that? In five years’ time you made yourself the terror and abhorrence of your messmates. The worst hands detested you; your captain—that was me, John Gaunt, the chief of sinners—cast you out for a Jonah. [Who was it stabbed the Portuguese and made off inland with his miserable wife? Who, raging drunk on rum, clapped fire to the baracoons and burned the poor soulless creatures in their chains?] Ay, you were a scandal to the Guinea coast, from Lagos down to Calabar? and when at last I sent you ashore, a marooned man—your shipmates, devils as they were, cheering and rejoicing to be quit of you—by heaven, it was a ton’s weight off the brig!

PEW. Cap’n Gaunt, Cap’n Gaunt, these are ugly words.

GAUNT. What next? You shipped with Flint the Pirate. What you did then I know not; the deep seas have kept the secret: kept it, ay, and will keep against the Great Day. God smote you with blindness, but you heeded not the sign. That was His last mercy; look for no more. To your knees, man, and repent! Pray for a new heart; flush out your sins with tears; flee while you may from the terrors of the wrath to come.

PEW. Now, I want this clear: Do I understand that you’re going back on me, and you’ll see me damned first?

GAUNT. Of me you shall have neither money nor strong drink: not a guinea to spend in riot; not a drop to fire your heart with devilry.

PEW. Cap’n, do you think it wise to quarrel with me? I put it to you now, Cap’n, fairly, as between man and man—do you think it wise?

GAUNT. I fear nothing. My feet are on the Rock. Begone! (_He opens the Bible and begins to read_.)

PEW (_after a pause_). Well, Cap’n, you know best, no doubt; and David Pew’s about the last man, though I says it, to up and thwart an old Commander. You’ve been ’ard on David Pew, Cap’n: ’ard on the poor blind; but you’ll live to regret it—ah, my Christian friend, you’ll live to eat them words up. But there’s no malice here: that ain’t Pew’s way; here’s a sailor’s hand upon it . . . You don’t say nothing? (GAUNT _turns a page_.) Ah, reading, was you? Reading, by thunder! Well, here’s my respecks (_singing_)—

‘Time for us to go, Time for us to go, When the money’s out, and the liquor’s done, Why, it’s time for us to go.

(_He goes tapping up to door_, _turns on the threshold_, _and listens_. GAUNT _turns a page_. PEW, _with a grimace_, _strikes his hand upon the pocket with the keys_, _and goes_.)

DROP.