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It was at a ship-chandler's in Tower Street, a large and dingy house, the lower portion being filled with canvas, cordage, barrels of pitch and tar, candles, oil, and matters of all sorts needed by ship-masters, including many cannon of different sizes, piles of balls, anchors, and other heavy work, all of which were stowed away in a yard behind it. The owner of this store was a one-armed man.
He was a ship-chandler's shopman, with an ambition to be mistaken for a genuine "salt," and had not been many months in the place.
The assaulting crowd wavered, fell back, and then, maddened at Oliver's defence of the invader, with a wild yell of triumph, swept the two young men off their feet, throwing them bodily down the steps of a ship-chandler's shop, the soldier knocked senseless by a blow from a brick which had struck him full in the chest.
He had torn the envelope open, hastily, on deck, where it was handed to him by the ship-chandler's runner, who had brought his mail at the moment of anchoring. For the second time in his life he was appalled, and remained stock-still at the cabin door with the paper trembling between his fingers. Open a boarding-house! Two hundred pounds for a start! The only resource!
But there is no time here to speak of the spirit-room, a cellar down in the after-hold, where the sailor's "grog" is kept; nor of the cabletiers, where the great hawsers and chains are piled, as you see them at a large ship-chandler's on shore; nor of the grocer's vaults, where tierces of sugar, molasses, vinegar, rice, and flour are snugly stowed; nor of the sail-room, full as a sail-maker's loft ashore piled up with great top-sails and top-gallant-sails, all ready-folded in their places, like so many white vests in a gentleman's wardrobe; nor of the copper and copper-fastened magazine, closely packed with kegs of powder, great-gun and small-arm cartridges; nor of the immense shot-lockers, or subterranean arsenals, full as a bushel of apples with twenty-four-pound balls; nor of the bread-room, a large apartment, tinned all round within to keep out the mice, where the hard biscuit destined for the consumption of five hundred men on a long voyage is stowed away by the cubic yard; nor of the vast iron tanks for fresh water in the hold, like the reservoir lakes at Fairmount, in Philadelphia; nor of the paint-room, where the kegs of white-lead, and casks of linseed oil, and all sorts of pots and brushes, are kept; nor of the armoror's smithy, where the ship's forges and anvils may be heard ringing at times; I say I have no time to speak of these things, and many more places of note.
Leaving the grim row of tall columns guarding the front of the old custom-house, he turned his steps in the direction of the docks, wheeled sharply to the left, and continued up South Street until he stopped in front of a ship-chandler's store. Some one was at work inside, for the rays of a lantern shed their light over piles of old cordage and heaps of rusty chains flanking the low entrance.
Let us take a glance at this subject in passing. An inhabitant of Anjer owner of a hotel, a ship-chandler's store, two houses, and a dozen boats went down to the beach about six on the morning of that fateful 27th of August. He had naturally been impressed by the night of the 26th, though, accustomed as he was to volcanic eruptions, he felt no apprehensions as to the safety of the town.
He knew what was expected of a gentleman better than even to glance at it as it lay before him in its envelope. "No, I wouldn't," he answered. He scratched his head reflectively, and looked beneath his bushy brows at Cartoner as if he expected the ship-chandler's port to have an immediate effect of some sort. "Got your luggage in the boat alongside?" he asked, at length. "No. It's at the station."
On his way from the ship-chandler's 'Bias ran against Mr Philp, who paused in the roadway and eyed him, chewing a piece of news and chuckling. "That friend o' yours is a wonnur!" preluded Mr Philp. "Meanin' Caius Hocken?" "Who else? . . . He's goin' a great pace in these days; but you won't tell me he has flown out o' that range?
"Talk about being cocky," said Gregson; "you should hear Captain Schenke bragging about the way he brought the Hedwig Rickmers out. I heard 'em and the old man at it in the ship-chandler's yesterday. Hot . . . . Look here, you chaps! I don't think the old man cares so much to win the Cup as to beat Schenke!
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