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Captain Cai relaxed his frown. After all, 'twas good to return and find the little town running on just as he left it, even down to Quaymaster Bussa and his dandering ways.
They arrived a couple of hours ago both drunk as Chloe." "Plenty o' time to sleep it off between this an' then," opined 'Bias comfortably. "But they're still on the drink. Likely as not we shall find 'em to-morrow in Highway lock-up, which is four miles from here. . . . It happened once before," said Cai with a face of gloom, "and Bussa did the whole display by himself." "Good Lord!
They are, in fact, a myth, and will be remembered chiefly as a conspicuous instance of geographic delusion. It had long been supposed that the navigation of the Niger River, the third largest river in Africa, was permanently impaired by the Bussa Rapids, about one hundred miles in length, where Mungo Park was wrecked and drowned.
Her father's name was Paul Bussa; her mother's Jacobella de' Roffredeschi; they were both of noble and even illustrious descent, and closely allied to the Orsinis, the Savellis, and the Mellinis. On the day of her birth she was carried to the church of Santa Agnese, in the Piazza Navona, and there baptised.
But Major Toutée, a few years ago, when assailed by hostile natives, made a safe journey with his boats through the rapids; and Captain Lenfant, in 1901, carried 500,000 pounds of supplies up the river and through the rapids to the French stations between Bussa and Timbuktu. He had a small, flat-bottomed steamboat and a number of little boats propelled by fifty black paddlers.
At a later period, when that church was reconstructed, his remains were transported to the cloisters of Tor Di Specchi, where the simple inscription, "Here lies Paul Bussa," remains to this day.
The barber paused, snapping his scissors and nodding. "Bussa was right then, or Bussa and Philp between 'em." "Hey?" "'Tis wonderful how news gets abroad in Troy. . . . 'Hunken, now? And where might he be one of? I don't seem to fit the name in my mem'ry at all." "You wouldn't. He comes from t'other side of the Duchy a Padstow-born man, and he've never set eyes on Troy in his life."
"I don't need to walk off the Town Quay for that." "Ah, an' I daresay it came into your head that if you had the orderin' of Bussa you wouldn' be long about it? The town'll think it, anyway. We're a small popilation in Troy, all tied up in neighbourly feelin's an' hangin' together till as the sayin' is you can't touch a cobweb without hurtin' a rafter.
"No," said Captain Cai firmly, "you haven't, or you wouldn't ask the question. He's the best man ever wore shoe-leather, and you can trust him to the end o' the earth." "I can't say as I know a Hunken answerin' that description," Mr Bussa confessed dubiously. "You've heard the description, anyway," suggested Mr Rogers, losing patience.
But that has been your fashion, Peter Bussa, ever since I knowed 'ee, and 'Nigh enough' your motto." "You've no idea, Cap'n Cai, the hard I work to keep this blessed quay tidy." "Work? Ay like a pig's tail, I believe: goin' all day, and still in a twist come night." "Chide away chide away, now! But you're welcome home for all that, Cap'n Cai, welcome as a man's heart to his body."
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