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Updated: May 11, 2025
"If you calls me Missis anything, dearie, mind if I don't speak to you always as `Master Leigh' that distant as how you won't know me," she said; so, as she always said what she meant, I did as she wished, and she continued to style me her "dearie," that being the affectionate pet name she had for me, in the same way as her brother Sam had dubbed me his "cockbird," when he first introduced himself to me on the Hoe, a mode of address which he still persisted in.
"Better and better still," I said, in high glee, in which Sam Pengelly shared with a kindred feeling, while his sister put up her apron to her eyes, and began to cry at the idea of my going to sea. "Is she a large vessel?" "Aye, aye, my cockbird. A barque of a thousand tons, or more, and her name's the Esmeralda."
"Hullo, young cockbird," said the owner of the face a middle-aged, respectable, nautical-looking sort of man speaking in a cheery voice, which went to my heart; "what's the row with you, my hearty? Tell old Sam Pengelly all about it!"
Look here, I can't bear to see a ship in distress, or a comrade in the doldrums; so I tell you what, young cockbird, raise your crest and don't look so peaky, for I'm going to help you if it's in my power, as most likely it is that is, saving as how it ain't a loss by death, which takes us all, and which the good Lord above can only soothe, bringing comfort to you; and even then, why, a friendly word, and a grip o' some un's hand, sometimes softens down the roughest plank we've got to tread.
I had just begun to deliberate with myself as to what sort of ship I should seek, and whither I would prefer to voyage for my next trip, when Sam came back from Plymouth one morning brimful of news. "Well, laddie who d'ye think I met to-day?" he called out to me, almost before he was quite inside the house. "I'm sure I can't guess," I replied. "Who?" "Why, Cap'en Billings, my cockbird!"
Here I sought him; and here I found him, sure enough! He did not see me coming; so, going behind the seat on which he was sitting, I clapped him suddenly on the back, exclaiming at the same time, in slight paraphrase of his old address to me that memorable December day when I first heard his friendly voice "Hallo, old cockbird! How are you?" Gracious me, you should only have seen him jump!
"Yes, laddie, I did miss him very much, but now, my cockbird," and here his face brightened up with another beaming smile, as he laid a meaning emphasis on his words, "but now I fancy, somehow or other, I'll not miss Teddy as much as I used to; d'ye know why?" "No," I said, hesitatingly, and somewhat untruthfully, for I pretty well guessed what he meant.
"Good-bye, my cockbird," said he, wringing my hand with a grip that made it wince again, a tremble the while in his voice and something suspiciously like a tear in his eye. "Keep honest, and do your duty, and never forget your father, laddie, nor old Sam Pengelly, who'll be right glad to see you again when you return from this v'yage!"
"Why," he said, after a close inspection to see whether I was actually Martin Leigh or else some base impostor assuming his voice and guise, "it is the young cockbird, by all that's living ain't I glad!" And, then, throwing his arms round me in a bear-like hug, he almost squeezed every particle of breath out of my body.
Hortensius Martius, the perfumed exquisite, was now like an angry cockbird on the defence, whilst Escanes, taller and stronger than he, was clenching his fists, trying to keep up that outward semblance of patrician decorum which the dignity of his caste demanded in the presence of the plebs.
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