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Updated: May 12, 2025
"But I'm a houtcast," he would wind up invariably, as his potations overcame him; "that's where it is who cares what a houtcast thinks?" Chubb took no further notice of him than to laughingly threaten to put him under arrest for mutiny. It must not be supposed that the "houtcast's" behaviour on the occasion in question was due to any want of courage.
He then left me, after another vehement handshaking, and proceeded up the drive in front of the house. A feeling of curiosity to see what kind of greeting the drunken, wastrel "houtcast" would command from his folk, all unconscious of his disagreeable proximity to their eminently respectable residence, induced me to follow him.
I paused at a point where, concealed by some shrubbery, I had a view of the hall door, which, upon my friend's ringing, was opened by a smart maid-servant. Swaying up and down on the steps in a most ludicrous manner, the "houtcast" addressed her, although I was too far off to make out the words, but to judge by her looks she felt no prepossession in his favour.
Having a week or two before come off a voyage at Liverpool, he had at that port drawn £75 in pay, which he had spent in two days and nights of revelry, an assertion to which his personal appearance bore strong corroborative testimony. He appeared, on the whole, to consider himself an exceedingly ill-used person. "I'm a houtcast," he repeatedly said.
I next met Webster at Sydney. The explanation of my being left behind at Port Arthur was simple enough. The "houtcast" had taken so many "caulkers" of rum during the day that he became oblivious to the fact of my being ashore, and Chubb took it for granted that I had returned on board, especially as I had sent back the boat in which I landed with the Chinese agent.
But it's always how they've treated me a houtcast, that's what I am a houtcast." Apparently hard hit, the "houtcast," who for the time being certainly had some grounds for so styling himself, leaned with his back against the gate, as if the effort to stand upright was too much for him on the top of his recent disappointment. His plight was undoubtedly pitiable.
I was just turning away, when I heard a loud outcry; the "houtcast," about a hundred yards distant, was hailing me. On what trifles does destiny depend! My first impulse was to walk off without taking any notice of his shouts, and on the simple decision to stay and see what he wanted, turned the whole future.
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