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On entering the bar-room of this tavern, as it was called, but which in the mother country would probably have aspired to be termed no more than a pot-house he found the hospitable apartment thronged with its customary revellers.
You can tell by his gloves, by his waistcoat, that he is a working man, the son of a man that kept a pot-house somewhere in Germany; he has not the instincts of a gentleman; he drinks beer, and he smokes smokes? ah! madame, twenty-five pipes a day! . . . What would have become of poor Lili? . . . It makes me shudder even now to think of it. God has indeed preserved us!
"Don't you roar at your officer," said the mate sternly. "Your manners is worse than your cooking. You'd better stay with us a few trips to improve 'em." The "Bruiser" turned purple, and shivered with impotent wrath. "We get a parcel o' pot-house loafers aboard here," continued the mate, airily addressing the atmosphere, "and, blank my eyes! if they don't think they're here to be waited on.
No, dame I'll hang first! the crock I found, the crock I'll keep: the money's mine, whoever did the murder." Then, changing his mad tone into one of reckless inebriate gayety for he was more than half-seas over even then from the pot-house toastings and excitement he added, "But come, wenches, down with your mugs, and help me to get through the jar: I never felt so dry in all my life.
"No, Silverbridge; I said no such thing; but that if he were a hedger and ditcher the bread and cheese and onions would be as good." "I should not mind trying them at all," said Gerald. "Only one never does have such things for breakfast. Last winter a lot of us skated to Ely, and we ate two or three loaves of bread and a whole cheese at a pot-house! And as for beer, we drank the public dry."
"Hist," whispered Martin, breaking in and laying his hand upon the speaker, "a truce to such treason talk; naught has it done but brought me to an ill-famed pot-house," he concluded in a thoughtful voice.
Many people expressed surprise that Bishop Pendle should have been present when the man was arrested, and some blamed him for having even gone to The Derby Winner. A disreputable pot-house, they whispered, was not the neighbourhood in which a spiritual lord should be found.
The tavern-keeper's friends, not daring to approach again, flung at him from the end of the pot-house jars of oil, pewter vessels, burning lamps, and even the huge bronze cauldron in which a whole sheep was stewing. This cauldron fell with a horrible crash on Balthasar's head and split his skull.
For the rest, one simply found a number of bare wooden forms set alongside the veriest pot-house tables, on which the glasses containing various beverages left round and sticky marks. There was no luxury, no artistic feature, no cleanliness even. Globeless gas burners flared freely, heating a dense mist compounded of tobacco smoke and human breath.
But he lingered. "It is no pot-house story," he defended sulkily. "The Ottawas say they will go to war if the prisoner is not put in the pot before to-morrow morning. And what can the commandant do? The Ottawas are two thousand strong." I knew, without comment, that he was telling me the truth, and I stood still.
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