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The tall seaman touched his hat by way of acknowledging the introduction. "But but I only see one!" protested Parson Spettigew. "This here's Bill Adams," said Mr. Jope, and again the tall seaman touched his hat. "Is it Eli you're missin'? He's in the cask." "Oh!" "We'll hoick him up to the store, Bill, if you're ready? It looks a nice cool place.
"Now look here," he said very quietly, as the poor wretch would have grovelled at the Parson's feet, "you was boastin' to Bill, not an hour agone, as you could stuff anything." "Don't hurt him," Parson Spettigew interposed, touching Mr. Jope's arm. "I'm not hurtin' him, your Reverence, only Eh? What's that?" All turned their faces towards the store.
"If your Reverence wouldn' mind steppin' down to the creek with me?" he suggested respectfully. Parson Spettigew fetched his hat, and together the pair descended the vale beneath the dropping petals of the cherry. At the foot of it they came to a creek, which the tide at this hour had flooded and almost overbrimmed.
Bang-Bang! went the eighteen-pounders, and through the smoke Colonel Taubmann saw the pretty Mayoress put up both hands to her ears. "Damme!" said Gunner Spettigew that evening, "the practice, if a man can speak professionally, was a disgrace. Oke, there, at Number Two gun, must ha' lost his head altogether; for I marked the shot strike the water, and 'twas a good hundred yards short if an inch.
Gunner Oke had strapped an accordion on top of his knapsack. Gunner Polwarne staggered under a barrel of marinated pilchards. Gunner Spettigew travelled light with a pack of cards, for fortune-telling and Pope Joan.
Believe me, dear sir, your obedient servant, I will dare to say that Colonel Taubmann never fired a shot in his life round-shot, bomb or grenade, grape or canister with a tithe of the effect wrought by this letter. For a whole day Looe was stunned, dismayed, desolated. "And in Christmas week, of all holy seasons!" commented Gunner Spettigew.
As it is to-day, so or nearly so it was on a certain sunny afternoon in the year 1807, when the Reverend Edward Spettigew, Curate-in-Charge, sat in the garden before his cottage and smoked his pipe while he meditated a sermon. That is to say, he intended to meditate a sermon. But the afternoon was warm: the bees hummed drowsily among the wallflowers and tulips.
"Eh? . . . What can I do for you?" asked Parson Spettigew, a trifle flustered at being caught napping. " Of the Vesoovius bomb, bo's'n," pursued Mr. Jope, with a smile that disarmed annoyance, so ingenuous it was, so friendly, and withal so respectful: "but paid off at eight this morning. Maybe your Reverence can tell me whereabouts to find an embalmer in these parts?" "A a what?" "Embalmer." Mr.
"An' so big," she went on, "that the Rector can't afford to live in it. That's why 'tis to let. The rent's forty pound." "Can I see him?" "No, you can't; for he lives up to Lunnon an' hires Parson Spettigew of Botusfleming to do the work. But it's my father has the lettin' o' the Rectory if a tenant comes along. He keeps the keys." "Then I 'd like to talk with your father."
Parson Spettigew laid the book face-downwards on his knee while his lips murmured a part of the text he had chosen: "A place of broad rivers and streams . . . wherein shall go no galley with oars, neither shall gallant ship pass thereby. . . ." His pipe went out. The book slipped from his knee to the ground. He slumbered. The garden gate rattled, and he awoke with a start.
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