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She sailed some time before us for London. I thought he'd have been home by this." It was not until two days later, however, that the gossip in Sunwich received a pleasant fillip by the arrival of the injured captain. He came down from London by the midday train, and, disdaining the privacy of a cab, prepared to run the gauntlet of his fellow-townsmen.
Wilks by the sentimental applause evoked by it, was his renunciation of the post of steward on the ss. Conqueror. Sunwich buzzed with the tidings that after eighteen years' service with Captain Nugent he preferred starvation ashore to serving under another master.
It was not of a very exalted nature, and caused more strain upon the back than the intellect, but seven years of roughing it had left him singularly free from caste prejudices, a freedom which he soon discovered was not shared by his old acquaintances at Sunwich.
Kybird and daughter with a recital of his adventures in Australia, receiving in return a full and true account of Sunwich and its people up to date. "There's no pride about 'im, that's what I like," said Mrs. Kybird to her lord and master as they sat alone after closing time over a glass of gin and water. "He's a nice young feller, but bisness is bisness, and s'pose you don't get your rent?"
"Your father is a straightforward, honest man, and your partner's uprightness is the talk of Sunwich." "It doesn't take much to make Sunwich talk," retorted Hardy. "A preposterous suggestion to make to a man of my standing," said the shipbroker, ignoring the remark. "If the affair ever leaked out I should never hear the end of it."
Captain Nugent's views concerning sailormen were well known in Sunwich, and two of the men present had served under him. He went forward, the centre of an attentive and rotating circle, and, sadly out of breath, was bestowed in the forecastle and urged to listen to reason. For the remainder of the morning he made no sign.
Captain Nugent, who was moving towards the door, swung round and confronted him savagely. "What do you mean?" he demanded. "What I say," retorted Captain Hardy. "I don't want to indulge Sunwich with the spectacle of two middle-aged ship-masters at fisticuffs, but that's what'll happen if you touch my boy. It would probably please the spectators more than it would us."
Smith, "and not liking waste, and seeing by your manner that you've 'ad more than enough already to-night, I drunk it. There isn't another man in Sunwich I could ha' played that trick on, no, nor a boy neither." Mr. Wilks was about to speak, but, thinking better of it, threw the three spoons in the kitchen, and resuming his seat by the fire sat with his back half turned to his visitor.
Kybird's extensive stock, he paid a visit to Jem Hardy to talk over old times and discuss the future. "You ought to make friends with your father," said the latter; "it only wants a little common sense and mutual forbearance." "That's all," said Nugent; "sounds easy enough, doesn't it? No, all he wants is for me to clear out of Sunwich, and I'm not going to until it pleases me, at any rate.
An honest seafaring smell, compounded of tar, rope, and fish, known to the educated of Sunwich as ozone, set his thoughts upon the sea. He longed to be aboard ship again, with the Court of Inquiry to form part of his crew. In all his fifty years of life he had never met such a collection of fools.
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