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Updated: June 10, 2025
He walked with his head thrown up, with long lithe steps, with a gait and carnage so unlike the heavy tread of men wearing sea-boots all their working days, that none would have believed him to be born and bred in Farlingford.
'I be a dyin' woman, I tell 'ee, an' got the gift o' tongues. . . . And your 'natomies and fishes' innards may be all very well, but you want a wife to look after the money an' tell the men to wipe their sea-boots 'pon the front mat.
Only in respect of its maliciousness he entertained a certain doubt. One morning, a few days later, he was sitting at home working. In the meantime he had been obliged to undertake casual jobs for sailors in the harbor, and now he was soling a pair of sea-boots for a seaman on board a collier.
Besides, there were jerseys and great sea-boots to be worn out. Neddy and Teddy, his two fine donkeys, were soon fitted with "steering gear," among the intricacies of which their active heels often got "foul." They "ran aground" with alarming frequency, scraping their pack-saddles against the walls of narrow lanes.
Their leader, a brawny, thick-set Spaniard, with a skin tanned to the hue of well-seasoned mahogany, his ragged black locks bound round with a filthy red silk handkerchief, and surmounted by a broad-brimmed straw hat, his body clad in a red and yellow striped worsted shirt, confined at the waist by a cutlass-belt, into which a long-barrelled pistol was thrust, and his legs encased in sea-boots reaching nearly to the thigh, was a particularly truculent-looking ruffian; and a powerful negro, somewhat similarly clad, who seemed to be his chief aide, was little if anything better.
The shape of his head reminded one somewhat of the big sort of seal which is called Klakkekal his skin about the neck looked dark and shaggy, and the tops of his fingers grew together. He sat there with turned-down sea-boots on, and his thick grey woollen stockings reached right up to his thigh. He wore besides, plain freize clothes with bright glass buttons on his waistcoat.
"Workhouse bound, you mean," grumbled another sorry chap, in a darned shirt. "Oh, boys, don't be down-hearted. Let's keep up our spirits. Sing us a song, one of ye, and I'll give the chorus." "Sing if ye like, but I'll plug my ears, for one," said still another sulky varlet, with the toes out of his sea-boots, while all the rest with one roar of misanthropy joined him.
With a thick greatcoat on, a stout stick in one hand, he set forth through the snow on his errand of mercy, long before the rest of the family had left their rooms. He was just going into the cottage when he met Paul Petherwick, with his pilot-coat, sea-boots, and a spy-glass under his arm, accompanied by several of his crew, carrying oars and coils of rope and other ship's gear.
Todt und Holle! cried the other, whom the blow and the brandy had driven to madness. 'We shall see. Take that, thou deyvil's spawn, take that! He ran at me, and kicked me as hard as he could with his heavy sea-boots. Some of the gang laughed, but the man who had spoken before gave the Dutchman a shove that sent him whirling. 'None of that, he said sternly.
From these conditions was evolved the "Liverpool packet rat," hairy and wild and drunken, the prey of crimps and dive-keepers ashore, brave and toughened to every hardship afloat, climbing aloft in his red shirt, dungaree breeches, and sea-boots, with a snow-squall whistling, the rigging sheathed with ice, and the old ship burying her bows in the thundering combers.
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