t in a corner
of the parlour next the fire, and drank rum and water very strong. Mostly
he would not speak when spoken to; only look up sudden and fierce, and
blow through his nose like a fog-horn; and we and the people who came
about our house soon learned to let him be. Every day, when he came back
from his stroll, he would ask if any seafaring men had gone by along the
road. At first we thought it was the want of company of his own kind that
made him ask this question; but at last we began to see he was desirous
to avoid them. When a seaman put up at the "Admiral Benbow" (as now and
then some did, making by the coast road for Bristol), he would look in at
him through the curtained door before he entered the parlour; and he was
always sure to be as silent as a mouse when any such was present. For me,
at least, there was no secret about the matter; for I was, in a way, a
sharer in his alarms. He had taken me aside one day, and promised me a
silver fourpenny on the first of every month if I would only keep my
"weather-eye open for a seafaring man with one leg," and let him know the
moment he appeared. Often enough, when the first of the month came round,
and I applied to him for my wage, he would only blow through his nose at
me, and stare me down; but before the week was out he was sure to think
better of it, bring me my fourpenny-piece, and repeat his orders to look
out for "the seafaring man with one leg."

How that personage haunted my dreams, I need scarcely tell you. On stormy
nights, when the wind shook the four corners of the house, and the surf
roared along the cove and up the cliffs, I would see him in a thousand
forms, and with a thousand diabolical expressions. Now the leg would be
cut off at the knee, now at the hip; now he was a monstrous kind of a
creature who had never had but the one leg, and that in the middle of his
body. To see him leap and run and pursue me over hedge and ditch was the
worst of nightmares. And altogether I paid pretty dear for my monthly
fourpenny-piece, in the shape of these abominable fancies.

But though I was so terrified by the idea of the seafaring man with one
leg, I was far less afraid of the captain himself than anybody else who
knew him. There were nights when he took a deal more rum and water than
his head would carry; and then he would sometimes sit and sing his wicked
old wild sea-songs, minding nobody; but sometimes he would call for
glasses round, and force all the tr