old seaman, with the
sabre-cut, first took up his lodging under our roof.

I remember him as if it were yesterday, as he came plodding to the
inn-door, his sea-chest following behind him in a hand-barrow; a tall,
strong, heavy, nut-brown man; his tarry pigtail falling over the
shoulders of his soiled blue coat; his hands ragged and scarred, with
black, broken nails; and the sabre-cut across one cheek, a dirty, livid
white. I remember him looking round the cove and whistling to himself as
he did so, and then breaking out in that old sea-song that he sang so
often afterwards:--

"Fifteen men on the dead man's chest--
Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!"

in the high, old tottering voice that seemed to have been tuned and
broken at the capstan bars. Then he rapped on the door with a bit of
stick like a handspike that he carried, and when my father appeared,
called roughly for a glass of rum. This, when it was brought to him, he
drank slowly, like a connoisseur, lingering on the taste, and still
looking about him at the cliffs and up at our signboard.

"This is a handy cove," says he, at length; "and a pleasant sittyated
grog-shop.--Much company, mate?"

My father told him no--very little company, the more was the pity.

"Well, then," said he, "this is the berth for me.--Here you, matey," he
cried to the man who trundled the barrow; "bring up alongside and help up
my chest. I'll stay here a bit," he continued. "I'm a plain man; rum and
bacon and eggs is what I want, and that head up there for to watch ships
off.--What you mought call me? You mought call me captain. Oh, I see what
you're at--there;" and he threw down three or four gold pieces on the
threshold. "You can tell me when I've worked through that," says he,
looking as fierce as a commander.

And, indeed, bad as his clothes were, and coarsely as he spoke, he had
none of the appearance of a man who sailed before the mast; but seemed
like a mate or skipper, accustomed to be obeyed or to strike. The man who
came with the barrow told us the mail had set him down the morning before
at the "Royal George"; that he had inquired what inns there were along
the coast, and hearing ours well spoken of, I suppose, and described as
lonely, had chosen it from the others for his place of residence. And
that was all we could learn of our guest.

He was a very silent man by custom. All day he hung round the cove, or
upon the cliffs, with a brass telescope; all evening he sa