could say nothing at all, but could only petulantly whimper and stamp
his foot, which I thought a mean thing for a man to do in such
circumstances. "A poor way," says he, at last, "t' treat an old
shipmate!" I thought it marvellously weak; my uncle would have had
some real and searching thing to say--some slashing words (and, may
be, a blow). "An you isn't a thief," cries Tom Bull, in anger, "you
_looks_ it, anyhow. An' the rig o' that lad bears me out. Where'd you
come by them jools? Eh?" he demanded. "Where'd you come by them
di'monds and pearls? Where'd you come by them rubies an' watches?
_You_--Nick Top: Twist Tickle hook-an'-line man! Buyin' di'monds for
a pauper," he snorted, "an' drinkin' Cheap an' Nasty! Them things
don't mix, Nick Top. Go be hanged! The police 'll cotch ye yet."

"No," says my uncle, gently; "not yet."

Tom Bull stamped out in a rage.

"No," my uncle repeated, wiping the sweat from his brow, "Tom Bull
forgotten; the police 'll not cotch me. Oh no, Dannie!" he sighed.
"They'll not cotch me--not yet!"

* * * * *

Then out of the black night came late company like a squall o' wind:
Cap'n Jack Large, no less! newly in from Cadiz, in salt, with a
spanking passage to make water-side folk stare at him (the _Last Hope_
was the scandal of her owners). He turned the tap-room into an uproar;
and no man would believe his tale. 'Twas beyond belief, with Longway's
trim, new, two-hundred-ton _Flying Fish_, of the same sailing, not yet
reported! And sighting Nicholas Top and me, Cap'n Jack Large cast off
the cronies he had gathered in the tap-room progress of the night, and
came to our stall, as I expected when he bore in from the rain, and
sent my uncle's bottle of Cheap and Nasty off with contempt, and
called for a bottle of Long Tom (the best, as I knew, the Anchor and
Chain afforded), which must be broached under his eye, and said he
would drink with us until we were turned out or dawn came. Lord, how I
loved that man, as a child, in those days: his jollity and bigness and
courage and sea-clear eyes! 'Twas grand to feel, aside from the
comfort of him, that he had put grown folk away to fondle the child on
his knee--a mystery, to be sure, but yet a grateful thing. Indeed,
'twas marvellously comfortable to sit close to him. But I never saw
him again: for the _Last Hope_ went down, with a cargo of mean fish,
in the fall of the next year, in the sea between St.