Captain Cuttle lived on the brink of a little canal near the India Docks, where there was a swivel bridge which opened now and then to let some wandering monster of a ship come roaming up the street like a stranded leviathan. The gradual change from land to water, on the approach to Captain Cuttle’s lodgings, was curious. It began with the erection of flagstaffs, as appurtenances to public-houses; then came slop-sellers’ shops, with Guernsey shirts, sou’wester hats, and canvas pantaloons, at once the tightest and the loosest of their order, hanging up outside. These were succeeded by anchor and chain-cable forges, where sledgehammers were dinging upon iron all day long. Then came rows of houses, with little vane-surmounted masts uprearing themselves from among the scarlet beans. Then, ditches. Then, pollard willows. Then, more ditches. Then, unaccountable patches of dirty water, hardly to be descried, for the ships that covered them. Then, the air was perfumed with chips; and all other trades were swallowed up in mast, oar, and block-making, and boatbuilding. Then, the ground grew marshy and unsettled. Then, there was nothing to be smelt but rum and sugar. Then, Captain Cuttle’s lodgings—at once a first floor and a top storey, in Brig Place—were close before you.
The Captain was one of those timber-looking men, suits of oak as well as hearts, whom it is almost impossible for the liveliest imagination to separate from any part of their dress, however insignificant. Accordingly, when Walter knocked at the door, and the Captain instantly poked his head out of one of his little front windows, and hailed him, with the hard glared hat already on it, and the shirt-collar like a sail, and the wide suit of blue, all standing as usual, Walter was as fully persuaded that he was always in that state, as if the Captain had been a bird and those had been his feathers.
“Wal’r, my lad!” said Captain Cuttle. “Stand by and knock again. Hard! It’s washing day.”
Walter, in his impatience, gave a prodigious thump with the knocker.
“Hard it is!” said Captain Cuttle, and immediately drew in his head, as if he expected a squall.
Nor was he mistaken: for a widow lady, with her sleeves rolled up to her shoulders, and her arms frothy with soapsuds and smoking with hot water, replied to the summons with startling rapidity. Before she looked at Walter she looked at the knocker, and then, measuring him with her eyes from head to foot, said she wondered he had left any of it.
“Captain Cuttle’s at home, I know,” said Walter with a conciliatory smile.
“Is he?” replied the widow lady. “In-deed!”
“He has just been speaking to me,” said Walter, in breathless explanation.
“Has he?” replied the widow lady. “Then p’raps you’ll give him Mrs. MacStinger’s respects, and say that the next time he lowers himself and his lodgings by talking out of the winder she’ll thank him to come down and open the door too.” Mrs. MacStinger spoke loud, and listened for any observations that might be offered from the first floor.
“I’ll mention it,” said Walter, “if you’ll have the goodness to let me in, Ma’am.”
For he was repelled by a wooden fortification extending across the doorway, and put there to prevent the little MacStingers in their moments of recreation from tumbling down the steps.
“A boy that can knock my door down,” said Mrs. MacStinger, contemptuously, “can get over that, I should hope!” But Walter, taking this as a permission to enter, and getting over it, Mrs. MacStinger immediately demanded whether an Englishwoman’s house was her castle or not; and whether she was to be broke in upon by “raff.” On these subjects her thirst for information was still very importunate, when Walter, having made his way up the little staircase through an artificial fog occasioned by the washing, which covered the banisters with a clammy perspiration, entered Captain Cuttle’s room, and found that gentleman in ambush behind the door.
“Never owed her a penny, Wal’r,” said Captain Cuttle, in a low voice, and with visible marks of trepidation on his countenance. “Done her a world of good turns, and the children too. Vixen at times, though. Whew!”
“I should go away, Captain Cuttle,” said Walter.
“Dursn’t do it, Wal’r,” returned the Captain. “She’d find me out, wherever I went. Sit down. How’s Gills?”
The Captain was dining (in his hat) off cold loin of mutton, porter, and some smoking hot potatoes, which he had cooked himself, and took out of a little saucepan before the fire as he wanted them. He unscrewed his hook at dinnertime, and screwed a knife into its wooden socket instead, with which he had already begun to peel one of these potatoes for Walter. His rooms were very small, and strongly impregnated with tobacco-smoke, but snug enough: everything being stowed away, as if there were an earthquake regularly every half-hour.
“How’s Gills?” inquired the Captain.
Walter, who had by this time recovered his breath, and lost his spirits—or such temporary spirits as his rapid journey had given him—looked at his questioner for a moment, said “Oh, Captain Cuttle!” and burst into tears.
No words can describe the Captain’s consternation at this sight. Mrs. MacStinger faded into nothing before it. He dropped the potato and the fork—and would have dropped the knife too if he could—and sat gazing at the boy, as if he expected to hear next moment that a gulf had opened in the City, which had swallowed up his old friend, coffee-coloured suit, buttons, chronometer, spectacles, and all.
But when Walter told him what was really the matter, Captain Cuttle, after a moment’s reflection, started up into full activity. He emptied out
