“I should rather think there was,” I replied, perhaps a little drily, for he ought to have known it long ago: “Jerry, I could tell you things that would burst the tar of your pigtail. Nevertheless I will abstain, being undervalued so. Ho, shipmate! Haul your wind, and hail! I am blessed if it isn’t old Heaviside!”
Even in the dark, I knew by the walk that it was a seaman, and now my eyes were so accustomed to look out in all sorts of weather, that day or night made little difference to my sense of vision, which (as you may see hereafter) saved a British fleet, unless I do forget to tell of it.
“Heaviside is my name, sir. And I should like to know what yours may be.”
“David Llewellyn.” And so we met; and I squeezed his hand till he longed to dance; and I was ready to cut a caper from my depth of feeling.
I introduced him to Jerry Toms, according to strict formality; and both being versed in the rules of the service, neither would take precedence; but each of them hung back for the other fellow to pretend to it, if he dared. I saw exactly how they stood; and being now, as master’s mate, superior officer to both, I put them at their ease, by showing that we must not be too grand. Thus being all in a happy mood, and desirous to make the best of things, we could not help letting our Captain go to dwell upon his own fortunes. Not that we failed of desire to help him, but that our own business pressed.
Gunner Heaviside led us down to a little cabin set up by himself on the very brink of Tawe high-water mark, as a place of retirement when hard pressed, and unable to hold his own in the bosom of his family. You may well be surprised—for I was more, I was downright astonished—to find that this was my old ferryboat, set up (like a dog begging) on shores, with the poop channelled into the sand, and the sides eked out with tarpaulin. A snugger berth I never saw for a quiet man to live in: and though Heaviside scorned to tell us, and we disdained to ask him, that—as I guessed from the first—was the true meaning of it. This poor fellow had been seduced—and I felt for his temptations—(when he came fresh from salt water, and our rolling ideas of women) into rapid matrimony with that sharp Nanette. He ought to have known much better; and I ought to have given him warning; but when he had made up his mind to settle, I thought it was something solid. I gave him the names, as I may have said, of good substantial farmers’ daughters, owning at least a good cow apiece from the date of their majority, also having sheets and blankets, and (as they told me many a time) picked goosefeathers enough for two. And yet he must go and throw himself away upon that Nanette so!
But when I came to hear his case, and he for a moment would not admit that it was worse than usual, or that he wanted pity more than any other men do, and scarcely knew how far he ought, or dared even, to accept it; and then at the gurgling of his pipe, fancied that he heard somebody; Jerry and I squeezed hands for a moment, and were very careful not to tantalise this poor man, with our strong-set resolution. “Give a wide berth to all womankind,” was what we would have said, if we could when now it was too late for him; “failing that, stand off and on, and let the inhabitants come down, and push off their boats, and victual you.”
Poor Heaviside fetched a sigh enough to upset all arrangements; for Jerry and I (good widowers both) were not likely to be damped, at the proper time for jollifying, by the troubles of a man who was meant to afford us rather a subject for rejoicing. Therefore we roused him up, and said, or at least conveyed to him, that he must not be so sadly down upon his luck like this. And hearing that he had six children now, and was in fear of a seventh one, I was enabled to recollect more than twenty instances of excellent women who had managed six, and gone off at the seventh visitation.
This good news put such sudden spirit into my old shipmate, that he ceased for a long time to be afeared of all that his wife could do to him. He never said a word to show what his mind suggested to him, whether good or evil. Only he made me tell those cases of unmerited mercy (as he put it) such a number of times that I saw what comfort he was deriving. And then we challenged him to tell us what was going on with him.
He seemed rather shy of discussing himself, but said that he was in Sir Philip’s service, as boatman, longshoreman, and river-bailiff, also pork-salter (as a son of the brine), and watercress-picker to the family. In a word, he had no work whatever to do; as you may pretty safely conclude, when a man is compelled to go into a catalogue of his activities. This sense of ease overweighed him no doubt, and made the time hang heavily, after so much active service, so that Naval Instructor Heaviside moved about, and began to gossip, and having no business of his own, spent his mind upon other folks’. Now, as we began to see through him, and the monotony of a fellow who is under his wife’s thumb (without the frankness to acknowledge, and enlist our sympathies for this universal burden), both Jerry and I desired to hear something a little more new than this. All things are good in their way, and devised by a finely
