('Twas a
strange custom of the Bristowe housewives to employ dogs for
turning their roasting jacks). With all humility I expressed
contrition, and vowed amendment, and I kept my word. While I ate my
dinner my thoughts were busy with my late encounter with Vetch, and
I wondered what he was about in Bristowe, and whether Dick Cludde
was still with him. I did not doubt they were in a desperate rage
with me, and if they should be here together I was pretty sure they
would take some means of avenging themselves; but confident of my
strength and my skill of fence the prospect gave me rather a
pleasant expectancy than any alarm.
So three days passed--days which I spent for the most part with
Woodrow the old mariner, plying him with questions innumerable
about shipping and life at sea, and learning many things by my own
observation. I saw no more of Vetch, nor did anything give me cause
of uneasiness. On the second day Mistress Perry, indeed, threatened
a slight discomfort by wishing me to share my room with a new
lodger she had just taken; but she gave in when I flatly refused to
bed with a stranger, and grumblingly accommodated the man--a
rough-looking sea dog--in a little closet off the stairs.
On the third afternoon, when I returned to the quay after my
dinner, Woodrow told me he had found a skipper who would sail for
Southampton at the end of the week, and was willing to take me as
ship's boy. He assured me that I could hope for nothing better to
begin with, and the voyage would be long enough for me to try my
sea legs, and, as he believed, to cure me of my fancy for a sea
life.
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