Seven Frozen Sailors. Fenn George Manville

yes, I’ve been wrecked three times, and I’ve been aboard when a fire’s broken out, and I’ve seen some fighting – close work some of it, and precious hot; and I was once among savages, and there was one that was a kind of a princess among ’em – But there, that’s no story, and might happen to any man.

      If I were Atlantic Jones now, I could tell you a story worth listening to. Atlantic Jones was made of just the kind of stuff they make heroes out of for story books. He was a rum ’un was J. If I could spin a yarn about anything, it ought to be about him, now. I only wish I could.

      Why was he called Atlantic? I can’t rightly say. I don’t think he was christened so. I think it was a name he took himself. It was to pass off the Jones, which was not particularly imposing without the first part for the trade he belonged to. He was a play-actor.

      I don’t think he had ever done any very great things at it before I met with him; anyhow, he was rather down on his luck just then, and shabby – well, anything nearer rags, and yet making believe to have an air of gentility about it, I never came across. I don’t remember ever having a boot-heel brought so directly under my observation which was so wonderfully trodden down on one side. In a moment of confidence, too, he showed me a hole in the right boot-sole that he had worn benefit cards over, on the inside – some of the unsold ones remaining from his last ticket night.

      I was confoundedly hard up myself about that time, having just come ashore from a trip in one of those coffin-ships, as they call them now. “Run” they wanted to make out, but it wasn’t much of a run, either. The craft was so rotten, there were hardly two planks sticking properly together, and the last man had scarcely got his last leg into the boat, when the whole ricketty rabbit-hutch went down, and only as many bubbles as you could fill a soup-plate with stayed a-top to mark the whereabouts. But the owners wanted to press the charge, and for a while I wanted to lie close, and that’s why I came to London, which is a big bag, as it were, where one pea’s like another when they’re well shaken up in it.

      You’ll say it was rather like those birds who, when they hear the sportsman coming, dive their heads into the sand, and leave the other three-quarters of them in full view to be shot at, thinking no one else can see it, because they don’t happen to be able to see it themselves. You’ll say it was like one of them, for me, a sailor, wanting to keep dark from the police, to go skulking about in waterside taverns and coffee-houses Wapping and Rotherhithe way; well, perhaps it was.

      It was at a coffee-house in Wapping I met Atlantic Jones, and he scared me a bit the first time I met him. It wasn’t a pretty kind of coffee-house, not one of those you read about in that rare old book, the Spectator, where the fops, and dandies, and bloods, “most did congregate,” where they “quaffed” and “toasted” in the good old style, which, by the way, must have been somewhat of an expensive old style, and, thank goodness, even some of us third or fourth-raters, nowadays, can spend an odd half-hour or so from time to time very much as the biggest nobs would spend it, though we have but a few silver pieces in our pocket.

      To the good old style of coffee-house my fine gentleman, with the brocaded coat-tails, dainty lace ruffles, and big, powdered periwig, would be borne, smoothly (with an occasional jolt or two that went for nothing) in a sedan chair; and on his arrival there, if it were night-time, would call for his wine, his long pipe, his newspaper, and his wax-candles, and sit solemnly enjoying himself, while humbler folks blinked in the dim obscurity surrounding him, for most likely it was not everybody frequenting the place who could afford to be thus illuminated.

      No; this was one of the most ordinary, common, and objectionable kind of coffee-shops, where the most frequent order was for “half a pint and slices;” where the half-pint was something thick and slab, which analytical research might have proved to be artfully compounded of parched peas and chicory, with a slight flavouring of burnt treacle; while the slices were good old, solemn, stale bread, with an oleaginous superficial surface, applied by a skilled hand, spreading over broader surfaces than scarcely would have seemed credible; so that regular customers, when they wanted to have their joke, would pick up a a slice, and turn it about, and hold it up to the light and put a penny in their right eye, making believe they had got an eye-glass there, and say, “Look here, guv’nor! which side is it? I’m only a arskin’ fear it should fall on my Sunday go-to-meeting suit, and grease it.”

      Rashers of quite unbelievable rancidness, and “nice eggs,” in boiling which poultry, in its early promise, was not unfrequently made an untimely end of, were the chief articles of consumption. The newspapers and periodicals – which, somehow, always appeared to be a week old – were marked by innumerable rings, where the customers had stood their coffee-cups upon them, and there were thousands of brisk and lively flies forever buzzing round about the customers’ heads and settling on their noses; and thousands more of sleepy flies, stationary on the walls and ceiling, and thickly studding the show rasher in the window; and thousands and thousands more dead flies, lying about everywhere, and turning up as little surprises in the milk jug and the coffee-grounds, on the butter, or under the bacon, when you turned it over.

      Not in the eggs, by-the-bye. You were pretty safe from them there – the embryo chick was the worst thing that could happen to you.

      Not altogether a nice kind of place to pass one’s evenings in, you are thinking. Well, no; but it was uncommonly quiet and snug, and uncommonly cheap, which was rather a point with me. I was, in truth, so hard up that night that I had stood outside the window a good twenty minutes, balancing my last coin – a fourpenny-bit – in my hand, and tossing up, mentally, to decide whether I should spend it in a bed or a supper. I decided on the latter, and entered the coffee-house, where I hoped, after I had eaten, to be able to sleep away an hour or two in peace, if I could get a snug corner to myself.

      Several other people, however, seemed to have gone there with something of the same idea, and snored up and down, with their heads comfortably pillowed among the dirty plates and tea-things, while others carried on low, muttered conversations, and one woman was telling an interminable tale, breaking off now and then to whimper.

      There was one empty box, in a darkish corner, and I made for that, and ordered my meal – thanking my stars that I had been so lucky as to find such a good place. But I was not left long in undisputed possession of it.

      While I was disposing of the very first mouthful the shop-door opened, and a blue-cheeked, anxious-looking man peeped in, as though he were frightened – or, perhaps, ashamed – and glanced eagerly round. Then, as it seemed, finding nothing of a very alarming character, he came a step further in, and stopped again, to have another look, and his eyes fell upon me, and he stared very hard indeed, and came straight to my box, and sat down opposite to me.

      I can’t say this made me feel particularly comfortable, for, you see, for some days past I had spent the greater part of my time slipping stealthily round corners, and dodging up and down the sneakiest courts and alleys I could come across, with an idea that every lamp-post was a policeman in disguise that had got his eye on me.

      I can’t say I felt much more comfortable at this stranger’s behaviour, when he had taken his seat and ordered a cup of coffee and a round of toast, in a low, confidential tone of voice, just, as it struck me, as a detective might have done who had the coffee-shop keeper in his pay. Then he pulled a very mysterious little brown paper-covered book from his pocket, consisting of some twenty pieces of manuscript, and he attentively read in it, and then fixed his eyes upon the ceiling and mumbled.

      Said I to myself, “Perhaps this is some poor parson chap, learning up his sermon for next Sunday.”

      But then this was only Monday night; it could hardly be that.

      Presently, too, I noticed that he was secretly taking stock of me round the side of the book. What, after all, if the written sheets of paper contained a minute description of myself and the other runaways who were “wanted?”

      He now certainly seemed to be making a comparison between me and something he was reading – summing me up, as it were – and I felt precious uncomfortable, I can tell you.

      All at once he spoke.

      “It’s a chilly evening, sir.”

      “Yes,” I said.

      “A