The Cruise of the Shining Light. Duncan Norman

uncle nodded.

      “Dear man!” Tom Bull sighed.

      My uncle looked away. Tom Bull seemed now first to observe his impoverished appearance, and attacked it with frankly curious eyes, which roamed without shame over my uncle’s shrinking person; and my uncle winced under this inquisition.

      “Pour your liquor,” growls he, “an’ be content!”

      Tom Bull grasped the bottle, unafraid of the contents, unabashed by the rebuke. “An’ Skipper Nicholas,” asks he, “where did you manage t’ pick up the young feller?”

      My uncle would not attend.

      “Eh?” Tom Bull persisted. “Where did you come across o’ he?”

      “This,” says my uncle, with a gentle tug at my ear, “is Dannie.”

      “Ay; but whose young one?”

      “Tom Callaway’s son.”

      “Tom Callaway’s son!” cries Tom Bull.

      There was that about me to stir surprise; with those 14 generous days so long gone by, I will not gainsay it. Nor will I hold Tom Bull in fault for doubting, though he stared me, up and down, until I blushed and turned uneasy while his astonished eyes were upon me.

      “Tom Callaway’s son!” cries he again.

      That I was.

      “The same,” says my uncle.

      Forthwith was I once more inspected, without reserve––for a child has no complaint to make in such cases––and with rising wonder, which, in the end, caused Tom Bull to gape and gasp; but I was now less concerned with the scrutiny, being, after all, long used to the impertinence of the curious, than with the phenomena it occasioned. My uncle’s friend had tipped the bottle, and was now become so deeply engaged with my appearance that the yellow whiskey tumbled into his glass by fits and starts, until the allowance was far beyond that which, upon information supplied me by my uncle, I deemed proper (or polite) for any man to have at one time. The measurement of drams was in those bibulous days important to me––of much more agreeable interest, indeed, than the impression I was designed to make upon the ’longshore world.

      “No such nonsense!” exclaims Tom Bull. “Tom Callaway died ’ithout a copper t’ bury un.”

      “Tom Callaway,” says my uncle, evasively, “didn’t have no call t’ be buried; he was drown-ded.”

      My uncle’s old shipmate sipped his whiskey with absent, but grateful, relish, his eyes continuing to wander over so much of me as grew above the table, 15 which was little enough. Presently my uncle was subjected to the same severe appraisement, and wriggled under it in guilty way––an appraisement of the waterside slops: the limp and shabby cast-off apparel which scantily enveloped his great chest, insufficient for the bitter rain then sweeping the streets. Thence the glance of this Tom Bull went blankly over the foggy room, pausing nowhere upon the faces of the folk at the bar, but coming to rest, at last, upon the fly-blown rafters (where was no interest), whence, suddenly, it dropped to my hand, which lay idle and sparkling upon the sticky table.

      “Tom Callaway’s son!” he mused.

      My hand was taken, spread down upon the calloused palm of Tom Bull, in disregard of my frown, and for a long time the man stared in puzzled silence at what there he saw. ’Twas very still, indeed, in the little stall where we three sat; the boisterous laughter, the shuffling and tramp of heavy boots, the clink of glasses, the beating of the rain upon the windows seemed far away.

      “I’d not be s’prised,” says Tom Bull, in the low, hoarse voice of awe, “if them there was di’monds!”

      “They is,” says my uncle, with satisfaction.

      “Di’monds!” sighs Tom Bull. “My God!”

      ’Twas boredom––the intimate inspection, the question, the start of surprise. ’Twas all inevitable, so familiar––so distastefully intrusive, too. ’Twas a boredom hard to suffer, and never would have been borne had not the occasion of it been my uncle’s delight. 16 ’Twas always the same: Diamonds? ay, diamonds! and then the gasped “My God!” They would pry into this, by the Lord! and never be stopped by my scowl and the shrinking of my flesh. It may be that the parade my misguided guardian made of me invited the intimacy, and, if so, I have no cry to raise against the memory of it; but, whatever, they made free with the child that was I, and boldly, though ’twas most boresome and ungrateful to me. As a child my hand was fingered and eyed by every ’longshore jack, coast-wise skipper, and foreign captain from the Turkey Cock to the sign of The King George. And wherever I went upon the streets of St. John’s in those days there was no escape: the glitter of me stopped folk in their tracks––to turn and stare and wonder and pass muttering on.

      “Three in that one, Tom,” adds my uncle.

      ’Twas a moment before Tom Bull had mastered his amazement. “Well, well!” cries he. “Di’monds! Three in that one! Lord, Lord, think o’ that! This wee feller with all them di’monds! An’ Skipper Nicholas,” says he, drawing closer to my beaming uncle, “this here red stone,” says he, touching the ring on my third finger, “would be a jool? A ruby, like as not?”

      “ ’Tis that,” says my uncle.

      “An’ this here?” Tom Bull continues, selecting my little finger.

      “Well, now, Tom,” says my uncle, with gusto, for he delighted in these discussions, “I ’low I better tell you ’bout that. Ye see, lad,” says he, “that’s a seal-ring, 17 Tom. I’m told that gentlemen wears un t’ stamp the wax o’ their corr-ee-spondence. ’Twas Sir Harry that give me the trick o’ that. It haves a D for Daniel, an’ a C for Callaway; an’ it haves a T in the middle, Tom, for Top. I ’lowed I’d get the Top in somewheres, so I put it in atween the D an’ the C t’ have it lie snug: for I’m not wantin’ this here little Dannie t’ forget that Top was t’ the wheel in his younger days.” He turned to me, and in a voice quite broken with affection, and sadly hopeless, somehow, as I recall, “Dannie, lad,” says he, “ye’ll never forget, will ye, that Top was t’ the wheel? God bless ye, child! Well, Tom,” turning now to his shipmate, “ye’re a man much sailed t’ foreign parts, an’ ye wouldn’t think it ungenteel, would ye, for a lad like Dannie t’ wear a seal-ring? No? I’m wonderful glad o’ that. For, Tom,” says he, most earnestly, “I’m wantin’ Dannie t’ be a gentleman. He’s just got t’ be a gentleman!”

      “A gentleman, Nick?”

      “He’ve got t’ be a gentleman!”

      “You’ll never manage that, Nick Top,” says Tom Bull.

      “Not manage it!” my uncle indignantly complained. “Why, look, Tom Bull––jus’ look––at them there jools! An’ that’s on’y a poor beginnin’!”

      Tom Bull laid my hand very gingerly upon the table, as though ’twere a thing not lightly to be handled lest it fall to pieces in his grasp. He drew my left hand from my pocket and got it under the light.

      18

      “Two pearls,” says my uncle, “ ’longside a emerald. Aft o’ that you’ll be like t’ find two more di’monds. Them’s first-water Brazil, Tom.”

      Tom Bull inquiringly touched my watch-guard.

      “Eighteen karat,” says my uncle.

      Tom Bull drew the watch from its pocket and let it lie glittering in his hand; the jewels, set shyly in the midst of the chasing, glowed in the twilight of the stall.

      “Solid,” says my uncle.

      Tom Bull touched my velvet jacket with the tip of his finger.

      “Imported direck,” says