Hocken and Hunken Part 1

Hocken and Hunken.

by A. T. Quiller-Couch.

BOOK I.

CHAPTER I.

CAPTAIN CAI HAULS ASh.o.r.e.

"Well, _that's_ over!"

Captain Caius Hocken, from the stern-sheets of the boat bearing him sh.o.r.eward, slewed himself half-about for a look back at his vessel, the _Hannah Hoo_ barquentine. This was a ticklish operation, because he wore a tall silk hat and had allowed his hair to grow during the pa.s.sage home--St. Michael's to Liverpool with a cargo of oranges, and from Liverpool around to Troy in charge of a tug.

"I'm wonderin' what 'twill feel like when it comes to my turn," mused his mate Mr Tregaskis, likewise pensively contemplating the _Hannah Hoo_. "Not to be sure, sir, as I'd compare the two cases; me bein' a married man, and you--as they say--with the s.h.i.+p for wife all these years, and children too."

"I never liked the life, notwithstandin'," confessed the Captain.

"And I'll be fifty come Michaelmas. Isn' that enough?"

"n.o.body likes it, sir; not at our age. But all the same I reckon there be compensations." Mr Tregaskis, shading his eyes (for the day was sunny), let his gaze travel up the spars and rigging of the Barquentine--up to the truck of her maintopmast, where a gull had perched itself and stood with tail pointing like a vane. "If the truth were known, maybe your landsman on an average don't do as he chooses any more than we mariners."

"Tut, man!" The Captain, who held the tiller, had ceased to look aft.

His eyes were on the quay and the small town climbing the hillside above it in tier upon tier of huddled grey houses. "Why, damme!

Your landsman chooses to live ash.o.r.e, to begin with. What's more, he can walk where he has a mind to, no matter where the wind sits."

Mr Tregaskis shook his head. Having no hat, he was able to do this, and it gave him some dialectical advantage over his skipper.

"In practice, sir, you'd find it depend on who's left to mind the shop."

"Home's home, all the same," said Captain Cai positively, thrusting over the tiller to round in for the landing-stairs. "I was born and reared in Troy, d'ye see? and as the sayin' goes--Steady on!"

A small schooner, the _Pure Gem_ of Padstow, had warped out from the quay overnight after discharging her ballast with the usual disregard of the Harbour Commissioners' bye-laws; and a number of ponderable stones, now barely covered by the tide, enc.u.mbered the foot of the landing.

On one of these the boat caught her heel, with a jerk that flung the two oarsmen sprawling and toppled Captain Hocken's tall hat over his nose.

Mr Tregaskis thrust out a hand to catch it, but in too great a haste.

The impact of his finger-tips on the edge of the crown sent the hat spinning forward over the thwart whereon sprawled Ben Price, the stroke oar, and into the lap of Nathaniel Berry, bowman.

Nathaniel Berry, recovering his balance, rescued the headgear from the grip of his knees, gave it a polite brush the wrong way of the nap, and pa.s.sed it aft to Ben Price. Ben--a bald-headed but able seaman--eyed it a moment, rubbed it the right way dubiously with his elbow, and handed it on to the mate; who in turn smoothed it with the palm of his hand, which--being an alert obliging man--he had dexterously wetted overside before the Captain could stop him.

"That's no method to improve a hat," said Captain Hocken shortly, s.n.a.t.c.hing it and wiping it with his handkerchief. He peered into it and pushed out a dent with his thumb. "The way this harbour's allowed to shoal is nothing short of a national disgrace!"

He improved on this condemnation as, having pushed clear and brought his boat safely alongside, he climbed the steps and met the Quaymaster, who advanced to greet him with an ingratiating smile.

"--A scandal to the civilised world! _There's_ a way to stack ballast, now! Look at it, sproiled about the quay-edge like a skittle-alley in a cyclone! But that has been your fas.h.i.+on, Peter Bussa, ever since I knowed 'ee, and 'Nigh enough' your motto."

"You've no idea, Cap'n Cai, the hard I work to keep this blessed quay tidy."

"Work? Ay--like a pig's tail, I believe: goin' all day, and still in a twist come night."

"Chide away--chide away, now! But you're welcome home for all that, Cap'n Cai,--welcome as a man's heart to his body."

Captain Cai relaxed his frown. After all, 'twas good to return and find the little town running on just as he left it, even down to Quaymaster Bussa and his dandering ways. Yes, there stood the ancient crane with its broken-cogged winch--his own initials, carved with his first clasp-knife, would be somewhere on the beam; and the heap of sand beside it differed nothing from the heap on which he and his fellows had pelted one another forty years ago. Certainly the two bollards--the one broken, the other leaning aslant--were the same over which he and they had played leap-frog. Yes, and yonder, in the arcade supporting the front of the "King of Prussia," was Long Mitch.e.l.l leaning against his usual pillar; and there, on the bench before the Working Men's Inst.i.tute, sat the trio of septuagenarians--Un' Barnicoat, Roper Vine, Old Cap'n Tom--and sunned themselves; inseparables, who seldom exchanged a remark, and never but in terms and tones of inveterate contempt.

Facing them in his doorway lounged the town barber, under his striped pole and sign-board--"_Simeon Toy, Hairdresser_," with the s's still twiddling the wrong way; and beyond, outside the corner-shop, Mr Rogers, s.h.i.+p-broker and s.h.i.+p-chandler--half paralytic but cunning yet,--sat hunched in his invalid chair, blinking; for all the world like a wicked old spider on the watch for flies.

"Ahoy, there!" Captain Cai hailed, and made across at once for the invalid chair: for Mr Rogers was his man of business. "Lost no time in reportin' myself, you see."

Mr Rogers managed to lift his hand a little way to meet Captain Cai's grasp. "Eh? Eh? I've been moored here since breakfast on the look-out for 'ee." He spoke indistinctly by reason of his paralysis.

"They brought word early that the _Hannah Hoo_ was in, and I gave orders straight away for a biled leg o' mutton--_with_ capers--_an'_ spring cabbage. Twelve-thirty we sit down to it, it that suits?"

"Thank 'ee, I should just say it _did_ suit! . . . You got my last letter, posted from the Azores?"

"To be sure I did. I've taken the two houses for 'ee, what's more, an'

the leases be drawn ready to sign. . . . But where's your friend?

He'll be welcome too--that is, if you don't hold three too many for a leg o' mutton?"

"'Bias Hunken? . . . You didn't reckon I was bringing him along with me, did you?"

"I reckoned nothin' at all, not knowin' the man."

"Well, he's at West Indy Docks, London,--or was, a week ago. I saw it on 'The s.h.i.+pping Gazette' two days before we left the Mersey: the _I'll Away_, from New Orleans; barquentine, and for shape in tonnage might be own sister to the _Hannah Hoo_; but soft wood and Salcombe built.

I was half fearing 'Bias might get down to Troy ahead of me."

"He hasn't reported himself to _me_, anyway. . . . But we'll talk about him and other things later on."

Mr Rogers dismissed the subject as the Quaymaster came sidling up to join them. Mild gossip was a pa.s.sion with the Quaymaster, and eavesdropping his infirmity.

"Well, Cap'n Cai, and so you've hauled ash.o.r.e--and for good, if I hear true?"

"For good it is, please G.o.d," answered Captain Cai, lifting his hat at the word. He was a simple man and a pious.

"And a householder you've become already, by all accounts. I don't set much store by Town Quay talk as a rule--"

"That's right," interrupted Mr Rogers. "There's no man ought to know its worth better than you, that sets most of it goin'."

"They _do_ say as you've started by leasin' the two cottages in Harbour Terrace."

"Do they?" Captain Cai glanced at the s.h.i.+p-chandler for confirmation.

"Well, then, I hope it is true."

"'Tis nothing of the sort," snapped Mr Rogers. Seeing how Captain Cai's face fell, he added, "I may be wrong, o' course, but I reckon there was _two_ tenants, and they wanted a cottage apiece."

"Ah, to be sure!" agreed the honest captain, visibly relieved.

But the Quaymaster persisted. "Yes, yes; there was talk of a friend o'

yours, an' that you two were for settin' up house alongside one another.

Hunken was the name, if I remember?"

Again Captain Cai glanced at the s.h.i.+p-chandler. He was plainly puzzled, as the s.h.i.+p-chandler was plainly nettled. But he answered simply--