Robert Michael Ballantyne - The Garret and the Garden; Or, Low Life High Up

In the midst of the great wilderness—we might almost say the wilds—of that comparatively unknown region which lies on the Surrey side of the Thames, just above London Bridge, there sauntered one fine day a big bronzed seaman of middle age. He turned into an alley, down which, nautically speaking, he rolled into a shabby little court. There he stood still for a few seconds and looked around him as if in quest of something.

It was a miserable poverty-stricken court, with nothing to commend it to the visitor save a certain air of partial-cleanliness and semi-respectability, which did not form a feature of the courts in its neighbourhood.

“I say, Capting,” remarked a juvenile voice close at hand, “you’ve bin an sailed into the wrong port.”

The sailor glanced in all directions, but was unable to see the owner of the voice until a slight cough—if not a suppressed laugh—caused him to look up, when he perceived the sharp, knowing, and dirty face of a small boy, who calmly contemplated him from a window not more than a foot above his head. Fun, mischief, intelligence, precocity sat enthroned on the countenance of that small boy, and suffering wrinkled his young brow.

“How d’ee know I’m in the wrong port—monkey?” demanded the sailor.

“’Cause there ain’t no grog-shop in it—gorilla!” retorted the boy.

There is a mysterious but well-known power of attraction between kindred spirits which induces them to unite, like globules of quicksilver, at the first moment of contact. Brief as was this interchange of politenesses, it sufficed to knit together the souls of the seaman and the small boy. A mutual smile, nod, and wink sealed, as it were, the sudden friendship.

“Come now, younker,” said the sailor, thrusting his hands into his coat-pockets, and leaning a little forward with legs well apart, as if in readiness to counteract the rolling of the court in a heavy sea, “there’s no occasion for you an’ me to go beatin’ about—off an’ on. Let’s come to close quarters at once. I haven’t putt in here to look for no grog-shop—”

“W’ich I didn’t say you ’ad,” interrupted the boy.

“No more you did, youngster. Well, what I dropped in here for was to look arter an old woman.”

“If you’d said a young ’un, now, I might ’ave b’lieved you,” returned the pert urchin.

“You may believe me, then, for I wants a young ’un too.”

“Well, old salt,” rejoined the boy, resting his ragged arms on the window-sill, and looking down on the weather-beaten man with an expression of patronising interest, “you’ve come to the right shop, anyhow, for that keemodity. In Lun’on we’ve got old women by the thousand, an’ young uns by the million, to say nuffin o’ middle-aged uns an’ chicks. Have ’ee got a partikler pattern in yer eye, now, or d’ee on’y want samples?”

“What’s your name, lad?” asked the sailor.

“That depends, old man. If a beak axes me, I’ve got a wariety o’ names, an’ gives ’im the first as comes to ’and. W’en a gen’leman axes me, I’m more partikler—I makes a s’lection.”

“Bein’ neither a beak nor a gentleman, lad, what would you say your name was to me ?”

“Tommy Splint,” replied the boy promptly. “Splint, ’cause w’en I was picked up, a small babby, at the work’us door, my left leg was broke, an’ they ’ad to putt it up in splints; Tommy, ’cause they said I was like a he-cat; w’ich was a lie!”

“Is your father alive, Tommy?”

“’Ow should I know? I’ve got no father nor mother—never had none as I knows on; an’ what’s more, I don’t want any. I’m a horphing, I am, an’ I prefers it. Fathers an’ mothers is often wery aggrawatin’; they’re uncommon hard to manage w’en they’re bad, an’ a cause o’ much wexation an’ worry to child’n w’en they’re good; so, on the whole, I think we’re better without ’em. Chimleypot Liz is parent enough for me.”

“And who may chimney-pot Liz be?” asked the sailor with sudden interest.

“H’m!” returned the boy with equally sudden caution and hesitancy. “I didn’t say chimney-pot but chimley-pot Liz. W’at is she? W’y, she’s the ugliest old ooman in this great meetropilis, an’ she’s got the jolliest old ’art in Lun’on. Her skin is wrinkled equal to the ry-nossris at the Zoo—I seed that beast once at a Sunday-school treat—an’ her nose has been tryin’ for some years past to kiss her chin, w’ich it would ’ave managed long ago, too, but for a tooth she’s got in the upper jaw. She’s on’y got one; but, my, that is a fang! so loose that you’d expect it to be blowed out every time she coughs. It’s a reg’lar grinder an’ cutter an’ stabber all in one; an’ the way it works—sometimes in the mouth, sometimes outside the lip, now an’ then straight out like a ship’s bowsprit—is most amazin’; an’ she drives it about like a nigger slave. Gives it no rest. I do declare I wouldn’t be that there fang for ten thousand a year. She’s got two black eyes, too, has old Liz, clear an’ bright as beads—fit to bore holes through you w’en she ain’t pleased; and er nose is ooked—. But, I say, before I tell you more about ’er, I wants to know wot you’ve got to do with ’er? An’ w’at’s your name? I’ve gave you mine. Fair exchange, you know.”

“True, Tommy, that’s only right an’ fair. But I ain’t used to lookin’ up when discoorsin’. Couldn’t you come down here an’ lay alongside?”

“No, old salt, I couldn’t; but you may come up here if you like. You’ll be the better of a rise in the world, won’t you? The gangway lays just round the corner; but mind your sky-scraper for the port’s low. There’s a seat in the winder here. Go ahead; starboard your helm, straight up, then ’ard-a-port, steady, mind your jib-boom, splice the main-brace, heave the main-deck overboard, and cast anchor ’longside o’ me!”

Following these brief directions as far as was practicable, the sailor soon found himself on the landing of the stair, where Tommy was seated on a rickety packing-case awaiting him.

“Now, lad,” said the man, seating himself beside his new friend, “from what you tells me, I think that chimney-pot—”

“Chimley,” remarked the boy, correcting.

“Well, then, chimley-pot Liz, from your account of her, must be the very woman I wants. I’ve sought for her far an’ wide, alow and aloft, an’ bin directed here an’ there an’ everywhere, except the right where, ’till now. But I’ll explain.” The man paused a moment as if to consider, and it became evident to the boy that his friend was labouring under some degree of excitement, which he erroneously put down to drink.

“My name,” continued the sailor, “is Sam Blake—second mate o’ the Seacow , not long in from China. I didn’t ship as mate. Bein’ a shipwrecked seaman, you see—”

“Shipwrecked!” exclaimed the boy, with much interest expressed in his sharp countenance.

“Ay, lad, shipwrecked; an’ not the first time neither, but I was keen to get home, havin’ bin kep’ a prisoner for an awful long spell by pirates—”

“Pints!” interrupted the boy again, as he gazed in admiration at his stalwart friend; “but,” he added, “I don’t believe you. It’s all barn. There ain’t no pints now; an’ you think you’ve got hold of a green un.”

“Tommy!” said the sailor in a remonstrative tone, “did I ever deceive you?”