William Bowen - The Old Tobacco Shop

It is painful to have to tell these things, but it can't be helped; for the consequences were so strange, and so important to Freddie and his friends, that —

Anyway, he lit the pipe and drew in a long breath through the stem. He nearly choked to death. Smoke got into his nose and his eyes and his throat, and he coughed and coughed; but he remembered the words, "Fight manfully onward," and he determined that he would not give up so soon. He stopped coughing and pulled again at the pipe; this time he did not swallow the smoke, but blew it out of his mouth as he had seen it done a thousand times. He gave another pull, and blew the smoke out again; it did indeed taste like brown sugar; it was extremely pleasant; he puffed again and again. He was astonished that he could have produced so much smoke in a few whiffs; there was quite a cloud over his head. He gave another puff, and when he blew out the smoke the white cloud above him was so thick that he could not see through it. It began to settle down on him. He put the Chinaman's head on the floor, and looked up into this cloud.

It was growing thicker and thicker, and it was beginning to churn about as if in a whirlwind; it turned all sorts of colours, mostly yellow and green, and parts of it looked like barber's poles revolving at a terrific speed. He became dizzy as he gazed at it; his head began to swim; the cloud was coming down closer and closer upon him, and whirling about more and more wildly; he crouched down lower, and became dizzier and dizzier. The counter and the shelves began to go round and round, so that he had to put his hand on the floor to steady himself; in another moment the shop disappeared altogether, and there was nothing under him but a little square of floor, and nothing over him but the wild, churning cloud, now sparkling with jets of fire. He felt himself falling, falling, and as he came to the bottom with a crash, he heard the shop door open and close, and found himself sitting on the floor with his back to the counter as before, with no smoke anywhere to be seen; and he was aware that a hoarse voice was speaking on the other side of the counter, and it was saying these words, very loud and brisk:

"Avast, there! Belay that piping! All snug, sir, hatches battened down, makin' way under skysails and royals, hands piped to quarters, and here's your humble servant ready for orders! Shiver my timbers, where's the skipper? Piped me up with a 'baccy pipe, he did, and where's he gone? Skipper ahoy! Come for orders, I be, and ever yours to command, Lemuel Mizzen! That's me!"

Freddie put the pipe down on the floor, rose to his feet, and looked over the counter.

Leaning on his elbow on the other side of the counter was a Sailorman, with a wide blue collar open at the throat, a flat blue cap with a black ribbon on the back of his head, and a green patch over his right eye.

Freddie looked at the Sailorman, and the Sailorman straightened up and touched his cap. His face was brown as weathered oak, and creased like bark; his one eye was black and glittering; the hand which he raised to his cap was of the shape and nearly the size of a ham; and the chest and throat which emerged from his wide-open shirt-collar was as brown as his face, and big with muscles. There was a delicious odour of tar about him; you positively could not look at him without hearing wind whistling through ropes. He hitched up his trousers with his other hand and said:

"Ay, ay, skipper! Here I be as big as life, all ready fer orders!"

As Freddie gazed at him, the Little Boy slowly collected his wits, and a light began to dawn upon him.

"Have you been to China?" said he.

"Right-o!" cried the Sailorman. "To China I have been – " in a queer sing-song, as if he might have been marching in time to it round a capstan, hauling in an anchor: "To China I have been, and a many ports I've seen, near and far; I can sail before the mast or behind it just as fast, I'm a tar, I'm a tar, I'm a tar!"

Freddie continued to stare at him with increasing astonishment.

"Are you a sailor, sir?" said he.

"Wot, me? I'm Lemuel Mizzen, A.B., that's me, and I sail the deep blue sea from Maine to Afrikee, and round again on an even keel to Cochin China for cochineal, and back to Chili for Chili sauce, and home again to Banbury Cross – that's me! Lemuel Mizzen, able seaman! Fed on hard tack or soft tack, or a starboard tack or a port tack, it's all the same to me! Now then, skipper, you piped me up, wot's the orders?"

"Please, sir," said Freddie, "would you mind telling me what it is you would like to have?"

" Me? Douse my binnacle light, wot I want is a chew o' terbacker; but the question before the chart-house is, wot do you want, skipper?"

"I don't want anything," said Freddie.

"Wot? You piped me up, didn't you? Piped me up with a pipe?"

"No, sir," said Freddie.

"Sorry to entertain a different opinion from the skipper! Didn't you smoke the Chinaman's 'baccy, in a pipe?"

"Yes, sir," said Freddie, hanging his head.

"Then you did pipe me up with a pipe, and I hope I knows better than to come aft without bein' piped. Didn't you know I've got to come when you smoke the pipe with the Chinaman's 'baccy in it?"

"No, sir," said Freddie.

The Able Seaman fixed his black eye on Freddie in amazement.

"Well, bust my locker if this ain't the – Beggin' your pardon, skipper, and no offense meant! Called me off from the China Sea, and don't want me after all! Didn't go fer to do it, not him! And me off in the China Sea amongst the Boxers, a-v'yaging hither and thither to pick up a cargo o' boxes to box compasses with! Ye've brought me a fair long journey fer nothin', skipper!"

"I'm very sorry, sir," said Freddie, "I didn't know you had to come when the Chinaman's tobacco was smoked. Are you the one that brought that tobacco here?"

"Ay, ay! That's me! Lemuel Mizzen, A.B.! And a fine long trip from the China Sea, to come to a lad in Amerikee when I hears in my ears the skipper's call, and all fer nothin' at all, at all! Ain't you got nothin' to offer in extenuation?"

Freddie did not know what "extenuation" meant, but he could see by the Sailorman's face that that gentleman was a good deal put out. He remembered that Mr. Mizzen wanted a chew of tobacco.

"Would a little tobacco make you feel better?" said he.

"Now you've got yer hand on the right rope!" said the Able Seaman, his face brightening. "I don't smoke. I chew. If you're goin' to offer a bit of a chew, why then, says I, I don't care if I do."

Freddie took a long plug of chewing tobacco from the shelf behind him. He knew that Mr. Toby would not mind making a little gift to the sailorman after his long journey. He put the plug under the cutter on the counter, and was about to press down the handle, to cut off a portion, when the Able Seaman hitched up his trousers and said:

"Belay there, skipper! Put the whole cargo aboard! This here craft needs ballast; hoist her over the side!" And he reached out his hand for the whole plug of tobacco and took it from Freddie, and gnawed off a corner with his teeth.

"Ah!" said he, his right cheek bulging out. "Too much ballast to starboard." And he gnawed off another corner, so that his left cheek bulged out like his right.

"All snug!" said he. "I'll just pay fer my cargo before I set sail, with a bit of a draft on the owners, in a manner of speakin'. Here y'are, sir. Stow that bit o' paper in yer sea-chest, and it'll come in handy one o' these days. Pay as you go, says I."

He placed in Freddie's hand a folded sheet of soiled paper. It was greasy with handling, and was evidently very old; it was folded small and tight, and was beginning to break with age at the creases. On the outside, it was blank; but there might have been writing inside.