A Master Of Craft. William Wymark Jacobs

I’ll come with you, if you like,” he said, slowly.

      “And suppose they go away and leave you, behind?” objected Mrs. Tipping.

      “Oh, well, you’d better stay then,” said the mate, wearily, “unless we take a couple of the hands with us. How would that suit you? They can’t sail with half a crew.”

      Mrs. Tipping, who was by no means as anxious for a sea voyage as she tried to make out, carefully pondered the situation. “I’m going to take an arm of each of ‘em and Matilda’ll take yours,” she said, at length.

      “As you please,” said Fraser, and in this way the procession actually started up the wharf, and looking back indignantly over its shoulder saw the watchman and Ben giving way to the most unseemly mirth, while the cook capered joyously behind them. A belated cab was passing the gate as they reached it, and in response to the mate’s hail pulled sharply up.

      Mrs. Tipping, pushing her captives in first, stepped heavily into the cab followed by her daughter, while the mate, after a brief discussion, clambered onto the box.

      “Go on,” he said, nodding.

      “Wot, ain’t the rest of you comin’?” enquired the cabman, eyeing the crowd at the gate, in pained surprise.

      “No. 17, Beaufort Street, Bow,” said Mrs. Tipping, distinctly, as she put her head out of the window.

      “You could sit on ‘er lap,” continued the cabman, appealingly.

      No reply being vouchsafed to this suggestion, he wrapped himself up in various rugs and then sat down suddenly before they could unwind themselves. Then, with a compassionate “click” to his horse, started up the road. Except for a few chance wayfarers and an occasional coffee-stall, the main streets were deserted, but they were noisy compared with Beaufort Street. Every house was in absolute darkness as the cab, with instinctive deference to slumber, crawled slowly up and down looking for No. 17.

      It stopped at last, and the mate, springing down, opened the door, and handing out the ladies, led the way up a flight of steps to the street door.

      “Perhaps you won’t mind knocking,” he said to Mrs. Tipping, “and don’t forget to tell the cap’n I’ve done this to oblige you because you insisted upon it.”

      Mrs. Tipping, seizing the knocker, knocked loud and long, and after a short interval repeated the performance. Somebody was heard stirring upstairs, and a deep voice cried out that it was coming, and peremptorily requested them to cease knocking.

      “That’s not Flower’s voice,” said Fraser.

      “Not loud enough,” said Miss Tipping.

      The bolts were drawn back loudly and the chain grated; then the door was flung open, and a big, red-whiskered man, blinking behind a candle, gruffly enquired what they meant by it.

      “Come inside,” said Mrs. Tipping to her following.

      “Ain’t you come to the wrong house?” demanded the red-whiskered man, borne slowly back by numbers.

      “I don’t think so,” said Mrs. Tipping, suavely; “I want to see Captain Flower.”

      “Well, you’ve come to the wrong house,” said the red-whiskered man, shortly, “there’s no such name here.”

      “Think,” said Mrs. Tipping.

      The red-whiskered man waved the candle to and fro until the passage was flecked with tallow.

      “Go away directly,” he roared; “how dare you come disturbing people like this?”

      “You may just as well be pleasant over it,” said Mrs. Tipping, severely; “because we sha’n’t go away until we have seen him. After all, it’s got nothing to do with you.”

      “We don’t want anything to say to you,” affirmed her daughter.

      “Will—you—get—out—of—my—house?” demanded the owner, wildly.

      “When we’ve seen Capt’n Flower,” said Mrs. Tipping, calmly, “and not a moment before. We don’t mind your getting in a temper, not a bit. You can’t frighten us.”

      The frenzied and reckless reply of the red-whiskered man was drowned in the violent slamming of the street-door, and he found himself alone with the ladies. There was a yell of triumph outside, and the sounds of a hurried scramble down the steps. Mrs. Tipping, fumbling wildly at the catch of the door, opened it just in time to see the cabman, in reply to the urgent entreaties of the mate, frantically lashing his horse up the road.

      “So far, so good,” murmured the mate, as he glanced over his shoulder at the little group posing on the steps. “I’ve done the best I could, but I suppose there’ll be a row.”

      The watchman, with the remainder of the crew, in various attitudes of expectant curiosity, were waiting to receive them at the wharf. A curiosity which increased in intensity as the mate, slamming the gate, put the big bar across and turned to the watchman.

      “Don’t open that to anybody till we’re off,” he said, sharply. “Cap’n Flower has not turned up yet, I suppose?”

      “No, sir,” said Ben.

      They went aboard the schooner again, and the mate, remaining on deck, listened anxiously for the return of the redoubtable Mrs. Tipping, occasionally glancing over the side in expectation of being boarded from the neighbouring stairs; but with the exception of a false alarm caused by two maddened seamen unable to obtain admittance, and preferring insulting charges of somnolency against the watchman, the time passed quietly until high water. With the schooner in midstream slowly picking her way through the traffic, any twinges of remorse that he might have had for the way he had treated two helpless women left him, and he began to feel with his absent commander some of the charm which springs from successful wrong-doing.

      CHAPTER VII

      He brought up off Greenwich in the cold grey of the breaking day. Craft of all shapes and sizes were passing up and down, but he looked in vain for any sign of the skipper. It was galling to him as a seaman to stay there with the wind blowing freshly down the river; but over an hour elapsed before a yell from Tim, who was leaning over the bows, called his attention to a waterman’s skiff, in the stern of which sat a passenger of somewhat dejected appearance. He had the air of a man who had been up all night, and in place of returning the hearty and significant greeting of the mate, sat down in an exhausted fashion on the cabin skylight, and eyed him in stony silence until they were under way again.

      “Well,” he said at length, ungraciously.

      Chilled by his manner, Fraser, in place of the dramatic fashion in which he had intended to relate the events of the preceding night, told him in a few curt sentences what had occurred. “And you can finish this business for yourself,” he concluded, warmly; “I’ve had enough of it.”

      “You’ve made a pretty mess of it,” groaned the other; “there’ll be a fine set-out now. Why couldn’t you coax ‘em away? That’s what I wanted you to do. That’s what I told you to do.”