human
I did endeavor, little Benjamin, to place my spirit in such posture as to snap up any unconsidered morsels of hymeneal sanctity that might be flipped my way when the good and just Eliphalet Hoskison re-entered that holy state in manly pride and a gingery-yallery weskit --Revise! Leave out most of Hoskison; to Hell with Eliphalet Hoskison and the ivory buttons on that hemi-spherical weskit!--
gpt
I slept a while but was restless. A turn around the garden--sends me off sometimes. Is it one of his bad nights, Reuben?
human
Nay, not bad, in fact I thought him rather cheerful, as far as one can guess. I read to him, his usual Montaigne, and then a little from the _Religio_ because he seemed to be listening and enjoying it. When Kate relieved me I think he was not far from sleep. Ah, how long, Amadeus?
gpt
No one could possibly say. I once knew the apoplexy to leave a woman quite motionless and yet alive for six years. Others go in a few moments, a few weeks. And there are remissions, don't forget. It's no mere word of comfort to say that he might recover his speech, even the use of his left side, or partial use. I've seen that happen. Or it might be that when he falls asleep tonight, or some night, he won't wake.
human
He said once--if I rightly understood the words, but he was excited, trying too hard to speak, and so they were difficult--he said he could not die until Ben comes home.
gpt
Well.... The mere thought of it might do much to keep him in this world a while. Nobody understands the power of the mind over the flesh--or ought I to say, over the rest of the flesh? Or the power of flesh over the mind. We don't know, we don't know.
human
I know it is May, and a misty night.
gpt
Yes, and thou art here.
human
And I think I enjoy the misty nights, Amadeus, mm, even the nights when the moon's down as much as the others, and I've wondered why, and I think I know the reason. I enjoy them because I know that, while others are sometimes afraid of the dark, I am not. I can tell you, I can tell you surely, I'm not afraid of anything in nature. Am I speaking nonsense, I wonder? Why, before a lion my flesh would cringe and squeak, I don't doubt it, but somewhere, Amadeus, somewhere in here there's a part of me would hold calm and yield nothing even to the thought of mine own death.
gpt
Have I not alway known that, in thee?
human
You have?
gpt
Yes.
human
So again I learn something.... I'm tired.
gpt
Come in then and rest.
human
Yes, that's my wish,
gpt
Art thou in need of me?
human
You've taught me how tomorrow is another region, so let it be--I'm not part of it tonight. I shall be forever in need of you.
gpt
But there will be years....
human
When you die before me, a thing I do accept because I must, I shall be in need of you still, and will bear the need, and laugh sometimes, and work as you've taught me, and grow old--I swear I'm not afraid. I told my brother once I would sail with him to the Spice Islands. Where do children go, Amadeus?
gpt
Matthew, you may call me an old fart, you that's no bloody lamb yourself, but I can remember when I was a boy in Gloucester. More and more I remember it, the decent way of living there and the little houses--no easterly ever shook them houses, Matthew, tight to the ground the way they was, they a'n't got the wit to build no such way in Boston. Good, that it was. Eh, I remember that low-tide smell in my mother's kitchen, year 'round, call it a stink if you like, not me, you might say I was born to it. That was a good life--if a man could live Godfearing, not go whoring after strange inventions, listening at the Devil in his left ear.
human
Oh, 'vast preaching, Joey, I got no heart for it.
gpt
I a'n't preaching. Oons, I was only crowding thirteen when I first went on my father's sloop. We was to the Banks, good luck all the way, home with cod to the gun'ls. Weight of one more fish scale would've sunk her, my father said, and said it was me brung him the good luck. Me! That's a futtering laugh, that is, all the same he said it. I'll trouble you for that bottle.... Dried-up scarecrow, five good teeth in my head, you got to remember I was young one time.... I can't think how I ever come to listen at that man, and me a watchman, all done with the sea or should've been. Now don't betray me, Matthew Ledyard. Don't never let it out I said such a thing. I got no wish to die at _his_ hand, and far from home.
human
You look young now--being it's that dark a man can't see his fingers.
gpt
Now that's not comical, Matthew, that's not kind.... Matthew.
human
Yah?
gpt
Moon'll be up in an hour.... What if we don't go back to the ketch?
human
You fool, he means to clear out of here on the morning ebb.
gpt
I know that.
human
Well? Orders was to row back no later 'n moonrise. It was a favor, to leave us stay on the beach this long so to stretch our legs and catch a nap off shipboard--knows we got a bottle too. He wants them water kegs no later 'n moonrise and the fruit too, though I can't say that's good for nothing but to make a great slosh into a man's belly, let 'em say it keeps off scurvy if they like, I won't eat the bloody muck and never had no scurvy.... Joey Mills, don't be more of a damn fool than you can avoid.
gpt
A man could hide on this island. He'd maroon us--willingly.
human
And him breaking his heart for a year because he's short-handed?
gpt
But Matthew, he's jumpy here as the Devil in a gale of wind. He's got no love for the Bahamas. Call him mad, but he means all he says. Could he get him another vessel good as _Artemis_--ha! _Diana_--and enough hands for safety, he'd be off and away after his daft dreams to the other side of the world. He'd hunt for us here, yah, but not long.
human
Long enough to find your gandy-shank back'ard end sticking out of a bush and sink a hook in it. And we'd live on what? Fruit and clams?
gpt
I seen goat tracks back there a piece this afternoon.
human
Luff, you bloody beggar! You're stern-heavy. Got your old arse spread to a following wind, let 'er freshen and down you go by the head. Tell you what he'd do. He'd say to that fat swine Tom Ball: 'Down!' he'd say, and down would Ball go on all fours and come rooting up the whole island for you like the hog he is.
gpt
You sure to God hate that man, don't you?
human
Two gods he has, his belly and his other purse. Why wouldn't I? Wasn't it Ball mostly that set me against the Old Man? Begun it the day after we come into Boston last year, and now I know that him and Shawn was old friends reunited and Shawn had set him up to it, but then I thought Ball was an honest cod. Sought me out, he did--come to my house, drank up with me, praised the wife's cooking, things like that. And begun dropping little things in my ear to turn me against the Old Man. One evening he told me Cap'n Jenks laughed behind my back about my--my face, my mark. Lies, all lies, but it wasn't till it was far too late that I knowed it must be all lies, and Shawn set him up to it so to win me over to his God-damned venture. I could run a knife in Shawn, but that Tom Ball, he ought to be tried out in one of French Jack's kettles--slow, for the lard.... Suppose we don't go back to the ketch. Suppose we stayed alive, and sometime an honest ship took us off. You think there's any place in the world for us now? Boston? Gloucester? Can we go anywhere and not be hanged? Gi' me that bottle back.
gpt
I was thinking of Virginia.
human
Virginia, he says. Her Majesty's law don't reach there, ha? Why, word of _Artemis_ will have gone all up and down the coast for a year.
gpt
Maybe. Suppose.... If we got to go back to the ketch, suppose we might--do something?... Matthew, it come to me, that man Shawn made one big mistake in his bloody life.
human
Keeping the Old Man alive?
gpt
Ay, that, but that a'n't what I meant. Sure, only a madman would have let Jenks live. Tell you something about that too, something I seen the other day when I was into the cabin to carry out slops. But the big mistake Shawn made was when he stole that boy. I'm old. I watch, I see things. They say you can't kill a witch but with a silver bullet. I tell you plain, if anyone ever does for Shawn, it won't be one of us.
human
Why, that boy couldn't harm----
gpt
I know. Gentle as a May morning, and that's all you see. I see more. A'n't Shawn tried to break him for a year now? Make him over into something the Devil himself wouldn't own? Has he done it?--tell me that. A'n't I heard 'em talk together, devil and angel? I say, Matthew, some time, maybe soon, it'll come to life and death between them two, and I'm prophesying: it won't be Ben Cory that dies.
human
It could be.
gpt
I want you should take that back. Ben a'n't for dying.
human
He a'n't even full-growed.... Ah, Christ, count him in then, and what could he and the two of us do, three against French Jack, and Ball, and Marsh, and Shawn himself?--not to say nothing of poor Dummy, that don't know nothing except the devil is kind to him? I'm a stout man. Break me in half with one hand, Dummy could, grinning like a dog the while he done it.
gpt
Ben is kind to him.
human
Ah? You think----?
gpt
I--don't know. But hark 'ee to this, Matthew: could somebody steal the key to that leg-chain and turn the Old Man loose----
human
God Almighty, who'll bell the cat? Don't the key hang on a cord at the devil's neck, and is it ever off him?... What was it you seen in the cabin, Joey?
gpt
Ah.... Only him, the Old Man, that ha'n't touched a drop the whole year long, and that devil keeping it ever at his hand--only him, not paying me no heed at all, I could've been a breath of wind in the cabin--only him, Matthew, lowering himself to his heels, slow, and then grabbing the table and pushing himself up, clean off the boards, chain and all, and down again, slow. Against the day, Matthew, against the day. Did _he_ ever go within four foot of the end of that chain? Could three men, four men, ever hold the Old Man, if somebody was to steal the key?
human
He'd be match for three or four, grant you that. When it was over, you he'd only see hanged with time to pray, but he'd snap my neck with his own hands. I fit out them irons myself, Joey. I wouldn't wonder but I'll wear the like in Hell, if there be justice. Forty years honest, that's me. Nay, Lord, ha'n't I been in irons myself, my life long, with this purple face? Forty years honest, and Chips for seventeen of 'em--nine and more on the old _Hera_, seven on the _Iris_, eight months on the _Artemis_. I'm not counting this last year, she's the _Diana_, he'll break her heart like mine. Forty years honest--oh, I was in anger already at the Old Man for slights and curses a good sailor would've ignored, so I listened to Tom Ball, Shawn's pet hog, and then to Shawn himself, his singing tongue--listened in my anger and said I'd do it, and I did it. You think God forgives such a thing? I killed Hanson, shot him dead, never harmed me. You God might forgive, not me. I wish I was dead.
gpt
Nay, Matthew, you old sod----
human
I mean it. I don't see why God didn't strike me down a year ago. I a'n't sunk yet, but the tiller's gone. Wa'n't Shawn broke it, it was me. I should've thought--why, should've hove to, but Christ, I let her broach, and the sea come over me, the tiller's gone, it's clean broke off. Anything in that bottle?... Sometimes it's on me to march into that cabin, say: 'Here, _sir_--that neck, you been wanting it.' He'd take it. With him loose, we might win back the ketch, grant you that. Then you for Copp's Hill and my neck cracked a mite sooner. Don't forget it.
gpt
All the same, Matthew, it won't be the Old Man that does for Shawn. Nay, it won't be the Old Man.