human
Your pardon, sir?
gpt
I was saying Mr. Jenks had three daughters, Faith, Hope and Charity. Hope died as an infant. Charity's but a young thing....
human
Faith is--charming, I thought.
gpt
She is, said Uncle John with total dryness.
human
Ben, I wish your opinion of that fat man, that new bosun Tom Ball.
gpt
My opinion? Flattered and flustered, Ben drew his wits away from the dream of Faith.
human
He's short of words certainly, Uncle John. He only showed me about the deck while you was engaged with Mr. Dyckman, and I don't recall he said more than half a dozen words, and that in so thick a talk--Devon, isn't it?--I missed much of it. That's not fat, Uncle John, that's mostly brawn, I believe.... I don't like it, sir, when a man stares at me long without winking. They say it's the candid way, but I feel more as if he was defying me to call him a liar.
gpt
Eh, Benjamin, you're somewhat sharp. I don't like him either, but Mr. Jenks calls him a good sailor. Ay, Devon, where my father was born--within sound of the Channel, he used to say, and could speak of the old country pleasantly when he was not laying about him as the Lord's own interpreter and flail....
human
You said Mr. Jenks never visits about ashore?
gpt
Mph!... Ben, when you're a man grown, should you find yourself a little too fond of drink, I suggest you resist it, even sometimes at cost of being named a poor thing, canting killjoy or whatever. 'Tis a matter of being your own man. Should you find--by your own judgment, boy--that drinking interferes with that, don't drink. Did you like Mr. Shawn?
human
Yes, sir, I did like him, very much. Are you telling me indirectly, Uncle John, that Captain Jenks----?
gpt
I am. Mr. Kenny halted his gray gelding on a rise of ground.
human
I like to pause here, Ben, where you see only the roofs and little threads of smoke.... Yes, he's something a slave to it, though never aboard ship. At sea he allows his men the ration and not a drop for himself. But ashore he must fall into another sea, of liquor--drifting, helpless, I don't know what stops him from sinking altogether. Blameth it on the moon and tides--his fancy. He told me once how in the dark times of the moon at sea he goes near mad with need of it but won't yield--then I dare say it'll go hard with every man aboard. The moon's his friend in some manner--he's well enough when she's waxing full, sad and bitten by his need when she waneth, noticed it a thousand times. I told him who Artemis was in the legends of the Greeks, virgin huntress and goddess of the moon. He was pleased, and turned on my ketch a newly loving eye. A troubled man, Benjamin. Knoweth well what is right, but no one ever tells him, no preacher or any other. Having shaken hands with him at last, I dare say you can imagine why few would undertake it.
gpt
My hand still aches.... Sir, do you think that if I--I mean when I go to Harvard, I shall know what I wish to do, that is for a life's work?
human
I trust so, Ben. And was that all? Ben wondered--was that all the old man would say? A gust of wind full of the sea smell blew across Ben's shoulder and sent a last year's oak leaf scurrying down the road. The wind's embrace was cold, the leaf a reminder of autumn in the flood of spring.
gpt
You know I concur in the wish your father expressed in his last moments: you and Reuben must acquire learning. But then the decision must be with you. If you should decide to take up my affairs when I'm done with 'em, why, I'll be pleased, more perhaps I shouldn't say. Trade, commerce--it's not dull, Ben, so long as one keeps the wit alive with a private philosophy. Our holy friends make great show of despising it, the while it keeps them and the rest of us fed and clothed. It might not suit Reuben--well well, let time work a little on it, boy.... If you should come to see it that way, remember ships are the thing, and there our dirty Boston's got 'em all by the nose. Never be a port in the Americas to match her, never.
human
What about Newport?
gpt
Pretty little harbor. I hear they never let anybody piss off the docks--afraid of flooding it, you know. Now New York might come to something one day, if they ever find the wit to use what nature gave 'em. Like you to see New York some time, maybe after the war, the way the river comes down wide and grand past miles of cliffs on the west. Nothing like it in New England nor Old England neither. Clean, wondrous blue--Jenks told me once 'tis good as well water above the tides. He took a sloop of mine up to Albany once, years ago. Well, poor Jenks! He'll be into the second or third tankard by now, scarce giving that slave wench time to lift off his boots. Yes, the troubled men--seekers and dreamers and friends of the moon, a little mad, and minds grown wise before their time like your sweet brother's--I don't pretend to understand 'em, Ben, the way I think you and I understand each other. I suppose they engender a great share of the sorrow in the world. What a place it might be without 'em! In a world without 'em I swear I'd die of boredom before I was hanged.
human
She is fair. When we saw her a-building up the river and climbed about on her naked ribs, that was different, Ru. Now she's alive, even at the wharf you feel it. She's only waiting to meet the winds again.
gpt
You'd marry the sea if you could. Come here to the window and look down. Something else is fair. Still light enough if you look sharp. The apple--nay, I mean the little new one, that Rob set out the first year we came here. It's budded, for the first time.
human
So it is. Will Rob let 'em ripen this year, I wonder?
gpt
I dare say not.... So you've met the great Jenks at last.
human
Never shake hands with him. Remember the bosun Joe Day? Died at the Indies--smallpox, Mr. Dyckman said. I was fond of Joe Day--made me think of Jesse Plum, the tales he could tell.... What's Kate contriving that smells so good all over the house?
gpt
Roast goose, O wanderer.
human
And what's up with Hibbs? Ha'n't seen him since I got home.
gpt
Sulking. Benjamin, stand forth! You ask me, what of Gideon Hibbs; you ask, oh, where is he? Hibbs Pontifex hath gone to roost, with a book upon his knee.
human
Upstairs?
gpt
Next door.
human
All lank and lean?
gpt
Ay--dreaming of roast goose.
human
What planneth he for the morrow's morn, the evil old--uh--papoose?
gpt
Ovid, my lord.
human
Not Ovid still!
gpt
Ovid, my lord.
human
Oh, no!
gpt
Yes. Both, I mean. The younger's a child. And a stranger introduced himself, a Mr. Daniel Shawn. Excited by _Artemis_ and won Uncle John's heart praising her. A seaman, silver-tongued--honest, I thought.
human
What was he after?
gpt
I don't know that he was after anything, Ru. From his talk he must have been everywhere and seen everything.
human
Maybe not everything.
gpt
Oh, Muttonhead!--a manner of speaking.
human
A goaty eye for Jenks' fair daughter belike?
gpt
No. Merely polite to her, like any gentleman.
human
An old man then.
gpt
Forty perhaps.
human
Ah, Ben, these ancient cods! They're the worst, didn't you know? Consider our Pontifex, how we sometimes hear him moaning in the night. I tell you, he hath a private succubus. Down the chimney cometh she, most punctually, Wednesdays and Saturdays, to grind him all night long between hot ivory legs, grind him even unto the very last gerunds and aorists and ablatives and first person plural of the verb _contorquere_.
gpt
Ha?
human
Alas, poor Ben!--no Latin? It means to wriggle.
gpt
Well, shame on you!
human
Button your long lip. You can't say that when I've made you laugh.
gpt
No, blast you, I can't. As for Shawn, I think he only wished to know more about _Artemis_.
human
Ay-yah. Still everyone wants for something.
gpt
Granted, O Grandfather! And thou?
human
Trifles. Most of the ocean and the empire of Cathay. The spring moon. The Northwest Passage, the Fountain of Youth, a few acres of Eden. Trifles, but still you see it's true--everyone wants for something, even I.
gpt
Yet the manifold desires of man, said Mr. Gideon Hibbs, biting a walnut--
human
--his long right hand held down a finger of the left--
gpt
--another finger--
human
--his left thumb waved, not included, and this troubled Mr. Hibbs because he was slightly drunk--