sailor; but he was a strange sort of
man. To see him in a passion, was something you wouldn't forget in a
hurry; and you wouldn't have known him long without having the chance.
Most of us can swear a bit now and then; but you ought to have heard
Captain Goss! He used even to frighten the old salts, that had common
oaths in their mouths from morning till night. He was worse than the
worst madman in Bedlam when his blood was up; and even the strong,
bold men of the crew used to cower before him like as the cabin-boy.
And yet, mates, he was but a little, maimed man, and more than sixty
years old. He had a regular monkey-face; I never saw one like
it--brown, and all over puckers, and working and twitching, like the
sea where the tide-currents meet. He had but one eye, and he wore a
big black patch over the place where the other had been; but that one
eye, mates, would screw into you like a gimlet. Well, Captain Goss was
more than fifty when he came down to Barking, and bought the _Lively
Nan_, and made a carrier[1] of her; and nobody knew who he was, or
where he came from. There was an old house at Barking then, and I have
heard say that its ruins are there yet. The boys said that Guy
Fawkes--him they burn every 5th of November--used to live there; and
the story went that it was haunted, and that there was one room, the
door of which always stood ajar, and nobody could either open or shut
it. Well, mates, Old Captain Goss wasn't the sort of man to care much
about Guy Fawkeses or goblins; so he hires a room in this old
house--precious cheap he got it!--and when he was ashore, you could
see a light in it all night; and if you went near, you might listen to
Old Goss singing roaring songs about the brisk boys of the Spanish
main, and yelling and huzzaing to himself, and drinking what he called
his five-water grog. Five-water grog, mates--that was one of his
jokes. It was rum made hot on the fire; and he could drink it scalding
and never wink: and he would drink it till he got reg'lar wild. He was
never right-down drunk, but just wild, like a savage beast! And then
he would jump up, and make-believe he was fighting, and holler out to
give it to the Spanish dogs, and that there were lots of doubloons
below. I've gone myself with other youngsters, to listen at the door;
and once when he was in the fit, yelling and singing, and laughing and
swearing, all at once, I'm jiggered if he didn't out with a brace of
old brass-mounted ship'