ears deceive me? or is this my old commander?

GAUNT. My name is John Gaunt. Who are you, my man, and what's your
business?

PEW. Here's the facks, so help me. A lovely female in this house was
Christian enough to pity the poor blind; and lo and be'old! who should
she turn out to be but my old commander's daughter! "My dear," says I to
her, "I was the Admiral's own particular bo'sun."--"La, sailor," she
says to me, "how glad he'll be to see you!"--"Ah," says I, "won't he
just--that's all."--"I'll go and fetch him," she says; "you make
yourself at 'ome." And off she went; and, Commander, here I am.

GAUNT (_sitting down_). Well.

PEW. Well, Cap'n?

GAUNT. What do you want?

PEW. Well, Admiral, in a general way, what I want in a manner of
speaking is money and rum. (_A pause._)

GAUNT. David Pew, I have known you a long time.

PEW. And so you have; aboard the old _Arethusa_; and you don't seem that
cheered up as I'd looked for, with a old shipmate dropping in, one as
has been seeking you two years and more--and blind at that. Don't you
remember the old chantie?--

"Time for us to go,
Time for us to go,
And when we'd clapped the hatches on,
'Twas time for us to go."

What a note you had to sing, what a swaller for a pannikin of rum, and
what a fist for the shiners. Ah, Cap'n, they didn't call you Admiral
Guinea for nothing. I can see that old sea-chest of yours--her with the
brass bands, where you kept your gold dust and doubloons: you know!--I
can see her as well this minute as though you and me was still at it
playing put on the lid of her.... You don't say nothing, Cap'n?...
Well, here it is: I want money and I want rum. You don't know what it is
to want rum, you don't: it gets to that p'int that you would kill a 'ole
ship's company for just one guttle of it. What? Admiral Guinea, my old
Commander, go back on poor old Pew? and him high and dry? (Not you! When
we had words over the negro lass at Lagos, what did you do? fair
dealings was your word: fair as between man and man; and we had it out
with p'int and edge on Lagos sands. And you're not going back on your
word to me, now I'm old and blind! No, no! belay that, I say. Give me
the old motto: Fair dealings, as between man and man.)

GAUNT. David Pew, it were better for you that you were sunk in fifty
fathom. I know your life; and first and last, it is one broadside of
wickedness. You were a porter in a school, and beat a boy to