which was
madness and death. I felt somewhat as if I were in like case, for there
I lived always in the neighbourhood, always in the companionship of the
sea and of seafaring folk, and yet I was doomed to dwell at home and
dance attendance upon the tinkling of the shop bell. But my word was my
word all the same, and my love for my mother, I am glad to think, was
greater after all than my longing to see far lands.

CHAPTER IV

A MAID CALLED BARBARA

I suppose the Skull and Spectacles was not quite the best place in the
world for a lad of my age, and perhaps for some lads it might have been
fruitful of evil. But I found then, and have found all through my life,
an infinite deal of entertainment in studying the ways and humours of
all kinds of fellowships, without of necessity accommodating myself to
the morals or the manners of the company. I have been very happy with
gipsies on a common, though I never poisoned a pig or coped a nag. I
have mixed much with sailors of all kinds, than whom no better
fellows--the best of them, and that is the greater part--exist on earth,
and no worse the worse; and yet I think I have not been stained with all
the soils of the sea. I have been with pirates, and thieves, and
soldiers of fortune, and gentlemen of blood, and highway robbers; and
once I supped with a hangman--off boiled rabbit and tripe, an excellent
alliance in a dish--and all this without being myself either pirate,
highwayman, or yet hangman. It is not always a man's company, but mostly
a man's mind, that makes him what he is or is not. If a man is going to
be a pitiful fellow and sorry knave, I am afraid you will not save him
by the companionship of a synod of bishops; nor will you spoil a fine
fellow if he occasionally rubs shoulders with rogues and vagabonds.

The girl at the Skull and Spectacles was kind to me, partly, perhaps,
because I differed somewhat from the ordinary ruck of customers of the
Skull and Spectacles. Had it been known that that crazy, villainous old
alehouse contained such a pearl, I make no doubt that the favour of the
place would have gone up, and its customers improved in outward seeming,
if not in inward merits or morals. The gallants of the town--for we had
our gallants even in that tranquil seaport--would have been assailed by
a thirst that naught save Nantz and schnapps and strong ale of the Skull
and Spectacles could assuage, and the gentlemen of the Chisholm Hunt
would have discove