230
XX. NO APOLOGY 243
XXI. FOOL'S FORTUNE 247
XXII. GATHERING WINDS 264
XXIII. THE TIDE-RIP 276
XXIV. JOHN CATHER'S FATE 290
XXV. TO SEA 305
XXVI. THE DEVIL'S TEETH 323

THE CRUISE OF THE SHINING LIGHT

THE CRUISE OF THE SHINING LIGHT

I

NICHOLAS TOP

My uncle, Nicholas Top, of Twist Tickle, was of a cut so grotesque
that folk forgot their manners when he stumped abroad. Bowling through
the streets of St. John's, which twice a year he tapped with staff and
wooden leg, myself in leading--bowling cheerily, with his last rag
spread, as he said, and be damned to the chart--he left a swirling
wake of amazement: craning necks, open mouths, round eyes, grins so
frank, the beholders being taken unaware, that 'twas simple to
distinguish hearts of pity from savage ones.

Small wonder they stared; my uncle was a broad, long-bodied, scowling,
grim-lipped runt, with the arms and chest of an ape, a leg lacking,
three fingers of the left hand gone at the knuckles, an ankle botched
in the mending (the surgery his own), a jaw out of place, a round
head set low between gigantic shoulders upon a thick neck: the whole
forever clad in a fantastic miscellany of water-side slops, wrinkled
above, where he was large, flapping below, where he was lean, and
chosen with a nautical contempt for fit and fashion, but with a
mysteriously perverse regard for the value of a penny.

"An' how much, lad," says he, in the water-side slop-shops, "is a
penny saved?"

'Twas strange that of all men he should teach me this old-fashioned
maxim as though 'twere meant for my own practice. 'Twas well enough
for him, it seemed; but 'twas an incumbrance of wisdom in the singular
case of the lad that was I.

"A penny made, sir," says I.

"Co'--rect!" says he, with satisfaction.

There was more to be wondered at: beginning at my uncle's left ear,
which was itself sadly puckered and patched, a wide, rough scar, of
changing color, as his temper went, cut a great swath in his wiry
hair, curving clear over the crown of his head. A second scar, of
lesser dimension and ghastly loo