Lady Good-for-Nothing | Page 4

off a piece of the pasty and wrapped it in a
handkerchief--and memory recalled, as with a small shock of surprise,
that the handkerchief was clean. The old man, though ragged enough to
scare the crows, was clean from his bare head to his bare sea-bleached
feet. He munched the rest of the pasty, talking between mouthfuls. To
his discourse Dicky paid no heed, but slipped away for a scamper on
the sands.
As he came running back he saw the old man, in the act of wiping his
mouth with the back of his hand, suddenly shoot out an arm and point.
Just beyond the breakers a solitary bird--an osprey--rose with a fish
shining in the grip of its claws. It flew northward, away for the
headland, for a hundred yards or so; and then by some mischance let
slip his prey, which fell back into the sea. The boy saw the splash. To
his surprise the bird made no effort to recover the fish--neither stooped
nor paused--but went winging sullenly on its way.
"That's the way o' them," commented the old wreck-picker. "Good food,
an' to let it go. I could teach him better."
But the boy, years after, read it as another and different parable.
Chapter II.
PORT NASSAU.
They left the beach, climbed a road across the neck of the promontory,
and rattled downhill into Port Nassau. Dusk had fallen before they
reached the head of its cobbled street; and here one of the postillions
drew out a horn from his holster and began to blow loud blasts on it.
This at once drew the townsfolk into the road and warned them to get
out of the way.
To the child, drowsed by the strong salt air and the rocking of the coach,
the glimmering whitewashed houses on either hand went by like a
procession in a dream. The figures and groups of men and women on
the side-walks, too, had a ghostly, furtive air. They seemed to the boy
to be whispering together and muttering. Now this was absurd; for what

with the blare of the postillion's horn, the clatter of hoofs, the jolting
and rumbling of wheels, the rattle of glass, our travellers had all the
noise to themselves--or all but the voice of the gale now rising again
for an afterclap and snoring at the street corners. Yet his instinct was
right. Many of the crowd were muttering. These New Englanders had
no love to spare for a Collector of Customs, a fine gentlemen from Old
England and (rumour said) an atheist to boot. They resented this ostent
of entry; the men more sullenly than the women, some of whom in their
hearts could not help admiring its high-and-mighty insolence.
The Collector, at any rate, had a crowd to receive him, for it was
Saturday evening. On Saturdays by custom the fishing-fleet of Port
Nassau made harbour before nightfall, and the crews kept a sort of
decorous carnival before the Sabbath, of which they were strict
observers. In the lower part of the town, by the quays, much buying and
selling went on, in booths of sail-cloth lit as a rule by oil-flares. For
close upon a week no boat had been able to put to sea; but the Saturday
market and the Saturday gossip and to-and-fro strolling were in full
swing none the less, though the salesmen had to substitute
hurricane-lamps for their ordinary flares, and the boy--now wide awake
again--had a passing glimpse of a couple of booths that had been
wrecked by the rising wind and were being rebuilt. He craned out to
stare at the helpers, while they, pausing in their work and dragged to
and fro by the flapping canvas, stared back as the coach went by.
It came to a halt on a level roadway some few rods beyond this bright
traffic, in an open space which, he knew, must be near the waterside,
for beyond the lights of the booths he had spied a cluster of masts quite
close at hand. Or perhaps he had fallen asleep and in his sleep had been
transported far inland. For the wind had suddenly died down, the coach
appeared to be standing in a forest glade--at any rate, among trees--and
through the trees fell a soft radiance that might well be the moon's were
it only a tinge less yellow. In the shine of it stood Manasseh, holding
open the coach door; and as the child stepped out these queer
impressions were succeeded by one still more curious and startling. For
a hand, as it seemed, reached out of the darkness, brushed him smartly
across the face, and was gone. He gave a little cry and stood staring

aloft at a lantern that hung some feet above him from an arched