Run to Earth | Page 6

lately."
The captain slapped his hand upon one of his capacious pockets as he spoke. Dennis Wayman watched the gesture with eager eyes. All through Valentine's speech, Joyce Harker had been trying to arrest his attention, but trying in vain. When the owner of the 'Pizarro' began to talk, it was very difficult to stop him.
The captain bade the landlord a cheerful good day, and departed with his faithful follower.
Out in the street, Joyce Harker remonstrated with his employer.
"I told you that fellow was not to be trusted, captain," he said; "and yet you blabbed to him about the money."
"Nonsense, Joyce. I didn't say a word about money."
"Didn't you though, captain? You said quite enough to let that man know you'd got the cash about you. But you won't go back to that place till you go to meet Captain George on the fifth?"
"Of course not."
"You won't change your mind, captain?"
"Not I."
"Because, you see, I shall be down at Blackwall, looking after the repairs, for it will be sharp work to get finished against you want to sail for Rio. So, you see, I shall be out of the way. And if you did go back to that house alone, Lord knows what they might try on."
"Don't you be afraid, Joyce. In the first place I shan't go back there till twelve o'clock on the fifth. I'll come up from Plymouth by the night coach, and put up at the 'Golden Cross' like a gentleman. And, in the second place, I flatter myself I'm a match for any set of land-sharks in creation."
"No, you're not, captain. No honest man is ever a match for a scoundrel."
Jernam and his companion carried the captain's portmanteau between them. They hailed a hackney-coach presently, and drove to the "Golden Cross," through the chill, gray streets, where the closed shutters had a funereal aspect.
At the coach-office they parted, with many friendly words on both sides; but to the last, Joyce Harker was grave and anxious.
The last he saw of his friend and employer was the captain's dark face looking out of the coach-window; the captain's hand waved in cordial farewell.
"What a good fellow he is!--what a noble fellow!" thought the wizen little clerk, as he trudged back towards the City. "But was there ever a baby so helpless on shore?--was there ever an innocent infant that needed so much looking after?"
* * * * *
Valentine Jernam arrived at Plymouth early the next morning, and walked from Plymouth to the little village of Allanbay, in which lived the only relative he had in the world, except his brother George. Walking at a leisurely pace along the quiet road, Captain Jernam, although not usually a thoughtful person, was fain to think about something, and fell to thinking over the past.
Light-hearted and cheery of spirit as the adventurous sailor was now-a-days, his childhood had been a very sad one. Motherless at eight years of age, and ill-used by a drunken father, the boy had suffered as the children of the poor too often suffer.
His mother had died, leaving George an infant of less than twelve months old; and from the hour of her death, Valentine had been the infant's sole nurse and protector; standing between the helpless little one and the father's brutality; enduring all hardships cheerfully, so long as he was able to shelter little Georgy.
On more than one occasion, the elder boy had braved and defied his father in defence of the younger brother.
It was scarcely strange, therefore, that there should arise between the two brothers an affection beyond the ordinary measure of brotherly love. Valentine had supplied the place of both parents to his brother George,--the place of the mother, who lay buried in Allanbay churchyard; the place of the father, who had sunk into a living death of drunkenness and profligacy.
They were not peasant-born these Jernams. The father had been a lieutenant in the Royal Navy; but had deservedly lost his commission, and had come, with his devoted wife, to hide his disgrace at Allanbay. The vices which had caused his expulsion from the navy had increased with every year, until the family had sunk to the lowest depths of poverty and degradation, in spite of the wife's heroic efforts to accomplish the reform of a reprobate. She had struggled nobly till the last, and had died broken-hearted, leaving the helpless children to the mercy of a wretch whose nature had become utterly debased and brutalized.
Throughout their desolate childhood the brothers had been all in all to each other, and as soon as George was old enough to face the world with his brother, the two boys ran away to sea, and obtained employment on board a small trading vessel.
At sea, as on shore, Valentine stood between his younger brother and all hardships. But the