The Battle and the Breeze | Page 9

Ben Bolter, after
a prolonged silence.
"You wouldn't be if you had left a bride behind you," answered Bill

shortly.
"How d'ye know that?" said Ben; "p'r'aps I have left one behind me.
Anyhow, I've left an old mother."
"That's nothin' uncommon," replied Bill; "a bride may change her mind
and become another man's wife, but your mother can't become your
aunt or your sister by any mental operation that I knows of."
"I'm not so sure o' that, now," replied Ben, knitting his brows, and
gazing earnestly at the forebrace, which happened to be conveniently in
front of his eyes; "see here, s'pose, for the sake of argiment, that you've
got a mothers an' she marries a second time--which some mothers is apt
to do, you know,--and her noo husband has got a pretty niece. Nothin'
more nat'ral than that you should fall in love with her and get spliced.
Well, wot then? why, your mother is her aunt by vartue of her marriage
with her uncle, and so your mother is your aunt in consikence of your
marriage with the niece--d'ye see?"
Bill laughed, and said he didn't quite see it, but he was willing to take it
on credit, as he was not in a humour for discussion just then.
"Very well," said Ben, "but, to return to the p'int--which is, if I may so
say, a p'int of distinkshun between topers an' argifiers, for topers are
always returnin' to the pint, an' argifiers are for ever departin' from
it--to return to it, I say: you've no notion of the pecoolier sirkumstances
in which I left my poor old mother. It weighs heavy on my heart, I
assure ye, for it's only three months since I was pressed myself, an' the
feelin's ain't had time to heal yet. Come, I'll tell 'e how it was. You owe
me some compensation for that crack on the nose you gave me, so
stand still and listen."
Bill, who was becoming interested in his messmate in spite of himself,
smiled and nodded his head as though to say, "Go on."
"Well, you must know my old mother is just turned eighty, an' I'm
thirty-six, so, as them that knows the rule o' three would tell ye, she
was just forty-four when I began to trouble her life. I was a most awful

wicked child, it seems. So they say at least; but I've no remembrance of
it myself. Hows'ever, when I growed up and ran away to sea and got
back again an' repented--mainly because I didn't like the sea--I tuk to
mendin' my ways a bit, an' tried to make up to the old 'ooman for my
prewious wickedness. I do believe I succeeded, too, for I got to like her
in a way I never did before; and when I used to come home from a
cruise--for, of course, I soon went to sea again--I always had somethin'
for her from furrin' parts. An' she was greatly pleased at my attentions
an' presents--all except once, when I brought her the head of a mummy
from Egypt. She couldn't stand that at all--to my great disappointment;
an' what made it wuss was, that after a few days they had put it too near
the fire, an' the skin it busted an' the stuffin' began to come out, so I
took it out to the back-garden an' gave it decent burial behind the pump.
"Hows'ever, as I wos goin' to say, just at the time I was nabbed by the
press-gang was my mother's birthday, an' as I happened to be flush o'
cash, I thought I'd give her a treat an' a surprise, so off I goes to buy her
some things, when, before I got well into the town--a sea-port it
was--down comed the press-gang an' nabbed me. I showed fight, of
course, just as you did, an floored four of 'em, but they was too many
for me an' before I knowed where I was they had me into a boat and
aboord this here ship, where I've bin ever since. I'm used to it now, an'
rather like it, as no doubt you will come for to like it too; but it was
hard on my old mother. I begged an' prayed them to let me go back an'
bid her good-bye, an' swore I would return, but they only laughed at me,
so I was obliged to write her a letter to keep her mind easy. Of all the
jobs I ever did have, the writin' of that letter was the wust. Nothin' but
dooty would iver indooce me to try it again; for, you see, I didn't get
much in the way of edication, an' writin' never came handy to me.
"Hows'ever," continued Ben, "I took