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Sailor's Knots (Entire Collection)

William Wymark Jacobs

W.В W. Jacobs

Sailor's Knots (Entire Collection)

DESERTED

“Sailormen ain’t wot you might call dandyfied as a rule,” said the night-watchman, who had just had a passage of arms with a lighterman and been advised to let somebody else wash him and make a good job of it; “they’ve got too much sense. They leave dressing up and making eyesores of theirselves to men wot �ave never smelt salt water; men wot drift up and down the river in lighters and get in everybody’s way.”

He glanced fiercely at the retreating figure of the lighterman, and, turning a deaf ear to a request for a lock of his hair to patch a favorite doormat with, resumed with much vigor his task of sweeping up the litter.

The most dressy sailorman I ever knew, he continued, as he stood the broom up in a corner and seated himself on a keg, was a young feller named Rupert Brown. His mother gave �im the name of Rupert while his father was away at sea, and when he came �ome it was too late to alter it. All that a man could do he did do, and Mrs. Brown �ad a black eye till �e went to sea agin. She was a very obstinate woman, though—like most of �em—and a little over a year arterwards got pore old Brown three months’ hard by naming �er next boy Roderick Alfonso.

Young Rupert was on a barge when I knew �im fust, but he got tired of always �aving dirty hands arter a time, and went and enlisted as a soldier. I lost sight of �im for a while, and then one evening he turned up on furlough and come to see me.

O’ course, by this time �e was tired of soldiering, but wot upset �im more than anything was always �aving to be dressed the same and not being able to wear a collar and neck-tie. He said that if it wasn’t for the sake of good old England, and the chance o’ getting six months, he’d desert. I tried to give �im good advice, and, if I’d only known �ow I was to be dragged into it, I’d ha’ given �im a lot more.

As it �appened he deserted the very next arternoon. He was in the Three Widders at Aldgate, in the saloon bar—which is a place where you get a penn’orth of ale in a glass and pay twopence for it—and, arter being told by the barmaid that she had got one monkey at �ome, he got into conversation with another man wot was in there.

He was a big man with a black moustache and a red face, and �is fingers all smothered in di’mond rings. He �ad got on a gold watch-chain as thick as a rope, and a scarf-pin the size of a large walnut, and he had �ad a few words with the barmaid on �is own account. He seemed to take a fancy to Rupert from the fust, and in a few minutes he �ad given �im a big cigar out of a sealskin case and ordered �im a glass of sherry wine.

“Have you ever thought o’ going on the stage?” he ses, arter Rupert �ad told �im of his dislike for the Army.

“No,” ses Rupert, staring.

“You s’prise me,” ses the big man; “you’re wasting of your life by not doing so.”

“But I can’t act,” ses Rupert.

“Stuff and nonsense!” ses the big man. “Don’t tell me. You’ve got an actor’s face. I’m a manager myself, and I know. I don’t mind telling you that I refused twenty-three men and forty-eight ladies only yesterday.”

“I wonder you don’t drop down dead,” ses the barmaid, lifting up �is glass to wipe down the counter.

The manager looked at her, and, arter she �ad gone to talk to a gentleman in the next bar wot was knocking double knocks on the counter with a pint pot, he whispered to Rupert that she �ad been one of them.

“She can’t act a bit,” he ses. “Now, look �ere; I’m a business man and my time is valuable. I don’t know nothing, and I don’t want to know nothing; but, if a nice young feller, like yourself, for example, was tired of the Army and wanted to escape, I’ve got one part left in my company that �ud suit �im down to the ground.”

“Wot about being reckernized?” ses Rup