"Afraid of a sun-stroke in England in November, Tom, that you wear your
tropical hat, strongly paid outside and paper-lined inside, here?" said
the captain, eyeing it.
"It's as well to be on the safe side, sir," replied Tom.
"Safe side!" repeated the captain, laughing. "You'd guard against a sun-
stroke, with that old hat, in an Ice Pack. Wa'al! What have you made
out at the Post-office?"
"It _is_ the Post-office, sir."
"What's the Post-office?" said the captain.
"The name, sir. The name keeps the Post-office."
"A coincidence!" said the captain. "A lucky bit! Show me where it is.
Good-bye, shipmates, for the present! I shall come and have another look
at you, afore I leave, this afternoon."
This was addressed to all there, but especially the young fisherman; so
all there acknowledged it, but especially the young fisherman. "_He's_ a
sailor!" said one to another, as they looked after the captain moving
away. That he was; and so outspeaking was the sailor in him, that
although his dress had nothing nautical about it, with the single
exception of its colour, but was a suit of a shore-going shape and form,
too long in the sleeves and too short in the legs, and too
unaccommodating everywhere, terminating earthward in a pair of Wellington
boots, and surmounted by a tall, stiff hat, which no mortal could have
worn at sea in any wind under heaven; nevertheless, a glimpse of his
sagacious, weather-beaten face, or his strong, brown hand, would have
established the captain's calling. Whereas Mr. Pettifer--a man of a
certain plump neatness, with a curly whisker, and elaborately nautical in
a jacket, and shoes, and all things correspondent--looked no more like a
seaman, beside Captain Jorgan, than he looked like a sea-serpent.
The two climbed high up the village,--which had the most arbitrary turns
and twists in it, so that the cobbler's house came dead across the
ladder, and to have held a reasonable course, you must have gone through
his house, and through him too, as he sat at his work between two little
windows,--with one eye microscopically on the geological formation of
that part of Devonshire, and the other telescopically on the open
sea,--the two climbed high up the village, and stopped before a quaint
little house, on which was painted, "MRS. RAYBROCK, DRAPER;" and also
"POST-OFFICE." Before it, ran a rill of murmuring water, and access to
it was gained by a little plank-bridge.
"Here's the name," said Captain Jorgan, "sure enough. You can come in if
you like, Tom."
The captain opened the door, and passed into an odd little shop, about
six feet high, with a great variety of beams and bumps in the ceiling,
and, besides the principal window giving on the ladder of stones, a
purblind little window of a single pane of glass, peeping out of an
abutting corner at the sun-lighted ocean, and winking at its brightness.
"How do you do, ma'am?" said the captain. "I am very glad to see you. I
have come a long way to see you."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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