If Phil had much of the blood of Captain Billy, Pete had much of the
blood of Black Tom. After leaving the mill at Sulby, Pete made his home
in the cabin of the smack. What he was to eat, and how he was to be
clothed, and where he was to be lodged when the cold nights came, never
troubled his mind for an instant. He had fine times with his partner.
The terms of their partnership were simple. Phil took the fun and made
Pete take the fish. They were a pair of happy-go-lucky lads, and they
looked to the future with cheerful faces.
There was one shadow over their content, and that was the ghost of a
gleam of sunshine. It made daylight between them, though, day by day
as they ran together like two that run a race. The prize was Katherine
Cregeen. Pete talked of her till Phil's heart awoke and trembled; but
Phil hardly knew it was so, and Pete never once suspected it. Neither
confessed to the other, and the shifts of both to hide the secret of
each were boyish and beautiful.
There is a river famous for trout that rises in Sulby glen and flows
into Ramsey harbour. One of the little attempts of the two lads to
deceive each other was to make believe that it was their duty to fish
this river with the rod, and so wander away singly up the banks of the
stream until they came to “The Manx Fairy,” and then drop in casually
to quench the thirst of so much angling. Towards the dusk of evening
Philip, in a tall silk hat over a jacket and knickerbockers, would come
upon Pete by the Sulby bridge, washed, combed, and in a collar. Then
there would be looks of great surprise on both sides. “What, Phil! Is
it yourself, though? Just thought I'd see if the trouts were biting
to-night. Dear me, this is Sulby too! And bless my soul, 'The Fairy'
again I Well, a drop of drink will do no harm. Shall we put a sight
on them inside, eh?” After that prelude they would go into the house
together.
This little comedy was acted every night for weeks. It was acted on
Hollantide Eve six months after Pete had been turned out by Cæsar.
Grannie was sitting by the glass partition, knitting at intervals,
serving at the counter occasionally and scoring up on a black board that
was a mass of chalk hieroglyphics. Cæsar himself in ponderous spectacles
and with a big book in his hands was sitting in the kitchen behind with
his back to the glass, so as to make the lamp of the business serve also
for his studies. On a bench in the bar sat Black Tom, smoking, spitting,
scraping his feet on the sanded floor, and looking like a gigantic
spider with enormous bald head. At his side was a thin man with a face
pitted by smallpox, and a forehead covered with strange protuberances.
This was Jonaique Jelly, barber, clock-mender, and Manx patriot. The
postman was there, too, Kelly the Thief, a tiny creature with twinkling
ferret eyes, and a face that had a settled look of age, as of one born
old, being wrinkled in squares like the pointing of a cobble wall.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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