The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1: Who was a sailor, a soldier, a merchant, a spy, a slave; among the moors...Sala, George Augustus
General
The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1: Who was a sailor, a soldier, a merchant, a spy, a slave; among the moors...
Sala, George Augustus
Adventure and adventurers -- Fiction
"What did he call me Pig-Woman for?" she grumbled, but still half
mollified. "What if I did waste my youth and prime in cooking of porkers
in a booth; I am no cutpurse. I, I never shoved the tumbler for
tail-drawing or poll-snatching on a levee-day.[L] But I will draw for
you, and welcome my guests of the game."
"And Supper, good Moll, Supper," added Jowler.
"An you had not hindered me, it would have been ready upstairs. There
are more upstairs besides you that hunger after the fat and the lean.
But can you sup without a cook? Will venison run off the spit ready
roasted, think you, like the pigs in Lubberland, that jump down your
throat, and cry _wee wee_?"
She began to bustle about, and summoned, by the name of Cicely
Grip--adding thereto the epithet of "faggot"--a stout serving-lass, who
might have been comely enough, but whose face and hands were very nearly
as black as those of the Man-Dog's. This wench brought a number of brown
jugs full of beer, and the Blacks took to drinking with much zest. Then
Jowler, who seemed a kind of lieutenant, in some authority over them,
gave the word of command to "Peel;" and they hastened to leave the room,
which was but a mean sort of barn-like chamber, with bare walls, a
wattled roof, and a number of rough wooden tables and settles, all
littered with jugs and Tobacco pipes. So I and the Fat Woman and Jowler,
Cicely Grip having betaken herself to the kitchen, were left together.
"Cicely will dish up, Mother Drum," he says; "you have fried collops
enow for us, I trow; and if more are wanted for the Billy Boys, you can
to your pan again. You began your brandy pottage too early tonight,
Mother. Let us have no more of your vapours 'twixt this and day-break,
prithee. What would Captain Night say?"
"Captain Night be hanged!"
"He will be hanged, as our brother Surly has it, in good time, I doubt
it not. Meanwhile, order must be kept at the Stag o' Tyne. Get you and
draw the dram I promised you; and, Mother, wash me this little lad's
face and hands, that he may sit down to meat with us in a seemly
manner."
"Who the Clink is he?" asked Mother Drum, eyeing me with no very Great
Favour.
"He says he is little Boy Jack," answered Mr. Jowler, gravely. "We will
give him another name before we have done with him. Meantime he has a
guinea in his pocket to pay his shot, and that's enough for the fat old
Alewife of the Stag o' Tyne."
"Fat again!" muttered Mother Drum. "Is it a 'Sizes matter to be full of
flesh? I be fat indeed," she answered, with a sigh, "and must have a
chair let out o' the sides for me, that these poor old hips may have
play. And I, that was of so buxom a figure."
"Never mind your Figure, Mother," remarked my Conductor, "but do my
bidding. I'll e'en go and peel too;" and without more ado he leaves us.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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