Adam seized his quill and in a moment had added a codiciclass="underline"
"Save only my new coat, together with the waistcoat thereto, also the cocked hat, which I give and bequeathe to R. Forbes, mate."
Feeling better, indeed humming, he went up on deck. Forbes saluted him; and the two stood watching the completion of the work.
"They're a good crew," Adam said after a while.
"Aye."
They were. The new bosun, Holyoake, if louder and less sure of himself than Jeth Gardner had been, was young—and he was spry, he was brisk. Abel Rellison still was with them, making a man's wages now, three shillings a month, which put him and John Bond into a position of great lordliness over the sailors from English ships. The two Negroes from Jamaica still were aboard, earning almost nothing, not caring, tolerably good workers, if slow. Then there were three strapping Newport boys, each the worth of any man. The Goodwill forecastle these days was a cheery clean place.
Skipper's gone balmy. Mate's on a spree. Running in circles On Scaredy-Cat Sea.
Adam harrumphed.
"You should have all the new cargo aboard inside of three hours." "Aye, but not stowed, sir."
"Take her out in the stream, do your stowing there. No sense paying wharfage. Leave the Moses and one hand." "Aye, aye, sir."
"Have only one hook down. That's if the water allows it." Resolved Forbes looked sideways at him. "Might leave in a hurry, sir?" "Aye. I might have just killed a man." He said it matter-of-factly; and Mr. Forbes only nodded. "Shall I have somebody summon a chair, sir?" Adam shook his head.
"I'd admire to walk. I'll have to chair around later." "I, uh, if it should happen that this man kills you instead—" "There's a paper in my box, on top." "Aye, aye, sir."
The cuffs alone must have been eighteen inches deep. Heavy with gold braid, they were stiffened inside by wire.
The coat itself, where it was not brass buttons or braiding or turned-over yellow, was the red of a flame. It was made of moire silk. Getting into it, when you were already encased in a waistcoat that reached to your knees, was much like what getting into a suit of armor must have been.
Adam was spared the crowning glory of this costume—the periwig.
"Run you anywhere up to fifty guineas," Chumley had explained. "Spend your money like that, you won't have any left for me."
So Adam had his hair cropped short and bought one of these new three-cornered hats. At Clark's of an afternoon, Chumley had said, almost nobody was bewigged. They wore instead little linen or velvet caps, not unlike nightcaps, or tricorns; or some even sat down bare-headed. It was a highly informal place. And the circumstance that his hair was close-cropped would make Adam appear a man relaxed, a man who had left his fifty-guinea peruke at home.
"La, but you couldn't go out that way at night!"
"Of course not."
Now he gave a last loving pat to his cravat and toddled cautiously downstairs, the boniface having shouted that his chair was ready, Clark's was scarcely half a mile away, but nobody save a fool would risk it afoot in a coat like this.
" 'Ail the conquering 'ero comes!"
This was Hal Bingham, making a to-do, as he did each day, about Adam's descent. The Hearth Cricket was patronized largely by seafaring men, not many of whom customarily sallied forth each afternoon in a coat that would have shamed Joseph's.
Adam liked the Hearth Cricket, as he liked Hal Bingham and his wife, their daughter Lil, the customers, the neighbors. Adam's day, this past week, had been divided sharply into three parts. In the morning he had gone about his business, chiefly buying, checking prices, being insulted by port officials, perhaps dropping in at Edward Lloyd's place in Abchurch Lane to look over the "ships' list" that enterprising proprietor posted. In the afternoon he would sit at Clark's, chatting with John Chumley, now and then meeting sundry meaningless minor toffs, and sipping wine, while he waited for Sir Jervis Johnston to appear. In the evening he sat before the fire at the inn. This was best. Back in his freedom suit, he would stretch his legs, hoist his jack, and talk and laugh. Except for their accent these folks were such as he might have known in Newport. Adam liked them, and it made his heart warm to see that they liked him. Indeed it got Adam all throat-lumpy every time he contemplated this coziness.
Today, however, the air of the ordinary was strained. Mine host and his virife clucked around Lillian, who was weeping.
Lil ran to Adam. He mussed her hair with one hand, giving her a smack on the backside with the other. Still blubbering, she giggled. She was six.
"They won't let me play outside!"
Hal said quickly: "She can run far's Loo Lane upstreet and the Thatched Roof downstreet, but only in daytime. She knows that."
Adam considered.
" 'Tis a short span, sure."
"Aye, and a few steps further," Goodwife Bingham cried, "might take 'er clear to the other side of the sea!"
"Bad as that?" Adam asked. "Even in daytime?"
"Bad as that," said Hal. "They'll be climbing in our windows pretty soon, snatching the babes right out of bed."
"Al Lamson's tyke, just about Lil's age here, she took a stroll last week —and they ain't seen nor hide nor hair of her since."
"Hardly seems possible— Where's the watch?"
"Wherever it's not needed. Don't you get Cap'n Long's coat all smeary there now!"
"She's all right," said Adam, an arm around her.
"Our one chick, y'see," said Hal. "Keeps up, we won't dare let her outdoors at all. Must be a gang of 'em working this neighborhood."
His wife sighed.
"Asking your pardon, Cap'n Long, but there's times I wish nobody'd ever discovered that America of yourn over there."
"Mary!"
"No harm," Adam said. "But we ain't all stolen nippers there, ma'am. We ain't all slaves. Folks in New England never even heard about these kidnappers, far as I know,"
"You tell 'em, when you go back."
"That I will, ma'am. I sure will."
He cupped Lillian's chin in a hand, and raised her face, and grinned down at her. She grinned back, tears and all.
"Now remember what your mother and father said, or I won't bring you a sugar bun today. Don't ever trust a strange man."
"I'd trust you," the child cried, and hugged him, "because you have on such a beautiful coat."
"A Londoner," said Adam.
The city seethed around his chair. Women screeched indefatigablv, and men fought. Why? As always, the great number of idle appalled Adam. The streets and the places of refreshment that led off them were crammed with men who sat or stood all day doing nothing. In Newrport when two or three were gathered together they worked while they talked, if they talked at all, and the subject of their conversation in such a case was likely to be, say, corporeal immortality, or perhaps the doctrine of moral inability in a fallen state. Here they droned of wenches, horse races, the price of gin.
All the noise, the fuss, the banging and slapping and kicking and stamping, the hubbub, the clamor—yet in a few hours, when night fell, an uneasy silence would fasten itself upon London; and the dust, if the day had been dry, would settle; while these brash boisterous persons, stricken dumb, scared, would disappear like worms that crawled back into the woodwork, leaving the streets still. It couldn't be, by Adam's reasoning, that all these persons had made themselves so uncomfortable in crushing so close together, in such a small and smelly place, purely for the purpose of safety. This, he'd heard, had been suggested by certain wiseacres. He did not believe it. He reckoned that nobody who had walked the streets of London after dark would ever believe it either. They frighted even him.