Rivers of Ice. Robert Michael Ballantyne
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a great spinning of yarns over Uncle William and the gold-fields.”
“Well, I don’t mind if I do,” said the Captain, “but before supper I must go to the docks for my kit and settle my lodgings.”
“I am going to the Strand, and shall be happy to give you a lift,” said Lewis.
The Captain accepted the offer, and as they drove along, he and his young friend became very intimate, insomuch that Lewis, who was lighthearted, open, and reckless, let him into his confidence, and spoke quite freely about his mother’s difficulties. It is only justice to add that the Captain did not encourage him in this. When, however, the youth spoke of himself, he not only encouraged him, but drew him out. Among other things, he drew out of him the fact that he was in the habit of gambling, and that he fully expected—if his usual luck attended him—to assist in adding to the fund which was to take the family abroad.
The Captain looked at the handsome stripling for a few seconds in silent surprise.
“You don’t mean to tell me,” he said slowly, “that you gamble?”
“Indeed I do,” replied Lewis, with a bland smile, and something of a twinkle in his eye.
“For money?” asked the Captain.
“For money,” assented the youth; “what have you to say against it?”
“Why, I’ve to say that it’s mean.”
“That’s strong language,” said Lewis, flushing.
“It an’t strong enough by a long way,” returned the Captain, with indignation, “it’s more than mean, it’s contemptible; it’s despicable.”
The flush on Lewis’s face deepened, and he looked at his companion with the air of one who meditates knocking another down. Perhaps the massive size and strength of the Captain induced him to change his mind. It may be that there occurred to him the difficulty—if not impossibility—of knocking down a man who was down already, and the want of space in a cab for such violent play of muscle. At all events he did nothing, but looked “daggers.”
“Look ’ee here, my lad,” continued the Captain, laying his huge hand on his companion’s knee, and gazing earnestly into his face, “I don’t mean for to hurt your feelin’s by sayin’ that you are mean, or contemptible, or despicable, for I don’t suppose you’ve thought much about the matter at all, and are just following in the wake of older men who ought to know better; but I say that the thing—gambling for money—is the meanest thing a man can do, short of stealing. What does it amount to? Simply this—I want another man’s money, and the other man wants mine. We daren’t try open robbery, we would be ashamed of that; we’re both too lazy to labour for money, and labour doesn’t bring it in fast enough, therefore we’ll go play for it. I’ll ask him to submit to be robbed by me on condition that I submit to be robbed by him; and which is to be the robbed, and which the robber, shall depend on the accidental turn of a dice, or something equally trifling—”
“But I don’t gamble by means of dice,” interrupted Lewis, “I play, and bet, on billiards, which is a game of skill, requiring much practice, judgment, and thought.”
“That makes no odds, my lad,” continued the Captain. “There is no connection whatever between the rolling of a ball and the taking away of a man’s money, any more than there is between the turning of a dice and the taking of a man’s money. Both are dishonourable subterfuges. They are mere blinds put up to cover the great and mean fact, which is, that I want to get possession of my neighbour’s cash.”
“But, Captain,” retorted Lewis, with a smile—for he had now entered into the spirit of the argument—“you ignore the fact that while I try to win from my friend, I am quite willing that my friend should try to win from me.”
“Ignore it? no!” cried Captain Wopper. “Putt it in this way. Isn’t it wrong for me to have a longing desire and itching fingers to lay hold of your cash?”
“Well, put in that simple form,” said Lewis, with a laugh, “it certainly is.”
“And isn’t it equally wrong for you to have a hungering and thirsting after my cash?”
“Of course that follows,” assented Lewis.
“Well, then,” pursued the Captain, “can any agreement between you and me, as to the guessing of black or white or the turning of dice or anything else, make a right out of two wrongs?”
“Still,” said Lewis, a little puzzled, “there is fallacy somewhere in your argument. I cannot see that gambling is wrong.”
“Mark me, my lad,” returned the Captain, impressively, “it is no sufficient reason for the doing of a thing that you cannot see it to be wrong. You are not entitled to do anything unless you see it to be right. But there are other questions connected with gambling which renders it doubly mean—the question, for instance, whether a man is entitled to risk the loss of money which he calls his own, but which belongs to his wife and children as much as to himself. The mean positions, too, in which a gambler places himself, are numerous. One of these is, when a rich man wins the hard-earned and much-needed gains of a poor one.”
“But one is not supposed to know anything about the affairs of those from whom one wins,” objected Lewis.
“All the more reason,” replied Captain Wopper, “why a man should never gamble, lest, unwittingly, he should become the cause of great suffering—it might be, of death.”
Still Lewis “could not see” the wrong of gambling, and the discussion was cut short by the sudden stopping of the cab at a door in the Strand, over which hung a lamp, on which the Captain observed the word “Billiards.”
“Well, ta-ta, old fellow,” said Lewis, gaily, as he parted from his new friend, “we’ll finish the argument another day. Meanwhile, don’t forget the hour—eight, sharp.”
Chapter Four.
Shows how the Captain came to an Anchor, and conceived a Deep Design
When Captain Wopper parted from his young friend, he proceeded along the Strand in an unusually grave mood, shaking his head to such a degree, as he reflected on the precocious wickedness of the rising generation, that a very ragged and pert specimen of that generation, observing his condition, gravely informed him that there was an hospital for incurables in London, which took in patients with palsy and St. Wituses’ dance werry cheap.
This recalled him from the depths of sorrowful meditation, and induced him to hail a cab, in which he drove to the docks, claimed his chest—a solid, seamanlike structure, reminding one of the wooden walls of Old England—and returned with it to the head of the lane leading to Grubb’s Court. Dismissing the cab, he looked round for a porter, but as no porter appeared, the Captain, having been accustomed through life to help himself, and being, as we have said, remarkably strong, shouldered the nautical chest, and bore it to the top of Mrs Roby’s staircase.
Here he encountered, and almost tumbled over, Gillie White, who saluted him with—
“Hallo! ship aho–o–oy! starboard hard! breakers ahead! Why, Capp’n, you’ve all but run into me!”
“Why don’t you show a light then,” retorted the Captain, “or blow your steam-whistle, in such a dark hole? What’s that you’ve got in your arms?”
“The baby,” replied Gillie.
“What baby?” demanded the Captain.
“Our baby, of course,” returned the imp, in a tone that implied the non-existence of any other baby worth mentioning. “I brought it up to show it to the sick ’ooman next door but one to Mrs Roby’s cabin. She’s very sick, she is, an’ took a great longing to see our baby, cos she thinks it’s like what her son was w’en he was a baby. If he ever was, he don’t look much like one now, for he’s six-feet nothin’ in his socks, an’ drinks like a fish, if he don’t do nothin’ wuss. Good-night Capp’n. Baby’ll ketch cold if I keep on jawin’