"Mr. Harper was completely out of his depth." (Page 267.)
THE SAILOR
BY
J. C. SNAITH
AUTHOR OF "ANNE FEVERSHAM," "BROKE OF COVENDEN,"
"ARAMINTA," ETC.
ILLUSTRATED BY
W. A. HOTTINGER
THOMAS LANGTON
TORONTO
1916
COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
"Mr. Harper was completely out of his depth." . . . . . . Frontispiece
"A nigger with rings in his ears came forward with a light."
"'I was a bit on last night,' she said with well assumed humility."
"'Mary,' he said, 'do you remember your words eleven months ago?'"
THE SAILOR
BOOK I
GESTATION
I
A large woman in a torn dress stood at the gate of a rag and bonedealer's yard. The season was November, the hour midnight, the place aslum in a Midland textile town.
Hanging from the wall of the house beyond was a dirty oil lamp roundwhich the fog circled in a hundred spectral shapes. Seen by its light,she was not pleasant to look upon. Bare-armed, bare-headed, savagechest half bare and sagging in festoons, she stood stayless andunashamed, breathing gin and wickedness. A grin of quiet joy was uponher alcoholic countenance. Nay, more than joy. It was a light ofinward ecstasy, and sprang from the fact that a heavy carter's whip wasin her hand.
Not many feet from the spot on which she stood was the wall of aneighbor's house. Crouching against it so that he was scarcely visiblein the darkness was a boy of thirteen. Without stockings or shoes, hewore only a filthy shirt, a thing that had once been a jacket, and atattered lower garment which left his thighs half naked.
His face was transfigured with terror.
"Enery Arper," said the woman with a shrill snigger not unlike thewhinny of a horse, "Auntie said she'd wait up for you, didn't she? Andshe always keeps a promise, don't she, my boy?"
The figure six yards away the fog was doing its best to hide coweredyet closer to the wall.
"And what was it, Enery, that Auntie promised you if you come 'omeagain with ninepence?" The wheeze of the voice had a note of humor.
The boy was wedged so close to the wall that he had barked the skin offhis bare knees. The woman, watching him intently, began to trail theheavy lash on the cobbled yard.
"Said she'd make it up to a shillin' for you, didn't she? ... if youcome 'ome again with ninepence. Said she'd cut the heart out o' you... same as if it was the eye of a pertater."
A powerful arm was already loos