"I’m sure you ’re out of sorts, and want to be stimulated," said Mrs. Mac Stinger. "Why not have, for once in a way, a bottle of sherry wine?"
"Well, Ma’am," rejoined the Captain, "if you’d be so good as take a glass or two, I think I would try that. Would you do me the favour, Ma’am," said the Captain, torn to pieces by his conscience, "to accept a quarter’s rent ahead?"
"And why so, Cap’en Cuttle?" retorted Mrs. Mac Stinger—sharply, as the Captain thought.
The Captain was frightened to dead "If you would Ma’am," he said with submission, "it would oblige me. I can’t keep my money very well. It pays itself out. I should take it kind if you’d comply."
"Well, Cap’en Cuttle," said the unconscious Mac Stinger, rubbing her hands, "you can do as you please. It’s not for me, with my family, to refuse, no more than it is to ask."
"And would you, Ma’am," said the Captain, taking down the tin canister in which he kept his cash, from the top shelf of the cupboard, "be so good as offer eighteen-pence a-piece to the little family all round? If you could make it convenient, Ma’am, to pass the word presently for them children to come for’ard, in a body, I should be glad to see 'em."
These innocent Mac Stingers were so many daggers to the Captain’s breast, when they appeared in a swarm, and tore at him with the confiding trustfulness he so little deserved. The eye of Alexander Mac Stinger, who had been his favourite, was insupportable to the Captain; the voice of Juliana Mac Stinger, who was the picture of her mother, made a coward of him.
Captain Cuttle kept up appearances, nevertheless, tolerably well, and for an hour or two was very hardly used and roughly handled by the young Mac Stingers: who in their childish frolics, did a little damage also to the glazed hat, by sitting in it, two at a time, as in a nest, and drumming on the inside of the crown with their shoes. At length the Captain sorrowfully dismissed them: taking leave of these cherubs with the poignant remorse and grief of a man who was going to execution.
In the silence of night, the Captain packed up his heavier property in a chest, which he locked, intending to leave it there, in all probability for ever, but on the forlorn chance of one day finding a man sufficiently bold and desperate to come and ask for it. Of his lighter necessaries, the Captain made a bundle; and disposed his plate about his person, ready for flight. At the hour of midnight, when Brig Place was buried in slumber, and Mrs. Mac Stinger was lulled in sweet oblivion, with her infants around her, the guilty Captain, stealing down on tiptoe, in the dark, opened the door, closed it softly after him, and took to his heels.
Pursued by the image of Mrs. Mac Stinger springing out of bed, and, regardless of costume, following and bringing him back; pursued also by a consciousness of his enormous crime; Captain Cuttle held on at a great pace, and allowed no grass to grow under his feet, between Brig Place and the Instrument-maker’s door. It opened when he knocked—for Rob was on the watch—and when it was bolted and locked behind him, Captain Cuttle felt comparatively safe.
"Whew!" cried the Captain, looking round him. "It’s a breather!"
"Nothing the matter, is there, Captain?" cried the gaping Rob.
