On descending I found a curious-looking figure in a gray dressing-gown with a purple cord. He was an elderly man--his hair not quite white yet, but well past mouse colour. His beard and moustache, however, were of a yellowish brown, and his face all puckered and shot with wrinkles, spare and yet puffy, with hanging bags under his singular light blue eyes.
"By God, Dr. Munro, sir," said he, as he shook my hand. "I take it as very kind of you that you should accept an informal invitation. I do, sir, by God!"
This sentence was, as it proved, a very typical one, for he nearly always began and ended each with an oath, while the centre was, as a rule, remarkable for a certain suave courtesy. So regular was his formula that I may omit it and you suppose it, every time that he opened his mouth. A dash here and there will remind you.
It's been my practice, Dr. Munro, sir, to make friends with my neighbours through life; and some strange neighbours I have had. By ----, sir, humble as you see me, I have sat with a general on my right, and an admiral on my left, and my toes up against a British ambassador. That was when I commanded the armed transport Hegira in the Black Sea in '55. Burst up in the great gale in Balaclava Bay, sir, and not as much left as you could pick your teeth with."
There was a strong smell of whisky in the room, and an uncorked bottle upon the mantelpiece. The captain himself spoke with a curious stutter, which I put down at first to a natural defect; but his lurch as he, turned back to his armchair showed me that he had had as much as he could carry.
"Not much to offer you, Dr. Munro, sir. The hind leg of a ---- duck, and a sailor's welcome. Not Royal Navy, sir, though I have a ---- sight better manners than many that are. No, sir, I fly no false colours, and put no R. N. after my name; but I'm the Queen's servant, by ----! No mercantile marine about me! Have a wet, sir! It's the right stuff, and I have drunk enough to know the difference."
Well, as the supper progressed I warmed with the liquor and the food, and I told my new acquaintance all about my plans and intentions. I didn't realise how lonely I had been until I found the pleasure of talking. He listened to it all with much sympathy, and to my horror tossed off a whole tumbler-full of neat whisky to my success. So enthusiastic was he that it was all I could do to prevent him from draining a second one.
"You'll do it, Dr. Munro, sir!" he cried. "I know a man when I see one, and you'll do it. There's my hand, sir! I'm with you! You needn't be ashamed to grasp it, for by ----, though I say it myself, it's been open to the poor and shut to a bully ever since I could suck milk. Yes, sir, you'll make a good ship-mate, and I'm ---- glad to have you on my poop.
For the remainder of the evening his fixed delusion was that I had come to serve under him; and he read me long rambling lectures about ship's discipline, still always addressing me as "Dr. Munro. sir." At last, however, his conversation became unbearable--a foul young man is odious, but a foul old one is surely the most sickening thing on earth. One feels that the white upon the hair, like that upon the mountain, should signify a height attained. I rose and bade him good-night, with a last impression of him leaning back in his dressing-gown, a sodden cigar-end in the corner of his mouth, his beard all slopped with whisky, and his half-glazed eyes looking sideways after me with the leer of a satyr. I had to go into the street and walk up and down for half-an-hour before I felt clean enough to go to bed.
Well, I wanted to see no more of my neighbour, but in he came as I was sitting at breakfast, smelling like a bar-parlour, with stale whisky oozing at every pore.
"Good morning, Dr. Munro, sir," said he, holding out a twitching hand. "I compliment you, sir! You look fresh, ---- fresh, and me with a head like a toy-shop. We had a pleasant, quiet evening, and I took nothing to hurt, but it is the ---- relaxing air of this place that settles me.