Peacham, Henry, the Younger, as an Educationist (1622). By Peter and the Interviewer. By PENLEY REYD WHEELWRIGHT. Political Phrases, Some Famous. By JAMES SYKES ГАСВ 507 ΙΟΙ Mr. J. H. McCarthy's "French Revolution "-Its Scheme-- Taffles. By QUINTON GORDON 308 413 517 Thomas Grantham: the Brainbreaker's Breaker (1644). By FOSTER WATSON, M.A. Township, The English. By T. H. B. GRAHAM, M.A. . Two Painters of the Sixteenth Century. By EDMUND G. GARDNER Veddahs, The, of Ceylon. By E. O. WALKER, C.I.E. William Moon, Clerk. By HARRY DAVIES Worcestershire Seed Farms. By JAMES CASSIDY Wordsworth, The Birds of. By JOHN HOGBEN THE GENTLEMAN'S MAGAZINE. JANUARY 1898. PROCTOR THE DRUNKARD. PROM BY LOUIS BECKE. ROCTOR, the ex-second mate of the island-trading brig Bandolier, crawled out from under the shelter of the overhanging rock where he had passed the night, and brushing off the thick coating of dust which covered his clothes from head to foot, walked quickly through the leafy avenues of Sydney Domain, leading to the city. Sleeping under a rock in a public park is not a nice thing to do, but Proctor had been forced to do it for many weeks past. He didn't like it at first, but soon got used to it. It was better than having to ask old Mother Jennings for a bed at the dirty lodginghouse, and being refused with unnecessary remarks upon his financial position. The Sailors' Home was right enough; he could get a free bed there for the asking, and some tucker as well. But then at the Home he had to listen to prayers and religious advice, and he hated both, upon an empty stomach. No, he thought, the Domain was a lot better; every dirty "Jack Dog" at the Home knew he had been kicked out of sundry ships before he piled up the Bandolier, and they liked to comment audibly on their knowledge of the fact while he was eating his dinner among them-it's a way which A.B.'s have of "rubbing it in" to an officer down on his beam ends. Drunkard? Yes, of course he was, and everybody knew it. Why, even that sour-faced old devil of a door-keeper at the Home put a tract on his bed every evening. Curse him and his Drunkard, beware!" and every other rotten tract on intemperance. VOL. CCLXXXIV. NO. 2005. Well, he had been sober for a week now-hadn't any money to get drunk with. If he had he certainly would get drunk, as quickly as he possibly could. Might as well get drunk as try to get a ship now. Why, every wharf-loafer knew him. A hot feeling came to his cheeks and stayed there as he walked through the streets, for he seemed to hear every one laugh and mutter at him as he passed, "That's the boozy mate of the Bandolier. Ran her ashore in the Islands when he was drunk and drowned most of the hands." Proctor was twenty-five when he began to drink. He had just been made master, and his good luck in making such quick passages set him off. Not that he then drank at sea; it was only when he came on shore and met so many of the passengers he had carried between Sydney and New Zealand that he went in for it. Then came a warning from the manager of the steamship company. That made him a bit careful-and vexed. And ill-luck made him meet a brother captain that night, and of course they had "a time" together, and Proctor was driven down in a cab to the ship and helped up the gangway by the wharfinger and a deck hand. The next morning he was asked to resign, and from that day his career was damned. From the command of a crack steamship to that of a tramp collier was a big come-down; but Proctor was glad to get the collier after a month's idleness. For nearly a year all went well. He had had a lesson, and did not drink now, not even on shore. A woman who had stood to him in his first disgrace had promised to marry him when the year was out, and that kept him straight. Then one day he received a cold intimation from his owners that he "had better look out for another ship," his services were no longer wanted. "Why?" he asked. Well, they said, they would be candid, they had heard he was a drinking man, and they would run no risks. Six months of shamefaced and enforced idleness followed; and then Proctor was partly promised a barque. Another man named Rothesay was working hard to get her, but Proctor beat him by a hair's breadth. He made two or three trips to California and back, and then, almost on the eve of his marriage, met Rothesay, who was now in command of a small island trading steamer. Proctor liked Rothesay, and thought him a good fellow; Rothesay hated Proctor most fervently, hated him because he was in command of the ship he wanted himself, and hated him because he was to marry Nell Levison. Proctor did not know this (Nell Levison did), or he ould have either knocked the handsome black-bearded, ever-smiling Captain Rothesay down, or told him to drink by himself. But he was no match for Rothesay's cunning, and readily swallowed his enemy's smiling professions of regard and good wishes for his married happiness. They drank together again and again, and, at eleven o'clock that night, just as the theatres were coming out, Rothesay suddenly left him, and Proctor found himself staggering across the street. A policeman took him to his hotel, where Proctor sank into a heavy, deadly stupor. He awoke at noon. Two letters were lying on his table. One was from the owners of his barque, asking him to call on them at ten o'clock that morning, the other was from Nell Levison. The latter was short but plain : "I shall never marry a drunkard. I never wish to see you again." He dressed and went to the owners' office. The senior partner did not shake hands as usual, but coldly bade him be seated. And in another minute Proctor learnt that it was known he had been seen drunk in the street, and that he could "look for another ship." He went out dazed and stupid. For three days he kept up his courage, and then wrote to the owners of the barque and asked them to overlook the matter. He had served them well, he urged, and surely they would not ruin him for life. And Rothesay, to whom he showed the letter, said it was one of which no man need be ashamed. He would take it himself, he added, for he felt he was in some degree to blame for that fatal night. Take it he did, for he felt certain that it would not alter the decision of Messrs. Macpherson & Donald-he knew them too well for that. Then he came back to Proctor with a gloomy face, and shook his head. The wretched man knew what that meant, and asked him no questions. Rothesay, sneak and traitor as he was, felt some shame in his heart when, an hour later, Proctor held out his hand, thanked him, and bade him good-bye. "I'm clearing out," he said. Then for four years Proctor was seen no more in Sydney. He went steadily to the devil elsewhere-mostly in the South Sea Islands, where he was dismissed from one vessel after another, first as skipper, then as mate, then as second mate. One day in a Fiji hotel he met a man-a stranger-who knew Rothesay well. "What is he doing now?" asked Proctor. "Don't know exactly. He's no friend of mine, although I was mate with him for two years. He married a girl that was engaged to another man-a poor devil of a chap named Proctor-married her a week after Proctor got the run from his ship for being drunk. And everyone says that it was Rothesay who made him drunk, as he was mad to get the girl. And I have no doubt it's true. Rothesay is the two ends and bight of a damned sneak." Proctor nodded, but said nothing. He drank now whenever he could get at liquor, ashore or afloat. Sometimes he would steal it. Yet somehow he always managed to get and ther ship. He knew the islands well, and provided he could be kep sober there was not a better man to be found in the Pacific labour trade. And the "trade"-i.e. the recruiting of native labourers for the Fijian and Queensland sugar plantations from among the New Hebrides and Solomon Groups-was a dangerous pursuit. But Proctor was always a lucky man. He had come down to a second mate's berth now on the brig Bandolier; but then he was recruiter as well, and with big wages incurred more risks than any other man on the ship. Perhaps he had grown careless of his life, which was lonely enough, for though not a morose man, he never talked with his shipmates. So for two years or more he cruised in the Bandolier among the woolly-haired, naked cannibals of the Solomon Group and thereabout, landing at places where no other recruiter would get out of his boat, and taking a box of trade goods with him, sat calmly down on the beach surrounded by savages who might without a moment's warning riddle him with spears or club him from behind. But Proctor knew no fear, although his armed boat's crew and the crew of the covering boat would call to him to get aboard again and shove off. Other labour ships there were cruising on the same ground who lost men often enough by spear or bullet or poisoned arrow, and went back to Fiji or Queensland with perhaps not a score of "recruits," but Proctor never lost a single man, and always filled the crazy old Bandolier with a black and savage cargo. Then, once in port again, his enemy seized him, and for a week at a time he would lie drunk in the local hells, till the captain sought him out and brought him on board again. Going back to the recruiting grounds with an empty ship and with no danger to apprehend from a sudden rush of naked figures, the captain gave him as much liquor as he wanted, else Proctor would have stolen it. And one night he was drunk on his watch, ran the Bandolier upon a reef, and all hands perished but himself and six others. One boat was saved, and then followed long days of hunger and thirst and agony upon the sea under a blazing sun, but Proctor brought the boat and crew safe to the Queensland coast. A month later he was in Sydney penniless, and again "looking for a ship." But no one would have him now; his story was too well known. And so for a week past he had slept in the park at night, and |