The Vital Spark | Page 5

Brodick man one day on the quay.
"Talking about birds," said Para Handy, with some diffidence, "Dougie and me had a canary yonder--"
"That's aal off," said the Brodick man hurriedly, getting very red in the face, showing so much embarrassment, indeed, that the Captain of the Vital Spark smelt a rat.
"What way off?" he asked. "It sticks in my mind that there wass a kind of a wudger, and that there's a pound note in the shupping-box for the best canary."
"Did you bring your canary?" asked the Brodick man anxiously.
"It's doon there in the vessel singin' like to take the rivets oot o' her," said Para Handy. "It's chust sublime to listen to."
"Weel, the fact iss, I'm not goin' to challenge," said the Brodick man. "I have a wife yonder, and she's sore against bettin' and wudgerin' and gemblin', and she'll no let me take my champion bird Wee Free over the door."
"Chust that!" said Para Handy. "That's a peety. Weel, weel, the pund'll come in handy. I'll chust go away down to the shupping-box and lift it. Seeing I won, I'll stand you a drink."
The Brodick man maintained with warmth that as Para Handy had not yet lodged his stake of a pound the match was off; an excited discussion followed, and the upshot was a compromise. The Brodick man, having failed to produce his bird, was to forfeit ten shillings, and treat the crew of the Vital Spark. They were being treated, and the ten shillings were in Para Handy's possession, when the Brodick sportsman rose to make some disconcerting remark.
"You think you are very smert, Macfarlane," he said, addressing the Captain. "You are thinkin' you did a good stroke to get the ten shullin's, but if you wass smerter it iss not the ten shullin's you would have at aal, but the pound. I had you fine, Macfarlane. My wife never said a word aboot the wudger, but my bird is in the pook, and couldna sing a note this week. That's the way I backed oot."
Para Handy displayed neither resentment nor surprise. He took a deep draught of beer out of a quart pot, and then smiled with mingled tolerance and pity on the Brodick man.
"Ay, ay!" he said, "and you think you have done a smert thing. You have mich caause to be ashamed of yourself. You are nothing better than a common swundler. But och, it doesna matter; the fact iss, oor bird's deid."
"Deid!" cried the Brodick man. "What do you mean by deid?"
"Chust that it's no' livin'," said Para Handy coolly. "Dougie and me bought wan in the Bird Market, and Dougie was carryin' it doon to the vessel in a sugar-poke when he met some fellows he kent in Chamaica Street, and went for a dram, or maybe two. Efter a while he didna mind what he had in the poke, and he put it in his troosers pockets, thinkin' it wass something extra for the Sunday's dinner. When he brought the poor wee bird oot of his pocket in the mornin', it wass chust a' remains."

III: THE MALINGERER
THE crew of the Vital Spark were all willing workers, except The Tar, who was usually as tired when he rose in the morning as when he went to bed. He said himself it was his health, and that he had never got his strength right back since he had the whooping-cough twice when he was a boy. The Captain was generally sympathetic, and was inclined to believe The Tar was destined to have a short life unless he got married and had a wife to look after him. "A wife's the very thing for you," he would urge; "it's no' canny, a man as delicate as you to be having nobody to depend on."
"I couldna afford a wife," The Tar always maintained. "They're all too grand for the like of me."
"Och ay! but you might look aboot you and find a wee, no' aawfu' bonny wan," said Para Handy.
"If she was blin', or the like of that, you would have a better chance of gettin' her," chimed in Dougie, who always scoffed at The Tar's periodical illnesses, and cruelly ascribed his lack of energy to sheer laziness.
The unfortunate Tar's weaknesses always seemed to come on him when there was most to do. It generally took the form of sleepiness, so that sometimes when he was supposed to be preparing the dinner he would be found sound asleep on the head of a bucket, with a half-peeled potato in his hand. He once crept out of the fo'c'sle rubbing his eyes after a twelve-hours' sleep, saying, "Tell me this and tell me no more, am I going to my bed or comin' from it?"
But there was something unusual and alarming about the illness which overtook