The Vital Spark

The Vital Spark Neil Munro

I. PARA HANDY, MASTER MARINER
A short, thick-set man, with a red beard, a hard round felt hat,
ridiculously out of harmony with a blue pilot jacket and trousers and a
seaman's jersey, his hands immersed deeply in those pockets our
fathers (and the heroes of Rabelais) used to wear behind a front flap, he
would have attracted my notice even if he had not, unaware of my
presence so close behind him, been humming to himself the chorus of a
song that used to be very popular on gabbarts, but is now gone out of
date, like "The Captain with the Whiskers took a Sly Glance at Me."
You may have heard it thirty years ago, before the steam puffer came in
to sweep the sailing smack from all the seas that lie between Bowling
and Stornoway. It runs--
"Young Munro he took a notion For to sail across the sea, And he left
his true love weeping, All alone on Greenock Quay,"
and by that sign, and by his red beard, and by a curious gesture he had,
as if he were now and then going to scratch his ear and only determined
not to do it when his hand was up, I knew he was one of the
Macfarlanes. There were ten Macfarlanes, all men, except one, and he
was a valet, but the family did their best to conceal the fact, and said he
was away on the yachts, and making that much money he had not time
to write a scrape home.
"I think I ought to know you," I said to the vocalist with the hard hat.
"You are a Macfarlane: either the Beekan, or Kail, or the Nipper, or
Keep Dark, or Para Handy--"
"As sure as daith," said he, "I'm chust Para Handy, and I ken your name
fine, but I cannot chust mind your face." He had turned round on the
pawl he sat on, without taking his hands from his pockets, and looked

up at me where I stood beside him, watching a river steamer being
warped into the pier.
"My goodness!" he said about ten minutes later, when he had wormed
my whole history out of me; "and you'll be writing things for the papers?
Cot bless me! and do you tell me you can be makin' a living off that?
I'm not asking you, mind, hoo mich you'll be makin', don't tell me; not
a cheep! not a cheep! But I'll wudger it's more than Maolean the
munister. But och! I'm not saying: it iss not my business. The munister
has two hundred in the year and a coo's gress; he iss aye the big man up
yonder, but it iss me would like to show him he wass not so big a man
as yourself. Eh? But not a cheep! not a cheep! A Macfarlane would
never put his nose into another man's oar."
"And where have you been this long while?" I asked, having let it sink
into his mind that there was no chance to-day of his learning my exact
income, expenditure, and how much I had in the bank.
"Me!" said he; "I am going up and down like yon fellow in the
Scruptures--what wass his name? Sampson--seeking what I may devour.
I am out of a chob. Chust that: out of a chob. You'll not be hearin' of
anybody in your line that iss in want of a skipper?"
Skippers, I said, were in rare demand in my line of business. We hadn't
used a skipper for years.
"Chust that! chust that! I only mentioned it in case. You are making
things for newspapers, my Cot! what will they not do now for the
penny? Well, that is it; I am out of a chob; chust putting bye the time.
I'm not vexed for myself, so mich as for poor Dougie. Dougie wass
mate, and I wass skipper. I don't know if you kent the Fital Spark?"
The Vital Spark, I confessed, was well known to me as the most
uncertain puffer that ever kept the Old New-Year in Upper Lochfyne.
"That wass her!" said Macfarlane, almost weeping. "There was never
the bate of her, and I have sailed in her four years over twenty with my
hert in my mooth for fear of her boiler. If you never saw the Fital Spark,

she is aal hold, with the boiler behind, four men and a derrick, and a
watter-butt and a pan loaf in the fo'c'sle. Oh man! she wass the beauty!
She was chust sublime! She should be carryin' nothing but gentry for
passengers, or nice genteel luggage for the shooting-lodges, but there
they would be spoilin' her and rubbin' all the pent off her with their
coals,