"Here's a most excellent glass," said Robin, pulling a pocket-glass from
his vest, and showing it to the sailor; "you can count the very
shot-holes in the vessel they are towing up."
The sailor took it with a sneer of incredulity and a glance of distrust
at the speaker, but neither were of long duration.
"Yes," said he, after gazing through it attentively for some minutes;
"yes, that is something like what I call a glass. 'Gad, it makes me
young again to see those marks--every bullet had its billet, I warrant
me. The eye you have left, my friend, does not look, though, as if it
wanted such a helper."
"Nor does it," said Robin; "and, as a token of the great honour which I
bear to the wooden walls of Old England, you are welcome to keep it."
"Keep your glass, sir!" repeated the wooden-legged hero; "no; you don't
look like one who could afford to make such a present. But I'll buy it,
I'll buy it, if you'll let me--that I will."
"I'd rather you would take it," replied Robin with much courtesy, and in
a well-feigned foreign accent; "for though I am a poor wanderer, one of
another country, trying to pick up a little by my skill in music, and
from those charitable Christians who pity my deformity, yet I love the
very look of a sailor so much, that I would give even my gittern to a
true son of the sea."
"Say you so, my boy?" shouted the old tar, "then d--n me now if I do
take it, nor I'll not buy it either; but I'll swop for it any thing I
have, and then, d'ye see, we'll have something to remember each other
all our days."
"The sailors of England," pursued the crafty Robin, "are never seen but
to be remembered--feared on sea and loved on land."
"You're the best-hearted foreigner I ever fell in with," said the old
man; "so let us make full sail for the Oliver's Head, and settle the
matter there; perhaps you'll give us a taste of your calling," touching
as he spoke the cracked gittern with the point of his stick. "My eyes!
how Ned Purcell will stare at this glass! His own! why his own an't a
fly-blow to it."
"The Oliver's Head" was a gay hostelry by the road-side, with what was
called in those days a portraiture of the Protector swinging from a post
which stood on the slip of turf that skirted the house. It was kept by a
bluff landlord and a young and pretty landlady, young enough to be her
husband's daughter, and discreet enough to be an old man's wife with
credit and respectability. There were benches all round the house, one
side of which looked towards the river, and the other out upon the
heath, and up the hill; and a pleasant view it was either way; but the
sailor chose the water-prospect, and established himself and Robin on a
small separate bench that was overshadowed by a green and spreading
cherry-tree. Having settled the exchange, which ended in Robin's
receiving a small Spanish dagger in exchange for his glass, the seaman
insisting on his taking a glass of another sort; to which Robin was by
no means averse, as he had not yet been able to obtain the desired
information relative to the Ironsides.