The Devils Spectacles

 I      MEMOIRS OF AN ARCTIC VOYAGER

He says, sir, he thinks he’s nigh to his latter end, and he would like, if convenient, to see you before he goes.’

‘Do you mean before he dies?’

‘That’s about it, sir.’

I was in no humour (for reasons to be hereafter mentioned) for seeing anybody, under disastrous circumstances of any sort; but the person who had sent me word that he was ‘nigh to his latter end’ had special claims on my consideration.He was an old sailor, who had first seen blue water under the protection of my father, then a post-captain in the navy. Born on our estate, and the only male survivor of our head gamekeeper’s family of seven children, he had received a good education through my father’s kindness, and he ought to have got on well in the world; but he was one of those born vagabonds who set education at defiance.

His term of service having expired, he disappeared for many years. During part of the time he was supposed to have been employed in the merchant navy. At the end of that long interval he turned up one day at our country house, an invalided man, without a penny in his pocket. My good father, then nearing the end of his life, was invalided too. Whether he had a fellow-feeling for the helpless creature whom he had once befriended, or whether he only took counsel of his own generous nature, it is now needless to inquire. He appointed Septimus Notman to be lodge-keeper at the second of our two park gates, and he recommended Septimus to my personal care on his deathbed. ‘I’m afraid he’s an old scoundrel,’ my father confessed; ‘but somebody must look after him as long as he lasts, and if you don’t take his part, Alfred, nobody else will.’ After this Septimus kept his place at the gate while we were in the country. When we returned to our London house the second gate was closed. The old sailor was lodged (by a strong exertion of my influence) in a room over a disused stable, which our coachman had proposed to turn into a hayloft. Everybody disliked Septimus Notman. He was said to be mad; to be a liar, a hypocrite, a vicious wretch, and a disagreeable brute. There were people who even reported that he had been a pirate during the time when we lost sight of him and who declared, when they were asked for their proof, that his crimes were written in his face.