Page:Robert Louis Stevenson, the dramatist.pdf/23

21 Again, take the scene between David Pew, the ruffianly blind beggar, once Boatswain of the "Arethusa" who, armed with the knowledge of Gaunt's past, comes to his old captain to extort money from him. They stand face to face. "Well?" says Gaunt. "Well, Cap'n?" says Pew. "What do you want?" asks Gaunt.

"Well, Admiral, in a general way, what I want in a manner of speaking is money and rum.

"David Pew, I have known you a long time.

"And so you have; aboard the old Arethusa; and you don't seem that cheered up as I'd looked for, with an old shipmate dropping in, one as has been seeking you two years and more—and blind at that. What a swaller you had for a pannikin of rum, and what a fist for the shiners! Ah, Cap'n, they didn't call you Admiral Guinea for nothing. I can see that old sea-chest of yours—her with the brass bands, where you kept your gold dust and doubloons: you know!—I can see her as well this minute as though you and me was still at it playing put on the lid of her &hellip; You don't say nothing, Cap'n? &hellip; Well, here it is: I want money and I want rum. You don't know what it is to want rum, you don't: it gets to that p'int, that you would kill a 'ole ship's company for just one guttle of it. What? Admiral Guinea, my old Commander, go back on poor old Pew? and him high and dry?

"David Pew, it were better for you that you were sunk in fifty fathom. I know your life; and first and last, it is one broadside