"Well, since you say I had better cut this quarter, I suppose I must; though I like to see the rigging above the housetops, and to hear the jolly voices of the sailors, and to know that the 'Pizarro' lies hard by in the Pool. However, there's an old aunt of mine, down in a sleepy little village in Devonshire, who'd be glad to see me, and none the worse for a small slice of Jernam Brothers' good luck; so I'll take a place on the Plymouth coach to-morrow morning, and go down and have a peep at her. You'll be able to keep a look-out on the repairs aboard of the 'Pizarro', and I can be back in time to meet George on the fifth."
"You're both a good deal too fond of this house," he said. "The people that have got it now are strangers to us. They've bought the business since our last trip. I don't like the look on them."
"No more do I, if it comes to that. I was sorry to hear the old folks had been done up. But come, Joyce, some more rum-and-water. Let's enjoy ourselves to-night, man, if I'm to start by the first coach to-morrow morning. What's that?"
The captain stopped, with the bell-rope in his hand, to listen to the sound of music close at hand. A woman's voice, fresh and clear as the song of a sky-lark, was singing "Wapping Old Stairs," to the accompaniment of a feeble old piano.
"What a voice!" cried the sailor. "Why, it seems to pierce to the very core of my heart as I listen to it. Let's go and hear the music, Joyce."
"Better not, captain," answered the warning voice of the clerk. "I tell you they're a bad lot in this house. It's a sort of concert they give of a night; an excuse for drunkenness, and riot, and low company. If you're going by the coach to-morrow, you'd better get to bed early to-night. You've been drinking quite enough as it is."
"Drinking!" cried Valentine Jernam; "why, I'm as sober as a judge. Come, Joyce, let's go and listen to that girl's singing."
The captain left the room, and Harker followed, shrugging his shoulders as he went.
"There's nothing so hard to manage as a baby of thirty years old," he muttered; "a blessed infant that one's obliged to call master."
He followed the captain, through a dingy little passage, into a room with a sanded floor, and a little platform at one end. The room was full of sailors and disreputable-looking women; and was lighted by several jets of coarse gas, which flared in the bleak March wind.