The Cruise of the Shining Light

was newly come in from the rain: a bitter night, the wind in the northeast, with a black fog abroad (I remember it well)--a wet, black night, the rain driving past the red-curtained windows of the Anchor and Chain, the streets swept clean of men, ourselves light-hearted and warm, indifferent, being ashore from the wind, the cloudy night, the vicious, crested waves of the open, where men must never laugh nor touch a glass.

They must have a dram together in a stall removed from the congregation of steaming men at the long bar. And when the maid had fetched the bottle, Tom Bull raised it, regarded it doubtfully, cocked his head, looked my shamefaced uncle in the eye.

"An' what might this be?" says he.

"'Tis knowed hereabouts, in the langwitch o' waterside widows," replies my uncle, mildly, "as a bottle o' Cheap an' Nasty."

Tom Bull put the bottle aside.

"Tis cheap, I'll be bound," says my uncle; "but 'tis not so wonderful nasty, Tom," he grieved, "when 'tis the best t'