I suppose I must have stared at this, for he paused and peered at me,
drawing me over to the window, through which--so thickly grimed it
was--a very little light dribbled from the courtyard into the room.
Yet the room itself was clean, almost spick and span, with a
seaman-like tidiness in all its arrangements--a small room, crowded
with foreign odds-and-ends, among which I remember a walking-stick
even more singular than the one Captain Coffin carried on his walks
abroad (it was white in colour, with lines of small grey
indentations, and he afterwards told me it was a shark's backbone);
a corner-cupboard, too, painted over with green-and-yellow tulips.

"Copper nails, I tell you. Nothing but the best'll do for your
friend Coffin." He leaned back, still eyeing me, and tapped me twice
on the chest. "You heard me say that? 'Your friend' was my words."

"Thank you, sir."

"But you made me jump, you did--me being that way given when off the
liquor." He hesitated a moment, with a glance over his shoulder at
the tulip-painted cupboard. "Brooks," he went on earnestly, "you and
me being met on a matter of business, and the same needin'
steadiness--head and hand, my boy, if ever business did--what d'ye
say to a tot of rum apiece?"

Without waiting for my answer, he hobbled off to the cupboard, and
had set two glasses on the table and brimmed them with neat spirit
before I had finished protesting. The bottle-neck trembled on the
rims of the glasses and struck out a sort of chime as he paused.

"You won't?" he asked, gulping down his own portion; and the liquor