Bret Harte

“ Sleight for the sale of the ship—as a direct way out of his present perplexity, he bent his steps towards the financier's office, but paused and turned back before reaching the door. He made his way to the wharf and gazed abstractedly at the lights reflected in the dark, tremulous, jelly-like water. But wherever he went he was accompanied by the absurd figure of his lodger—a figure he had hitherto laughed at or half pitied, but which now, to his bewildered comprehension, seemed to have a fateful significance. ”

“ Nott was a Far Western farmer who had never seen a ship before, nor a larger stream of water than a tributary of the Missouri river. In a spirit, half of fascination, half of speculation, he had bought her at the time of her abandonment, and had since mortgaged his ranch at Petaluma with his live stock, to defray the expenses of filling in the land where she stood, and the improvements of the vicinity. He had transferred his household goods and his only daughter to her cabin, and had divided the space "between decks" and her hold into lodging-rooms and lofts for the storage of goods. ”

“ Nott had never known him to make use of the latter door; on the contrary, it was his regular habit to issue from his apartment at three o'clock every afternoon, dressed as he has been described, stride deliberately through the passage to the upper deck and thence into the street, where his strange figure was a feature of the principal promenade for two or three hours, returning as regularly at eight o'clock to the ship and the seclusion of his loft. Mr. Nott paused before the door, under the pretence of throwing the light before him into the shadows of the forecastle; all was silent within. ”

“ Nott's unprofitable tenants—the rats? No. A bright idea flashed upon Mr. Nott's troubled mind. It was de Ferrières snoring! He smiled grimly. "Wonder if Rosey'd call him a gentleman if she heard that," he chuckled to himself as he slowly made his way back to the cabin and the small state-room opposite to his daughter's. During the rest of the night he dreamed of being compelled to give Rosey in marriage to his strange lodger, who added insult to the outrage by snoring audibly through the marriage service. ”

“ It was a figure so extraordinary that even in the strange masquerade of that early civilisation it was remarkable; a figure with whom father and daughter were already familiar without abatement of wonder—the figure of a rejuvenated old man, padded, powdered, dyed, and painted to the verge of caricature, but without a single suggestion of ludicrousness or humour. A face so artificial that it seemed almost a mask, but, like a mask, more pathetic than amusing. ”

“ Some fellers, Rosey," said Nott, with a cunning smile, "would hev blurted out a big figger and been cotched. That ain't my style. I just looked at him. 'I'll wait fur your figgers until next steamer day,' sez he, and off he goes like a shot. He's awfully sharp, Rosey."
"But if he is sharp, father, and he really wants to buy the ship," returned Rosey, thoughtfully, "it's only because he knows it's valuable property, and not because he likes it as we do. He can't take that value away even if we don't sell it to him, and all the while we have the comfort of the dear old Pontiac, don't you see?" ”

“ And you look more like a gentleman sitting in his own—ship—you know, looking over his bills and getting ready to give his orders."
Vague and general as Miss Rosey's compliment was, it had its full effect upon her father, who was at times dimly conscious of his hopeless rusticity and its incongruity with his surroundings. "Yes," he said awkwardly, with a slight relaxation of his aggressive attitude; "yes, in course it's more bang-up style, but it don't pay—Rosey—it don't pay. Yer's the Pontiac that oughter be bringin' in, ez rents go, at least three hundred a month, don't make her taxes. ”

“ His tenants vaguely recognised that his occupancy was a sentimental rather than a commercial speculation, and often generously lent themselves to the illusion by not paying their rent. Others treated their own tenancy as a joke—a quaint recreation born of the childlike familiarity of frontier intercourse. ”

“ Nott, musingly; "it's no slouch of an advertisement. 'The Pontiac,' the property of A. Nott, Esq., of St. Jo, Missouri. Send it on to your aunt Phœbe; sorter make the old folks open their eyes—oh? Well, seein' he's been to some expense fittin' up an entrance from the other street, we'll let him slide. But as to that d—d old Frenchman Ferrers, in the next loft, with his stuck-up airs and high falutin style, we must get quit of him; he's regularly gouged me in that ere horsehair spekilation."
"How can you say that, father!" said Rosey, with a slight increase of colour. "It was your own offer. ”