Circumstantial Evidence by John Lang — Read

When the skipper of some small coastal trading craft is able to retire from leading a sea-faring life, it is usually within close range of the briny, tarry whiffs that with every breeze come puffing from the harbour of some little port out of which he has formerly traded that he sets up his shore-going abode. There, when he has paid off for the last time, and everything, so to speak, is coiled down and made ship-shape, he settles within easy hail of old cronies like himself; and if he should chance to be one of those who have lived all their days with only their ship for wife, then he not unnaturally falls easily into the habit of dropping, of an evening, into the snug, well-lit bar-parlour of the "Goat and Compasses" or the "Mariner's Friend," or some such house of entertainment, with its glowing fire and warm, seductive, tobacco-and grog-scented atmosphere, there to wile away the time swopping yarns with old friends. Sometimes, if opportunity offer, he is not averse from a mild game of cards for moderate points; and usually he takes, or at least in old days he used to take, his liquor hot -- and strong.

Captain Alexander Craes was one of those retired merchant skippers; but he had not, like the majority of his fellows, settled near the sea-coast. It was Kelso that had drawn him like a loadstone. An inland-bred man, in his boyhood he had run away to sea, and the sea, that had irresistibly woed his youthful fancy, had no whit fulfilled his boyish dreams. It was not always blue, he found; the ship was not always running before a spanking breeze; more kicks than ha'pence, more rope's-endings than blessings, came his way during the first few years of his sailor life. Perhaps it was because he had been ashamed to go back and own himself beaten, or perhaps it was his native Border dourness that had caused him to stick to it; but at any rate he did stick to it -- though, like most sailors, he growled, and even swore sometimes, that he hated the life. And now, in the winter of 1784-5, here he was in Kelso, stout, weather-beaten, grey-headed, over fifty, living within earshot of the deep voice of flooded Tweed roaring and fretting over the barrier with which the devil, at bidding of Michael Scott the Wizard, long syne dammed its course. Many a time when the captain's little vessel, close hauled, had been threshing through leaden-grey seas under hurrying, leaden-grey skies and bitter snow squalls, with a foul wind persistently pounding at her day after day, he had thought, as some more than ordinarily angry puff whitened the water to windward and broke him off his course, with the weather leech of his close-reefed topsail shivering, how pleasant it must be to be a landsman, to go where he pleased in spite of wind or weather. Ah! they were the happy ones, those lucky landsmen, who could always do as they chose, blow high, blow low.