Oh , I see what you 're at -- there '' ; and he threw down three or four gold pieces on the threshold . `` You can tell me when I 've worked through that , '' says he , looking as fierce as a commander . And indeed bad as his clothes were and coarsely as he spoke , he had none of the appearance of a man who sailed before the mast , but seemed like a mate or skipper accustomed to be obeyed or to strike . The man who came with the barrow told us the mail had set him down the morning before at the Royal George , that he had inquired what inns there were along the coast , and hearing ours well spoken of , I suppose , and described as lonely , had chosen it from the others for his place of residence . And that was all we could learn of our guest . He was a very silent man by custom . All day he hung round the cove or upon the cliffs with a brass telescope ; all evening he sat in a corner of the parlour next the fire and drank rum and water very strong . Mostly he would not speak when spoken to , only look up sudden and fierce and blow through his nose like a fog-horn ; and we and the people who came about our house soon learned to let him be . Every day when he came back from his stroll he would ask if any seafaring men had gone by along the road . At first we thought it was the want of company of his own kind that made him ask this question , but at last we began to see he was desirous to avoid them . When a seaman did put up at the Admiral Benbow -LRB- as now and then some did , making by the coast road for Bristol -RRB- he would look in at him through the curtained door before he entered the parlour ; and he was always sure to be as silent as a mouse when any such was present . For me , at least , there was no secret about the matter , for I was , in a way , a sharer in his alarms . He had taken me aside one day and promised me a silver fourpenny on the first of every month if I would only keep my `` weather-eye open for a seafaring man with one leg '' and let him know the moment he appeared . Often enough when the first of the month came round and I applied to him for my wage , he would only blow through his nose at me and stare me down , but before the week was out he was sure to think better of it , bring me my four-penny piece , and repeat his orders to look out for `` the seafaring man with one leg . '' How that personage haunted my dreams , I need scarcely tell you . On stormy nights , when the wind shook the four corners of the house and the surf roared along the cove and up the cliffs , I would see him in a thousand forms , and with a thousand diabolical expressions . Now the leg would be cut off at the knee , now at the hip ; now he was a monstrous kind of a creature who had never had but the one leg , and that in the middle of his body . To see him leap and run and pursue me over hedge and ditch was the worst of nightmares . And altogether I paid pretty dear for my monthly fourpenny piece , in the shape of these abominable fancies . But though I was so terrified by the idea of the seafaring man with one leg , I was far less afraid of the captain himself than anybody else who knew him .
There were XXXXX when he took a deal more rum and water than his head would carry ; and then he would sometimes sit and sing his wicked , old , wild sea-songs , minding nobody ; but sometimes he would call for glasses round and force all the trembling company to listen to his stories or bear a chorus to his singing .
Benbow Bristol George before evening fire fog-horn fourpenny nights sharer