Me, I lucked onto a Spanish ship, a week or ten days later — she'd stopped to take on water, and I got talking with the cook, who needed another messboy. I've had better berths, but it got me to Malaga — and after that, one thing led to another, and I didn't see Henry Lee again for six or seven years, must have been, the way it happens with seamen. I thought about him often enough, riding that bull shark to rescue that merrow who were going to make him rich, and I asked after him any time I met an English hand, or a Yankee, but never a word could anyone tell me — not until I rounded a fruitstall in the marketplace at Velha Goa, and almost ran over him!
How I got there's no great matter — I were a cook meself by then, on a wallowing scow of an East Indiaman, and trying to get some greens and fresh fruit into the crew's hardtack diet, if just to sweeten the farts in the fo'c'sle. As for why I were running, with a box of mangoes in me arms … well, that don't figure in this story neither, so never you mind.
Henry Lee looked the same as I remembered him — still not shaving more than every three days, I'd warrant, still as blue–eyed an innocent as ever cracked a bos'un's head with a beer bottle. Only change in him I could see, he didn't look like a sailor no more. Hard to explain; he were dressing just the same as ever — singlet, blue canvas pants, same rope–sole shoes, even the very same dirty white cap he always wore — but summat was different about him. Might have been the way he walked — he'd lost that little roll we all have, walked like he'd not been to sea in his life. Aye, might have been that.
Well, he give a great whoop to see me, and he grabbed hold of me, mangoes and all, and dragged me off into a dark little Portygee tavern — smelled of dried fish and fried onions, I remember, and cloves under it all. They knew him there — landlord patted his back, kissed him on the cheek, brought us some kind of mulled ale, and left us alone. And Henry Lee sat there with his arms folded and grinned at me, not saying a word, until I finally told him he looked like a blasted old hen, squatting over one solitary egg, and it likely rotten at that. «Talk or be damned to you," I says. «The drink's not good enough to keep me from walking out of this fleapit.»
Henry Lee burst out laughing then, and he grabbed both me hands across the table, saying, «Ah, it's just so grand to see you, old Ben, I don't know what to say first, I swear I don't.»
«Tell about the money, mate," I says, and didn't he stare then ? I says, «Your clothes are for shite, right enough, but you're walking like a man with money in every pocket — you talk like your mouth's full of money, and you're scared it'll all spill out if you open your lips too wide. Now, last time I saw you, you hadn't a farthing to bless yourself with, so let's talk about that, hey? That merrow turn up with his life savings, after all?» And I laughed, because I'd meant it as a joke. I did.
Henry Lee didn't laugh. He looked startled, and then he leaned so close I could see where he'd lost a side tooth and picked up a scar right by his left eyebrow — made him look younger, somehow, those things did along with that missing bit of ear — and he dropped his voice almost to a whisper, no matter there wasn't a soul near us. «No," says he, «no, Ben, he did better than that, a deal better than that. He taught me the making of salt wine.»
Aye, that's how I looked at him — exactly the way you're eyeing me now. Like I'm barking mad, and Jesus and the saints wouldn't have me. And the way you mumbled, «Salt wine?» — I said it just the same as you, tucking me head down like that, getting me legs under me, in case things turned ugly. I did it true. But Henry Lee only sat back and grinned again. «You heard me, Ben," he says. «You heard me clear enough.»
«Salt wine," I says, and different this time, slowly. «Salt wine … that'd be like pickled beer? Oysters in honey, that kind of thing, is it? How about bloody fried marmalade, then?» Takes me a bit of time to get properly worked up, mind, but foolery will do it. «Whale blubber curry," I says. «Boiled nor'easter.»
For answer, Henry Lee reaches into those dirty canvas pants and comes up with a cheap pewter flask, two for sixpence in any chandlery. Doesn't say one word — just hands it to me, folds his hands on the table and waits. I take me time, study the flask — got a naked lady and a six–point buck on one side, and somebody in a flying chariot looks like it's caught fire on the other. I start to say how I don't drink much wine — never did, not Spanish sherry, nor even port, nor none of that Frenchy slop — but Henry Lee flicks one finger to tell me I'm to shut me gob and taste. So that's what I did.
All right, this is the hard part to explain. Nor about merrows, nor neither the part about some bloody fool jumping on the back of a bull shark — the part about the wine. Because it were wine in that flask, and it were salty, and right there's where I run aground on a lee shore, trying to make you taste and see summat you never will, if your luck holds. Salt wine —not red nor neither white, but gray–green, like the deep sea, and smelling like the sea, filling your head with the sea, but wine all the same. Salt wine…
First swallow, I lost meself. I didn't think I were ever coming back.
Weren't nothing like being drunk. I've downed enough rum, enough brandy, dropped off to sleep in enough jolly company and wakened in enough stinking alleys behind enough shebeens to know the difference. This were more … this were like I'd fallen overboard from me, from meself, and not a single boat lowered to find me. But it didn't matter none, because summat were bearing me up, summat were surging under me, big and fast and wild, as it might have been a dolphin between me legs, tearing along through the sea — or the air, might be we were flying, I'd not have known — carrying somebody off to somewhere, and who it was I can't tell you now no more than I could have then. But it weren't me, I'll take me affydavy on that. I weren't there. I weren't anywhere or anybody, and just then that were just where I wanted to be.
Just then … Aye, you give me a choice just then, happen I might have chosen … But I'd just had that one swallow, after all, so in a bit there I were, me as ever was, back at that tavern table with Henry Lee, and him still grinning like a dog with two tails, and he says to me, «Well, Ben?»
When I can talk, I ask him, «You can make this swill yourself?» and when he nods, «Then I'd say your merrow earned his keep. Not half bad.»
«Best you ever turned into piss," Henry says. I don't say nowt back, and after a bit, he leans forward, drops his voice way down again, and says, «It's our fortune, Ben. Yours and mine. I'm swearing on my mother's grave.»
«If the dollymop's even got one," I says, because of course he don't know who his mam was, no more than I know mine. They just dropped us both and went their mortal ways, good luck to us all. I tell him, «Never mind the swearing, just lay out what you mean by our fortune. I didn't save no merrow — fact, I halfway tried to save you from trying to save him. He don't owe me nowt, and nor do you.» And I'm on me feet and ready to scarper — just grab up those mangoes and walk. Ain't a living soul thinks I've got no pride, but I bloody do.
But Henry Lee's up with me, catching ahold of me arm like an octopus, and he's saying, «No, no, Ben, you don't understand. I need you, you have to help me, sit down and listen.» And he pulls and pushes me back down, and leans right over me, so close I can see the scar as cuts into his hairline, where the third mate of the Boston Annie got him with a marlinspike, happened off the Azores. He says, «I can make it, the salt wine, but I need a partner to market it for me. I've got no head for business — I don't know the first thing about selling. You've got to ship it, travel with it, be my factor. Because I can't do this without you, d'you see, Ben?»