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 nights 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 . Often I have heard the house shaking with `` Yo-ho-ho , and a bottle of rum , '' all the neighbours joining in for dear life , with the fear of death upon them , and each singing louder than the other to avoid remark . For in these fits he was the most overriding companion ever known ; he would slap his hand on the table for silence all round ; he would fly up in a passion of anger at a question , or sometimes because none was put , and so he judged the company was not following his story . Nor would he allow anyone to leave the inn till he had drunk himself sleepy and reeled off to bed . His stories were what frightened people worst of all . Dreadful stories they were -- about hanging , and walking the plank , and storms at sea , and the Dry Tortugas , and wild deeds and places on the Spanish Main . By his own account he must have lived his life among some of the wickedest men that God ever allowed upon the sea , and the language in which he told these stories shocked our plain country people almost as much as the crimes that he described . My father was always saying the inn would be ruined , for people would soon cease coming there to be tyrannized over and put down , and sent shivering to their beds ; but I really believe his presence did us good . People were frightened at the time , but on looking back they rather liked it ; it was a fine excitement in a quiet country life , and there was even a party of the younger men who pretended to admire him , calling him a `` true sea-dog '' and a `` real old salt '' and such like names , and saying there was the sort of man that made England terrible at sea . In one way , indeed , he bade fair to ruin us , for he kept on staying week after week , and at last month after month , so that all the money had been long exhausted , and still my father never plucked up the heart to insist on having more . If ever he mentioned it , the captain blew through his nose so loudly that you might say he roared , and stared my poor father out of the room . I have seen him wringing his hands after such a rebuff , and I am sure the annoyance and the terror he lived in must have greatly hastened his early and unhappy death . All the time he lived with us the captain made no change whatever in his dress but to buy some stockings from a hawker . One of the cocks of his hat having fallen down , he let it hang from that day forth , though it was a great annoyance when it blew . I remember the appearance of his coat , which he patched himself upstairs in his room , and which , before the end , was nothing but patches . He never wrote or received a letter , and he never spoke with any but the neighbours , and with these , for the most part , only when drunk on rum . The great sea-chest none of us had ever seen open .
He was only once crossed , and that was towards the end , when my poor father was far gone in a decline that XXXXX him off .
bade fancies following hanging joining received ruined sing took wringing