Rivers of Ice | Page 2

with her by knocking at her door with their noses instead of their knuckles. We calls her place the cabin, 'cause the windows is raither small, and over'angs the river."
"Well then, my lad," said the seaman, "clap a stopper on your tongue, if you can, and heave ahead."
"All right, capp'n," returned the small boy, "foller me, an' don't be frightened. Port your helm a bit here, there's a quicksand in the middle o' the track--so, steady!"
Avoiding a large pool of mud with which the head of the lane was garnished, and which might have been styled the bathing, not to say wallowing, quarters of the Grubb's Court juveniles, the small boy led the bluff seaman towards the river without further remark, diverging only once from the straight road for a few seconds, for the purpose of making a furious rush at a sleeping cat with a yell worthy of a Cherokee savage, or a locomotive whistle; a slight pleasantry which had the double effect of shooting the cat through space in glaring convulsions, and filling the small boy's mind with the placidity which naturally follows a great success.
The lane presented this peculiarity, that the warehouses on its left side became more and more solid and vast and tall as they neared the river, while the shops and dwellings on its right became poorer, meaner, and more diminutive in the same direction, as if there were some mysterious connection between them, which involved the adversity of the one in exact proportion to the prosperity of the other. Children and cats appeared to be the chief day-population of the place, and these disported themselves among the wheels of enormous waggons, and the legs of elephantine horses with an impunity which could only have been the result of life-long experience.
The seaman was evidently unaccustomed to such scenes, for more than once during the short period of his progress down the lane, he uttered an exclamation of alarm, and sprang to the rescue of those large babies which are supposed to have grown sufficiently old to become nursing mothers to smaller babies--acts which were viewed with a look of pity by the small boy, and called from him the encouraging observations, "Keep your mind easy, capp'n; they're all right, bless you; the hosses knows 'em, and wouldn't 'urt 'em on no account."
"This is Grubb's Court," said the boy, turning sharply to the right and passing through a low archway.
"Thank 'ee, lad," said the seaman, giving him a sixpence.
The small boy opened his eyes very wide indeed, exclaiming, "Hallo! I say, capp'n, wot's this?" at the same time, however, putting the coin in his pocket with an air which plainly said, "Whether you've made a mistake or not, you needn't expect to get it back again."
Evidently the seaman entertained no such expectations, for he turned away and became absorbed in the scene around him.
It was not cheering. Though the summer sun was high and powerful, it failed to touch the broken pavement of Grubb's Court, or to dry up the moisture which oozed from it and crept up the walls of the surrounding houses. Everything was very old, very rotten, very crooked, and very dirty. The doorways round the court were wide open--always open--in some cases, because of there being no doors; in other cases, because the tenements to which they led belonged to a variety of families, largely composed of children who could not, even on tiptoe, reach or manipulate door-handles. Nursing mothers of two feet high were numerous, staggering about with nurslings of a foot and a half long. A few of the nurslings, temporarily abandoned by the premature mothers, lay sprawling--in some cases squalling--on the moist pavement, getting over the ground like large snails, and leaving slimy tracks behind them. Little boys, of the "City Arab" type, were sprinkled here and there, and one or two old women sat on door-steps contemplating the scene, or conversing with one or two younger women. Some of the latter were busy washing garments so dirty, that the dirty water of old Father Thames seemed quite a suitable purifier.
"Gillie," cried one of the younger women referred to, wiping the soap-suds from her red arms, "come here, you bad, naughty boy. W'ere 'ave you bin? I want you to mind baby."
"W'y, mother," cried the small boy--who answered to the name of Gillie--"don't you see I'm engaged? I'm a-showin' this 'ere sea-capp'n the course he's got to steer for port. He wants to make the cabin of old mother Roby."
"W'y don't you do it quickly, then?" demanded Gillie's mother, "you bad, naughty, wicked boy. Beg your parding, sir," she added, to the seaman, "the boy 'an't got no sense, besides bein' wicked and naughty--'e ain't 'ad no train', sir, that's w'ere it is, all along of my 'avin'