We and the World, Part II | Page 4

Snuffy, when Snuffy was partly drunk. But after a pause, he said,
"All right. Where are your papers? What was your ship, and why did ye
run?"
"I have not served in a ship yet, sir," said I, "but I'm sure--"
He did not allow me to go on. With a sudden fierce look that made him
more horribly like Snuffy than before, he caught me by my sleeve and a
bit of my arm, and shoved me back from the edge of the dock till we
stood alone. "Then where did ye steal your slops?" he hissed at me with
oaths. "Look here, ye young gallows-bird, if ye don't stand me a liquor,
I'll run ye in as a runaway apprentice. So cash up, and look sharp."
I was startled, but I was not quite such a fool as I looked, mind or body.
I had once had a hardish struggle with Snuffy himself when he was
savage, and I was strong and agile beyond my seeming. I dived deeply
into my trousers-pocket, as if feeling for the price of a "liquor," and the
man having involuntarily allowed me a little swing for this, I suddenly
put up my shoulders, and ran at him as if my head were a battering-ram,
and his moleskin waistcoat the wall of a beleaguered city, and then
wrenching myself from his grasp, and dodging the leg he had put out to
trip me, I fled blindly down the quay.

No one can take orange-peel into account, however. I slipped on a large
piece and came headlong, with the aggravation of hearing my enemy
breathing hoarsely close above me. As regards him, I suppose it was
lucky that my fall jerked the shilling and the penny out of my pocket,
for as the shilling rolled away he went after it, and I saw him no more.
What I did see when I sat up was the last of my penny (which had
rolled in another direction), as it gave one final turn and fell into the
dock.
I could have cried with vexation, and partly with fatigue, for it was
getting late, and I was getting tired. I had fallen soft enough, as it
happened, for I found myself on a heap of seeds, some kind of small
bean, and the yielding mass made a pleasant resting-place. There was
no one very near, and I moved round to the back of the heap to be still
more out of sight, and sat down to try and think what it was best to do.
If my slops were really a sort of uniform to which I was not entitled,
they would do me more harm than good. But whom could I ask? If
there were an honest, friendly soul in all this crowd, and I could come
across him, I felt that (without telling too much of my affairs) I could
explain that I had exchanged some good shore clothes of my own for
what I had been told were more suitable to the work I was looking out
for, and say further that though I had never yet been at sea, I was hardy,
and willing to make myself useful in any way. But how could I tell
whom to trust? I might speak fair to some likely-looking man, and he
might take me somewhere and strip me of my slops, and find my
leather money-bag, and steal that too. When I thought how easily my
fellow-traveller might have treated me thus, I felt a thrill of gratitude
towards him, and then I wondered how he had prospered in his search
for work. As for me, it was pretty clear that if I hoped to work my way
in this wicked world, I must suspect a scoundrel in every man I met,
and forestall mischief by suspicion. As I sat and thought, I sifted the
beans through my fingers, and saw that there were lots of strange seeds
mixed with them, some of very fantastic shapes; and I wondered what
countries they came from, and with what shape and scent and colour
the plants blossomed, and thought how Charlie would like some of
them to sow in pots and watch. As I drove my hands deeper into the
heap, I felt that it was quite warm inside, and then I put my head down

to smell if there was any fragrance in the seeds, and I did not lift it up
again, for I fell fast asleep.
I was awakened by a touch on my head, and a voice just above me,
saying: "He's alive anyhow, thank GOD!" and sitting up among the
beans I found that it was dark and foggy, but a lamp at some distance
gave me a pretty good view of an