The Hole in the Wall being closed, its customers went their several ways; the sailors, shouting and singing, drifting off with their retinue along Wapping Wall toward Ratcliff; Mr. Cripps, fuller than usual of free drinks—for the sailors had come a long voyage and were proportionally liberal—scuffling off, steadily enough, on the way that led to Limehouse; for Mr. Cripps had drunk too much and too long ever to be noticeably drunk. And last of all, when the most undecided of the stragglers from Captain Nat Kemp's bar had vanished one way or another, the pale, quiet man moved out from the shadow and went in the wake of the noisy sailors.
The night was dark, and the streets. The lamps were few and feeble, and angles, alleys and entries were shapes of blackness that seemed more solid than the walls about them. But instead of the silence that consorts with gloom, the air was racked with human sounds; sounds of quarrels, scuffles, and brawls, far and near, breaking out fitfully amid the general buzz and whoop of discordant singing that came from all Wapping and Ratcliff where revellers rolled into the open.
A stone's throw on the pale man's way was a swing bridge with a lock by its side, spanning the channel that joined two dock-basins. The pale man, passing along in the shadow of the footpath, stopped in an angle. Three policemen were coming over the bridge in company—they went in threes in these parts—and the pale man, who never made closer acquaintance with the police than he could help, slunk down by the bridge-foot, as though designing to make the crossing by way of the narrow lock; no safe passage in the dark. But he thought better of it, and went by the bridge, as soon as the policemen had passed.
A little farther and he was in Ratcliff Highway, where it joined with Shadwell High Street, and just before him stood Paddy's Goose. The house was known by that name far beyond the neighbourhood, among people who were unaware that the actual painted sign was the White Swan. Paddy's Goose was still open, for its doors never closed till one; though there were a few houses later even than this, where, though the bars were cleared and closed at one, in accordance with Act of Parliament, the doors swung wide again ten minutes later. There was still dancing within at Paddy's Goose, and the squeak of fiddles and the thump of feet were plain to hear. The pale man passed on into the dark beyond its lights, and soon the black mouth of Blue Gate stood on his right.
Blue Gate gave its part to the night's noises, and more; for a sudden burst of loud screams—a woman's—rent the air from its innermost deeps; screams which affected the pale man not at all, nor any other passenger; for it might be murder or it might be drink, or sudden rage or fear, or a quarrel; and whatever it might be was common enough in Blue Gate.
Paddy's Goose had no monopoly of music, and the common plenty of street fiddlers was the greater as the early houses closed. Scarce eighty yards from Blue Gate stood Blind George, fiddling his hardest for a party dancing in the roadway. Many were looking on, drunk or sober, with approving shouts; and every face was ghastly phosphorescent in the glare of a ship's blue-light that a noisy negro flourished among the dancers. Close by, a woman and a man were quarrelling in the middle of a group; but the matter had no attention till of a sudden it sprang into a fight, and the man and another were punching and wrestling in a heap, bare to the waist. At this the crowd turned from the dancers, and the negro ran yelping to shed his deathly light on the new scene.
The crowd howled and scrambled, and a drunken sailor fell in the mud. Quick at the chance, a ruffian took him under the armpits and dragged him from among the trampling feet to a near entry, out of the glare. There he propped his prey, with many friendly words, and dived among his pockets. The sailor was dazed, and made no difficulty; till the thief got to the end of the search in a trouser pocket, and thence pulled a handful of silver. With that the victim awoke to some sense of affairs, and made a move to rise; but the other sprang up and laid him over with a kick on the head, just as the pale man came along. The thief made off, leaving a few shillings and sixpences on the ground, which the pale man instantly gathered up. He looked from the money to the man, who lay insensible, with blood about his ear; and then from the man to the money. Then he stuffed some few of the shillings into the sailor's nearest pocket and went off with the rest.
The fight rose and fell, the crowd grew, and the blue light burned down. In twenty seconds the pale man was back again. He bent over the bleeding sailor, thrust the rest of the silver into the pocket, and finally vanished into the night. For, indeed, though the pale man was poor, and though he got a living now in a way scarce reputable: yet he had once kept a chandler's shop. He had kept it till neither sand in the sugar nor holes under the weights would any longer induce it to keep him; and then he had fallen wholly from respectability. But he had drawn a line—he had always drawn a line. He had never been a thief; and, with a little struggle, he remembered it now.
Back in Blue Gate the screams had ceased. For on a black stair a large bony man shook a woman by the throat, so that she could scream no more. He cursed in whispers, and threatened her with an end of all noise if she opened her mouth again. "Ye stop out of it all this time," he said, "an' when ye come ye squall enough to bring the slops from Arbour Square!"
"O! O!" the woman gasped. "I fell on it, Dan! I fell on it! I fell on it in the dark!..."
There was nothing commoner in the black streets about the Highway than the sight of two or three men linked by the arms, staggering, singing and bawling. Many such parties went along the Highway that night, many turned up its foul tributaries; some went toward and over the bridge by the lock that was on the way to the Hole in the Wall. But they were become fewer, and the night noises of the Highway were somewhat abated, when a party of three emerged from the mouth of Blue Gate. Of them that had gone before the songs were broken and the voices unmelodious enough; yet no other song sung that night in the Highway was so wild as the song of these men—or rather of two of them, who sang the louder because of the silence of the man between them; and no other voices were so ill-governed as theirs. The man on the right was large, bony and powerful; he on the left was shorter and less to be noticed, except that under some rare and feeble lamp it might have been perceived that his face was an ugly one, with a broken nose. But what reveller so drunk, what drunkard so insensible, what clod so silent as the man they dragged between them? His feet trailed in the mire, and his head, hidden by a ragged hat, hung forward on his chest. So they went, reeling ever where the shadows were thickest, toward the bridge; but in all their reelings there was a stealthy hasting forward, and an anxious outlook that went ill with their song. The song itself, void alike of tune and jollity, fell off altogether as they neared the bridge, and here they went the quicker. They turned down by the bridge foot, though not for the reason the pale man had, two hours before, for now no policeman was in sight; and soon were gone into the black shadow about the lock-head....
It was the deep of the night, and as near quiet as the Highway ever knew; with no more than a cry here or there, a distant fiddle, and the faint hum of the wind in the rigging of ships. Off in Blue Gate the woman sat on the black stair, with her face in her hands, waiting for company before returning to the room where she had fallen over something in the dark.
High under the tiles of the Hole in the Wall, I had at first a night of disturbed sleep. I was in my old familiar cot, which had been brought during the evening, on a truck. But things were strange, and, in particular, my grandfather, who slept on the opposite side of the room, snored so amazingly, and with a sound so unlike anything I had ever heard before, that I feared he must be choking to death, and climbed out of bed, once, to see. There were noises from without too, sometimes of discordant singing, sometimes of quarrels; and once, from a distance, a succession of dreadful screams. Then the old house made curious sounds of its own; twice I was convinced of stealthy steps on the stair, and all night the very walls creaked aloud. So for long, sleepy as I was, I dozed and started and rolled and lay awake, wondering about the little ship in the bar-parlour, and Mr. Cripps, and the pale man, and the watch with the M on it. Also I considered again the matter of my prayers, which I had already discussed with Grandfather Nat, to his obvious perplexity, by candle-light. For I was urgent to know if I must now leave my mother out, and if I might not put my little dead brother in; being very anxious to include them both. My grandfather's first opinion was, that it was not the usual thing; which opinion he expressed with hesitation, and a curious look of the eyes that I wondered at. But I argued that God could bless them just as well in heaven as here; and Grandfather Nat admitted that no doubt there was something in that. Whereupon I desired to know if they would hear if I said in my prayers that I was quite safe with him, at the Hole in the Wall; or if I should rather ask God to tell them. And at that my grandfather stood up and turned away, with a rub and a pat on my head, toward his own bed; telling me to say whatever I pleased, and not to forget Grandfather Nat.
So that now, having said what I pleased, and having well remembered Grandfather Nat, and slept and woke and dozed and woke again, I took solace from his authority and whispered many things to my little dead brother, whom I could never play with: of the little ship in the glass case, and the pictures, and of how I was going to the London Dock to-morrow; and so at last fell asleep soundly till morning.
Grandfather Nat was astir early, and soon I was looking from the window by his bed at the ships that lay so thick in the Pool, tier on tier. Below me I could see the water that washed between the slimy piles on which the house rested, and to the left were the narrow stairs that terminated the passage at the side. Several boats were moored about these stairs, and a waterman was already looking out for a fare. Out in the Pool certain other boats caught the eye as they dodged about among the colliers, because each carried a bright fire amidships, in a brazier, beside a man, two small barrels of beer, and a very large handbell. The men were purlmen, Grandfather Nat told me, selling liquor—hot beer chiefly, in the cold mornings—to the men on the colliers, or on any other craft thereabout. It struck me that the one thing lacking for perfect bliss in most rowing boats was just such a brazier of cosy fire as the purl-boat carried; so that after very little consideration I resolved that when I grew up I would not be a sailor, nor an engine-driver, nor any one of a dozen other things I had thought of, but a purlman.
The staircase would have landed one direct into the bar-parlour but for an enclosing door, which strangers commonly mistook for that of a cupboard. A step as light as mine was possibly a rarity on this staircase; for, coming down before my grandfather, I startled a lady in the bar-parlour who had been doing something with a bottle which involved the removal of the cork; which cork she snatched hastily from a shelf and replaced, with no very favourable regard to myself; and straightway dropped on her knees and went to work with a brush and a dustpan. She was scarce an attractive woman, I thought, being rusty and bony, slack-faced and very red-nosed. She swept the carpet and dusted the shelves with an air of angry contempt for everything she touched, and I got into the bar out of her way as soon as I could. The potman was flinging sawdust about the floor, and there, in the same corner, sat the same pale, ragged man that was there last night, with the same full glass of liquor—or one like it—by his side: like a trade fixture that had been there all night.
When Grandfather Nat appeared, I learned the slack-faced woman's name. "This here's my little gran'son, Mrs. Grimes," he said, "as is goin' to live here a bit, 'cordin' as I mentioned yesterday."
"Hindeed?" said Mrs. Grimes, with a glance that made me feel more contemptible than the humblest article she had dusted that morning. "Hindeed? Then it'll be more work more pay, Cap'en Kemp."
"Very well, mum," my grandfather replied. "If you reckon it out more work——"
"Ho!" interjected Mrs. Grimes, who could fill a misplaced aspirate with subtle offence; "reckon or not, I s'pose there's another bed to be made? An' buttons to be sewed? An' plates for to be washed? An' dirt an' litter for to be cleared up everywhere? To say nothink o' crumbs—which the biscuit-crumbs in the bar-parlour this mornin' was thick an' shameful!"
Ihad had biscuits, and I felt a reprobate. "Very well, mum," Grandfather Nat said, peaceably; "we'll make out extry damages, mum. A few days'll give us an idea. Shall we leave it a week an' see how things go?"
"Ham I to consider that a week's notice, Captain Kemp?" Mrs. Grimes demanded, with a distinct rise of voice. "Ham I or ham I not?"
"Notice!" My grandfather was puzzled, and began to look a trifle angry. "Why, damme, who said notice? What——"
"Because notice is as easy give as took, Cap'en Kemp, as I'd 'ave you remember. An' slave I may be though better brought up than slave-drivers any day, but swore at vulgar I won't be, nor trampled like dirt an' litter beneath the feet, an' will not endure it neither!" And with a great toss of the head Mrs. Grimes flounced through the staircase door, and sniffed and bridled her way to the upper rooms.
Her exit relieved my mind; first, because I had a wretched consciousness that I was causing all the trouble, and a dire fear that Grandfather Nat might dislike me for it; and second, because when he looked angry I had a fearful foreboding vision of Mrs. Grimes being presently whirled round by the ear and flung into the street, as Jim Crute had been. But it was not long ere I learned that Mrs. Grimes was one of those persons who grumble and clamour and bully at everything and everybody on principle, finding that, with a concession here and another there, it pays very well on the whole; and so nag along very comfortably through life. As for herself, as I had seen, Mrs. Grimes did not lack the cunning to carry away any fit of virtuous indignation that seemed like to push her employer out of his patience.
My grandfather looked at the bottle that Mrs. Grimes had recorked.
"That rum shrub," he said, "ain't properly mixed. It works in the bottle when it's left standing, an' mounts to the cork. I notice it almost every morning."
The day was bright, and I resigned myself with some impatience to wait for an hour or two till we could set out for the docks. It was a matter of business, my grandfather explained, that he must not leave the bar till a fixed hour—ten o'clock; and soon I began to make a dim guess at the nature of the business, though I guessed in all innocence, and suspected not at all.
Contrary to my evening observation, at this early hour the larger bar was mostly empty, while the obscure compartment at the side was in far greater use than it had been last night. Four or five visitors must have come there, one after another: perhaps half a dozen. And they all had things to sell. Two had watches—one of them was a woman; one had a locket and a boatswain's silver call; and I think another had some silver spoons. Grandfather Nat brought each article into the bar-parlour, to examine, and then returned it to its owner; which behaviour seemed to surprise none of them as it had surprised the man last night; so that doubtless he was a stranger. To those with watches my grandfather said nothing but "Yes, that seems all right," or "Yes, it's a good enough watch, no doubt." But to the man with the locket and the silver call he said, "Well, if ever you want to sell 'em you might get eight bob; no more"; and much the same to him with the spoons, except that he thought the spoons might fetch fifteen shillings.
Each of the visitors went out with no more ado; and as each went, the pale man in the larger bar rose, put his drink safely on the counter, just beyond the partition, and went out too; and presently he came back, with no more than a glance at Grandfather Nat, took his drink, and sat down again.
At ten o'clock my grandfather looked out of the bar and said to the pale man: "All right—drink up."
Whereupon the pale man—who would have been paler if his face had been washed—swallowed his drink at last, flat as it must have been, and went out; and Grandfather Nat went out also, by the door into the passage. He was gone scarce two minutes, and when he returned he unlocked a drawer below the shelf on which the little ship stood, and took from it the cash box I had seen last night. His back was turned toward me, and himself was interposed between my eyes and the box, which he rested on the shelf; but I heard a jingling that suggested spoons.
So I said, "Did the man go to buy the spoons for you, Gran'fa' Nat?"
My grandfather looked round sharply, with something as near a frown as he ever directed on me. Then he locked the box away hastily, with a gruff laugh. "You won't starve, Stevy," he said, "as long as wits finds victuals. But see here," he went on, becoming grave as he sat and drew me to his knee; "see here, Stevy. What you see here's my business, private business; understand? You ain't a tell-tale, are you? Not a sneak?"
I repudiated the suggestion with pain and scorn; for I was at least old enough a boy to see in sneakery the blackest of crimes.
"No, no, that you ain't, I know," Grandfather Nat went on, with a pinch of my chin, though he still regarded me earnestly. "A plucked 'un's never a sneak. But there's one thing for you to remember, Stevy, afore all your readin' an' writin' an' lessons an' what not. You must never tell of anything you see here, not to a soul—that is, not about me buyin' things. I'm very careful, but things don't always go right, an' I might get in trouble. I'm a straight man, an' I pay for all I have in any line o' trade; I never stole nor cheated not so much as a farden all my life, nor ever bought anything as Iknewwas stole. See?"
I nodded gravely. I was trying hard to understand the reason for all this seriousness and secrecy, but at any rate I was resolved to be no tale-bearer; especially against Grandfather Nat.
"Why," he went on, justifying himself, I fancy, more for his own satisfaction than for my information; "why, even when it's on'y just suspicious I won't buy—except o' course through another party. That's how I guard myself, Stevy, an' every man has a right to buy a thing reasonable an' sell at a profit if he can; that's on'y plain trade. An' yet nobody can't say truthful as he ever sold me anything over that there counter, or anywhere else, barrin' what I have reg'lar of the brewer an' what not. I may look at a thing or pass an opinion, but what's that? Nothin' at all. But we've got to keep our mouths shut, Stevy, for fear o' danger; see? You wouldn't like poor old Grandfather Nat to be put in gaol, would ye?"
The prospect was terrible, and I put my hands about my grandfather's neck and vowed I would never whisper a word.
"That's right, Stevy," the old man answered, "I know you won't if you don't forget yourself—so don't do that. Don't take no notice, not even to me."
There was a knock at the back door, which opened, and disclosed one of the purlmen, who had left his boat in sight at the stairs, and wanted a quart of gin in the large tin can he brought with him. He was a short, red-faced, tough-looking fellow, and he needed the gin, as I soon learned, to mix with his hot beer to make the purl. He had a short conversation with my grandfather when the gin was brought, of which I heard no more than the words "high water at twelve." But as he went down the passage he turned, and sang out: "You got the news, Cap'en, o' course?"
"What? Viney and Marr?"
The man nodded, with a click and a twitch of the mouth. Then he snapped his fingers, and jerked them expressively upward. After which he ejaculated the single word "Marr," and jerked his thumb over his shoulder. By which I understood him to repeat, with no waste of language, the story that it was all up with the firm, and the junior partner had bolted.
"That," said Grandfather Nat, when the man was gone—"that's Bill Stagg, an' he's the on'y purlman as don't come ashore to sleep. Sleeps in his boat, winter an' summer, does Bill Stagg. How'd you like that, Stevy?"
I thought I should catch cold, and perhaps tumble overboard, if I had a bad dream; and I said so.
"Ah well, Bill Stagg don't mind. He was A.B. aboard o' me when Mr. Viney was my mate many years ago, an' a good A.B. too. Bill Stagg, he makes fast somewhere quiet at night, an' curls up snug as a weevil. Mostly under the piles o' this here house, when the wind ain't east. Saves him rent, ye see; so he does pretty well."
And with that my grandfather put on his coat and reached the pilot cap that was his everyday wear.
We walked first to the head of the stairs, where opened a wide picture of the Thames and all its traffic, and where the walls were plastered with a dozen little bills, each headed "Found Drowned," and each with the tale of some nameless corpse under the heading.
"That's my boat, Stevy," said my grandfather, pointing to a little dinghy with a pair of sculls in her; "our boat, if you like, seeing as we're pardners. Now you shall do which you like; walk along to the dock, where the sugar is, or come out in our boat."
It was a hard choice to make. The glory and delight of the part ownership of a real boat dazzled me like another sun in the sky; but I had promised myself the docks and the sugar for such a long time. So we compromised; the docks to-day and the boat to-morrow.
Out in the street everybody seemed to know Grandfather Nat. Those who spoke with him commonly called him Captain Kemp, except a few old acquaintances to whom he was Captain Nat. Loafers and crimps gazed after him and nodded together; and small ship-chandlers gave him good morning from their shop-doors.
A hundred yards from the Hole in the Wall, at a turn, there was a swing bridge and a lock, such as we had by the old house in Blackwall. At the moment we came in hail the men were at the winch, and the bridge began to part in the middle; for a ship was about to change berth to the inner dock. "Come, Stevy," said my grandfather, "we'll take the lock 'fore they open that. Not afraid if I'm with you, are you?"
No, I was not afraid with Grandfather Nat, and would not even be carried. Though the top of the lock was not two feet wide, and was knotted, broken and treacherous in surface and wholly unguarded on one side, where one looked plump down into the foul dock-water; and though on the other side there was but a slack chain strung through loose iron stanchions that staggered in their sockets. Grandfather Nat gripped me by the collar and walked me before him; but relief tempered my triumph when I was safe across; my feet never seemed to have twisted and slipped and stumbled so much before in so short a distance—perhaps because in that same distance I had never before recollected so many tales of men drowned in the docks by falling off just such locks, in fog, or by accidental slips.
A little farther along, and we came upon Ratcliff Highway. I saw the street then for the first time, and in truth it was very wonderful. I think there could never have been another street in this country at once so foul and so picturesque as Ratcliff Highway at the time I speak of. Much that I saw I could not understand, child as I was; and by so much the more was I pleased with it all, when perhaps I should have been shocked. From end to end of the Highway and beyond, and through all its tributaries and purlieus everything and everybody was for, by, and of, the sailor ashore; every house and shop was devoted to his convenience and inconvenience; in the Highway it seemed to me that every other house was a tavern, and in several places two stood together. There were shops full of slops, sou'westers, pilot-coats, sea-boots, tin pannikins, and canvas kit-bags like giants' bolsters; and rows of big knives and daggers, often engraved with suggestive maxims. A flash of memory recalls the favourite: "Never draw me without cause, never sheathe me without honour." I have since seen the words "cause" and "honour" put to uses less respectable.
The pawn-shops had nothing in them that had not come straight from a ship—sextants and boatswain's pipes being the choice of the stock. And pawn-shops, slop-shops, tobacco-shops—every shop almost—had somewhere in its window a selection of those curiosities that sailors make abroad and bring home: little ship-models mysteriously erected inside bottles, shells, albatross heads, saw-fish snouts, and bottles full of sand of different colours, ingeniously packed so as to present a figure or a picture when viewed from without.
Men of a dozen nations were coming or going in every score of yards. The best dressed, and the worst, were the negroes; for the black cook who was flush went in for adornments that no other sailor-man would have dreamed of: a white shirt, a flaming tie, a black coat with satin facings—even a white waistcoat and a top hat. While the cleaned-out and shipless nigger was a sad spectacle indeed. Then there were Spaniards, swart, long-haired, bloodshot-looking fellows, whose entire shore outfit consisted commonly of a red shirt, blue trousers, anklejacks with the brown feet visible over them, a belt, a big knife, and a pair of large gold ear-rings. Big, yellow-haired, blue-eyed Swedes, who were full pink with sea and sun, and not brown or mahogany-coloured, like the rest; slight, wicked-looking Malays; lean, spitting Yankees, with stripes, and felt hats, and sing-song oaths; sometimes a Chinaman, petticoated, dignified, jeered at; a Lascar, a Greek, a Russian; and everywhere the English Jack, rolling of gait—sometimes from habit alone, sometimes for mixed reasons—hard, red-necked, waistcoatless, with his knife at his belt, like the rest: but more commonly a clasp-knife than one in a sheath. To me all these strangely bedight men were matter of delight and wonder; and I guessed my hardest whence each had come last, what he had brought in his ship, and what strange and desperate adventures he had encountered on the way. And wherever I saw bare, hairy skin, whether an arm, or the chest under an open shirt, there were blue devices of ships, of flags, of women, of letters and names. Grandfather Nat was tattooed like that, as I had discovered in the morning, when he washed. He had been a fool to have it done, he said, as he flung the soapy water out of window into the river, and he warned me that I must be careful never to make such a mistake myself; which made me sorry, because it seemed so gallant an embellishment. But my grandfather explained that you could be identified by tattoo-marks, at any length of time, which might cause trouble. I remembered that my own father was tattooed with an anchor and my mother's name; and I hoped he would never be identified, if it were as bad as that.
In the street oyster-stalls stood, and baked-potato cans; one or two sailors were buying, and one or two fiddlers, but mostly the customers were the gaudy women, who seemed to make a late breakfast in this way. Some had not stayed to perform a greater toilet than to fling clothes on themselves unhooked and awry, and to make a straggling knot of their hair; but the most were brilliant enough in violet or scarlet or blue, with hair oiled and crimped and hung in thick nets, and with bright handkerchiefs over their shoulders—belcher yellows and kingsmen and blue billies. And presently we came on one who was dancing with a sailor on the pavement, to the music of one of the many fiddlers who picked up a living hereabouts; and she wore the regular dancing rig of the Highway—short skirts and high red morocco boots with brass heels. She covered the buckle and grape-vined with great precision, too, a contrast with her partner, whose hornpipe was unsteady and vague in the figures, for indeed he seemed to have "begun early"—perhaps had not left off all night. Two more pairs of these red morocco boots we saw at a place next a public house, where a shop front had been cleared out to make a dancing room, with a sort of buttery-hatch communicating with the tavern; and where a flushed sailor now stood with a pot in each hand, roaring for a fiddler.
But if the life and the picturesqueness of the Highway in some sort disguised its squalor, they made the more hideously apparent the abomination of the by-streets: which opened, filthy and menacing, at every fifty yards as we went. The light seemed greyer, the very air thicker and fouler in these passages; though indeed they formed the residential part whereof the Highway was the market-place. The children who ran and tumbled in these places, the boy of nine equally with the infant crawling from doorstep to gutter, were half naked, shoeless, and disguised in crusted foulness; so that I remember them with a certain sickening, even in these latter days; when I see no such pitiably neglected little wretches, though I know the dark parts of London well enough.
At the mouth of one of these narrow streets, almost at the beginning of the Highway, Grandfather Nat stopped and pointed.
It was a forbidding lane, with forbidding men and women hanging about the entrance; and far up toward the end there appeared to be a crowd and a fight; in the midst whereof a half-naked man seemed to be rushing from side to side of the street.
"That's the Blue Gate," said my grandfather, and resumed his walk. "It's dangerous," he went on, "the worst place hereabout—perhaps anywhere. Wuss'n Tiger Bay, a mile. You must never go near Blue Gate. People get murdered there, Stevy—murdered—many's a man; sailor-men mostly; an' nobody never knows. Pitch them in the Dock sometimes, sometimes in the river, so's they're washed away. I've known 'em taken to Hole-in-the-Wall Stairs at night."
I gripped my grandfather's hand tighter, and asked, in all innocence, if we should see any, if we kept watch out of window that night. He laughed, thought the chance scarce worth a sleepless night, and went on to tell me of something else. But I overheard later in a bar conversation a ghastly tale of years before; of a murdered man's body that had been dragged dripping through the streets at night by two men who supported its arms, staggering and shouting and singing, as though the three were merely drunk; and how it was dropped in panic ere it was brought to the waterside, because of a collision with three live sailors who really were drunk.
One or two crimps' carts came through from the docks as we walked, drawn by sorry animals, and piled high with shouting sailors and their belongings—chief among these the giant bolster-bags. The victims went to their fate gloriously enough, hailing and chaffing the populace on the way, and singing, each man as he list. Also we saw a shop with a window full of parrots and monkeys; and a very sick kangaroo in a wooden cage being carried in from a van.
And so we came to the London Dock at last. And there, in the sugar-sheds, stood more sugar than ever I had dreamed of in my wildest visions—thousands of barrels, mountains of sacks. And so many of the bags were rat-bitten, or had got a slit by accidentally running up against a jack-knife; and so many of the barrels were defective, or had stove themselves by perverse complications with a crowbar; that the heavy, brown, moist stuff was lying in heaps and lumps everywhere; and I supposed that it must be called "foot-sugar" because you couldn't help treading on it.
It was while I was absorbed in this delectable spectacle, that I heard a strained little voice behind me, and turned to behold Mr. Cripps greeting my grandfather.
"Good mornin', Cap'en Kemp, sir," said Mr. Cripps. "I been a-lookin' at the noo Blue Crosser—theEmily Riggs. She ought to be done, ye know, an' a han'some picter she'd make; but the skipper seems busy. Why, an' there's young master Stephen, I do declare; 'ow are ye, sir?"
As he bent and the nose neared, I was seized with a horrid fear that he was going to kiss me. But he only shook hands, after all—though it was not at all a clean hand that he gave.
"Why, Cap'en Kemp," he went on, "this is what I say a phenomenal coincidence; rather unique, in fact. Why, you'll 'ardly believe as I was a thinkin' o' you not 'arf an hour ago, scarcely! Now you wouldn't 'a' thought that, would ye?"
There was a twinkle in Grandfather Nat's eye. "All depends," he said.
"Comin' along from the mortuary, I see somethink——"
"Ah, something in the mortuary, no doubt," my grandfather interrupted, quizzically. "Well, what was in the mortuary? I bet there was a corpse in the mortuary."
"Quite correct, Cap'en Kemp, so there was; three of 'em, an' a very sad sight; decimated, Cap'en Kemp, by the watery element. But it wasn't them I was——"
"What! It wasn't a corpse as reminded you of me? That's rum. Then I expect somebody told you some more about Viney and Marr. Come, what's the latest about Viney an' Marr? Tell us about that."
Grandfather Nat was humorously bent on driving Mr. Cripps from his mark, and Mr. Cripps deferred. "Well, it's certainly a topic," he said, "a universal topic. Crooks the ship-chandler's done for, they say—unsolvent. TheMinerva'sreported off Prawle Point in to-day's list, an' they say as she'll be sold up as soon as she's moored. But there—she's hypotenused, Cap'en Kemp; pawned, as you might say; up the flue. It's a matter o' gen'ral information that she's pawned up to 'er r'yals—up to 'er main r'yals, sir. Which reminds me, speakin' o' r'yals, there's a timber-shop just along by the mortuary——"
"Ah, no doubt," Grandfather Nat interrupted, "they must put 'em somewhere. Any news o' theJuno?"
"No, sir, she ain't reported; not doo Barbadoes yet, or mail not in, any'ow. They'll sell 'er too, but the creditors won't get none of it. She's hypotenused as deep as the other—up to her r'yals; an' there's nothin' else to sell. So it's the gen'ral opinion there won't be much to divide, Marr 'avin' absconded with the proceeds. An' as regards what I was agoin' to——"
"Yes, you was goin' to tell me some more about Marr, I expect," my grandfather persisted. "Heard where he's gone?"
Mr. Cripps shook his head. "They don't seem likely to ketch 'im, Cap'en Nat. Some says 'e's absconded out o' the country, others says 'e's 'idin' in it. Nobody knows 'im much, consequence o' Viney doin' all the outdoor business—I on'y see 'im once myself. Viney, 'e thinks 'e's gone abroad, they say; an' 'e swears Marr's the party as 'as caused the unsolvency, 'avin' bin a-doin' of 'im all along; 'im bein' in charge o' the books. An' it's a fact, Cap'en Kemp, as you never know what them chaps may get up to with the proceeds as 'as charge o' books. The paper's full of 'em every week—always absconding with somebody's proceeds! An' by the way, speakin' o' proceeds——"
This time Captain Nat made no interruption, but listened with an amused resignation.
"Speakin' o' proceeds," said Mr. Cripps, "it was bein' temp'ry out o' proceeds as made me think o' you as I come along from the mortuary. For I see as 'andsome a bit o' panel for to paint a sign on as ever I come across. It was——"
"Yes, I know. Enough to stimilate you to paint it fine, only to look at it, wasn't it?"
"Well, yes, Cap'n Kemp, so it was."
"Not dear, neither?"
"No—not to say dear, seein' 'ow prices is up. If I'd 'ad——"
"Well, well, p'raps prices'll be down a bit soon," said Grandfather Nat, grinning and pulling out a sixpence. "I ain't good for no more than that now, anyhow!" And having passed over the coin he took my hand and turned away, laughing and shaking his head.
Seeing that my grandfather wanted his sign, it seemed to me that he was losing an opportunity, and I said so.
"What!" he said, "let him buy the board? Why, he's had half a dozen boards for that sign a'ready!"
"Half a dozen?" I said. "Six boards? What did he do with them?"
"Ate 'em!" said Grandfather Nat, and laughed the louder when I stared.
I found it quite true that one might eat the loose sugar wherever he judged it clean enough—as most of it was. And nothing but Grandfather Nat's restraining hand postponed my first bilious attack.
Thus it was that I made acquaintance with the Highway, and with the London Docks, in their more picturesque days, and saw and delighted in a thousand things more than I can write. Port was drunk then, and hundreds of great pipes lay in rows on a wide quay where men walked with wooden clubs, whacking each pipe till the "shive" or wooden bung sprang into the air, to be caught with a dexterity that pleased me like a conjuring trick. And many a thirsty dock-labourer, watching his opportunity, would cut a strip of bread from his humble dinner as he strolled near a pipe, and, absorbed in the contemplation of the indefinite empyrean, absently dip his sippet into the shive-hole as he passed; recovering it in a state so wet and discoloured that its instant consumption was imperative.
And so at last we came away from the docks by the thoroughfare then called Tanglefoot Lane; not that that name, or anything like it, was painted at the corner; but because it was the road commonly taken by visitors departing from the wine-vaults after bringing tasting-orders.
As we passed Blue Gate on our way home, I saw, among those standing at the corner, a coarse-faced, untidy woman, talking to a big, bony-looking man with a face so thin and mean that it seemed misplaced on such shoulders. The woman was so much like a score of others then in sight, that I should scarce have noted her, were it not that she and the man stopped their talk as we passed, with a quick look, first at my grandfather, and then one at the other; and then the man turned his back and walked away. Presently the woman came after us, walking quickly, glancing doubtfully at Grandfather Nat as she passed; and at last, after twice looking back, she turned and waited for us to come up.
"Beg pardon, Cap'en Kemp," she said in a low, but a very thick voice, "but might I speak to you a moment, sir?"
My grandfather looked at her sharply. "Well," he said, "what is it?"
"In regards to a man as sold you a watch las' night——"
"No," Grandfather Nat interrupted with angry decision, "he didn't."
"Beg pardon, sir, jesso sir—'course not; which I mean to say 'e sold it to a man near to your 'ouse. Is it brought true as that party—not meanin' you, sir, 'course not, but the party in the street near your 'ouse—is it brought true as that party'll buy somethink more—somethink as I needn't tell now, sir, p'raps, but somethink spoke of between that party an' the other party—I mean the party as sold it, an' don't mean you, sir, 'course not?"
It was plain that the woman, who had begun in trepidation, was confused and abashed the more by the hard frown with which Captain Nat regarded her. The frown persisted for some moments; and then my grandfather said: "Don't know what you mean. If somebody bought anything of a friend o' yours, an' your friend wants to sell him something else, I suppose he can take it to him, can't he? And if it's any value, there's no reason he shouldn't buy it, so far as I know." And Grandfather Nat strode on.
The woman murmured some sort of acknowledgment, and fell back, and in a moment I had forgotten her; though I remembered her afterward, for good reason enough.
In fact, it was no later than that evening. I was sitting in the bar-parlour with Grandfather Nat, who had left the bar to the care of the potman. My grandfather was smoking his pipe, while I spelled and sought down the narrow columns ofLloyd's Listfor news of my father's ship. It was my grandfather's way to excuse himself from reading, when he could, on the plea of unsuitable eyes; though I suspect that, apart from his sight, he found reading a greater trouble than he was pleased to own.
"There's nothing here about theJuno, Grandfather Nat," I said. "Nothing anywhere."
"Ah," said my grandfather, "La Guaira was the last port, an' we must keep eyes on the list for Barbadoes. Maybe the mail's late." Most of Lloyd's messages came by mail at that time. "Let's see," he went on; "Belize, La Guaira, Barbadoes"; and straightway began to figure out distances and chances of wind.
Grandfather Nat had been considering whether or not we should write to my father to tell him that my mother was dead, and he judged that there was little chance of any letter reaching theJunoon her homeward passage.
"Belize, La Guaira, Barbadoes," said Grandfather Nat, musingly. "It's the rough reason thereabout, an' it's odds she may be blown out of her course. But the mail——"
He stopped and turned his head. There was a sudden stamp of feet outside the door behind us, a low and quick voice, a heavy thud against the door, and then a cry—a dreadful cry, that began like a stifled scream and ended with a gurgle.
Grandfather Nat reached the door at a bound, and as he flung it wide a man came with it and sank heavily at his feet, head and one shoulder over the threshold, and an arm flung out stiffly, so that the old man stumbled across it as he dashed at a dark shadow without.
I was hard at my grandfather's heels, and in a flash of time I saw that another man was rising from over the one on the doorsill. But for the stumble Grandfather Nat would have had him. In that moment's check the fellow spun round and dashed off, striking one of the great posts with his shoulder, and nearly going down with the shock.
All was dark without, and what I saw was merely confused by the light from the bar-parlour. My grandfather raised a shout and rushed in the wake of the fugitive, toward the stairs, and I, too startled and too excited to be frightened yet, skipped over the stiff arm to follow him. At the first step I trod on some object which I took to be my grandfather's tobacco-pouch, snatched it up, and stuffed it in my jacket pocket as I ran. Several men from the bar were running in the passage, and down the stairs I could hear Captain Nat hallooing across the river.
"Ahoy!" came a voice in reply. "What's up?" And I could see the fire of a purl-boat coming in.
"Stop him, Bill!" my grandfather shouted. "Stop him! Stabbed a man! He's got my boat, and there's no sculls in this damned thing! Gone round them barges!"
And now I could distinguish my grandfather in a boat, paddling desperately with a stretcher, his face and his shirt-sleeves touched with the light from the purl-man's fire.
The purl-boat swung round and shot off, and presently other boats came pulling by, with shouts and questions. Then I saw Grandfather Nat, a black form merely, climbing on a barge and running and skipping along the tier, from one barge to another, calling and directing, till I could see him no more. There were many men on the stairs by this time, and others came running and jostling; so I made my way back to the bar-parlour door.
It was no easy thing to get in here, for a crowd was gathering. But a man from the bar who recognised me made a way, and as soon as I had pushed through the crowd of men's legs I saw that the injured man was lying on the floor, tended by the potman; while Mr. Cripps, his face pallid under the dirt, and his nose a deadly lavender, stood by, with his mouth open and his hands dangling aimlessly.
The stabbed man lay with his head on a rolled-up coat of my grandfather's, and he was bad for a child to look at. His face had gone tallowy; his eyes, which turned (and frightened me) as I came in, were now directed steadily upward; he breathed low and quick, and though Joe the potman pressed cloths to the wound in his chest, there was blood about his lips and chin, and blood bubbled dreadfully in his mouth. But what startled me most, and what fixed my regard on his face despite my tremors, so that I could scarce take my eyes from it, was the fact that, paleness and blood and drawn cheeks notwithstanding, I saw in him the ugly, broken-nosed fellow who had been in the private compartment last night, with a watch to sell; the watch, with an initial on the back, that now lay in Grandfather Nat's cash-box.
Somebody had gone for a doctor, it was said, but a doctor was not always easy to find in Wapping. Mrs. Grimes, who was at some late work upstairs, was not disturbed at first by the noise, since excitement was not uncommon in the neighbourhood. But now she came to the stairfoot door, and peeped and hurried back. For myself, I squeezed into a far corner and stared, a little sick; for there was a deal of blood, and Joe the potman was all dabbled, like a slaughterman.
My grandfather returned almost on the doctor's heels, and with my grandfather were some river police, in glazed hats and pilot coats. The doctor puffed and shook his head, called for cold water, and cloths, and turpentine, and milk. Cold water and cloths were ready enough, and turpentine was easy to get, but ere the milk came it was useless. The doctor shook his head and puffed more than ever, wiped his hands and pulled his cuffs down gingerly. I could not see the man on the floor, now, for the doctor was in the way; but I heard him, just before the doctor stood up. The noise sent my neck cold at the back; though indeed it was scarce more than the noise made in emptying a large bottle by up-ending it.
The doctor stood up and shook his head. "Gone," he said. "And I couldn't have done more than keep him alive a few minutes, at best. It was the lung, and bad—two places. Have they got the man?"
"No," said Grandfather Nat, "nor ain't very likely, I'd say. Never saw him again, once he got behind a tier o' lighters. Waterside chap, certain; knows the river well enough, an' these stairs. I couldn't ha' got that boat o' mine off quicker, not myself."
"Ah," said one of the river policemen, "he's a waterside chap, that's plain enough. Any other 'ud a-bolted up the street. Never said nothing, did he—this one?" He was bending over the dead man; while the others cleared the people back from the door, and squeezed Mr. Cripps out among them.
"No, not a word," answered Joe the potman. "Couldn't. Tried to nod once when I spoke to 'im, but it seemed to make 'im bleed faster."
"Know him, Cap'en Nat?" asked the sergeant.
"No," answered my grandfather, "I don't know him. Might ha' seen him hanging about p'raps. But then I see a lot doin' that."
I wondered if Grandfather Nat had already forgotten about the silver watch with the M on it, or if he had merely failed to recognise the man. But I remembered what he had said in the morning, after he had bought the spoons, and I reflected that I had best hold my tongue.
And now voices without made it known that the shore police were here, with a stretcher; and presently, with a crowding and squeezing in the little bar-parlour that drove me deeper into my corner and farther under the shelf, the uncomely figure was got from the floor to the stretcher, and so out of the house.
It was plain that my grandfather was held in good regard by the police; and I think that his hint that a drop of brandy was at the service of anybody who felt the job unpleasant might have been acted on, if there had not been quite as many present at once. When at last they were gone, and the room clear, he kicked into a heap the strip of carpet that the dead man had lain on; and as he did it, he perceived me in my corner.
"What—you here all the time, Stevy?" he said. "I thought you'd gone upstairs. Here—it ain't right for boys in general, but you've got a turn; drink up this."
I believe I must have been pale, and indeed I felt a little sick now that the excitement was over. The thing had been very near, and the blood tainted the very air. So that I gulped the weak brandy and water without much difficulty, and felt better. Out in the bar Mr. Cripps's thin voice was raised in thrilling description.
Feeling better, as I have said, and no longer faced with the melancholy alternatives of crying or being ill, I bethought me of my grandfather's tobacco-pouch. "You dropped your pouch, Gran'father Nat," I said, "and I picked it up when I ran out."
And with that I pulled out of my jacket pocket—not the pouch at all; but a stout buckled pocket-book of about the same size.
"That ain't a pouch, Stevy," said Grandfather Nat; "an' mine's here in my pocket. Show me."
He opened the flap, and stood for a moment staring. Then he looked up hastily, turned his back to the bar, and sat down. "Whew! Stevy!" he said, with amazement in his eyes and the pocket-book open in his hand; "you're in luck; luck, my boy. See!"
Once more he glanced quickly over his shoulder, toward the bar; and then took in his fingers a folded bunch of paper, and opened it. "Notes!" he said, in a low voice, drawing me to his side. "Bank of England notes, every one of 'em! Fifties, an' twenties, an' tens, an' fives! Where was it?"
I told him how I had run out at his heels, had trodden on the thing in the dark, and had slipped it into my pocket, supposing it to be his old leather tobacco-pouch, from which he had but just refilled his pipe; and how I had forgotten about it, in my excitement, till the people were gone, and the brandy had quelled my faintness.
"Well, well," commented Grandfather Nat, "it's a wonderful bit o' luck, anyhow. This is what the chap was pulling away from him when I opened the door, you can lay to that; an' he lost it when he hit the post, I'll wager; unless the other pitched it away. But that's neither here nor there.... What's that?" He turned his head quickly. "That stairfoot door ain't latched again, Stevy. Made me jump: fancied it was the other."
There was nothing else in the pocket-book, it would seem, except an old photograph. It was a faded, yellowish thing, and it represented a rather stout woman, seated, with a boy of about fourteen at her side; both very respectably dressed in the fashion of twenty years earlier. Grandfather Nat put it back, and slipped the pocket-book into the same cash-box that had held the watch with the M engraved on its back.
The stairfoot door clicked again, and my grandfather sent me to shut it. As I did so I almost fancied I could hear soft footsteps ascending. But then I concluded I was mistaken; for in a few moments Mrs. Grimes was plainly heard coming downstairs, with an uncommonly full tread; and presently she presented herself.
"Good law, Cap'en Kemp," exclaimed Mrs. Grimes, with a hand clutching at her chest, and her breath a tumultuous sigh; "Good law! I am that bad! What with extry work, an' keepin' on late, an' murders under my very nose, I cannot a-bear it—no!" And she sank into a chair by the stairfoot door, letting go her brush and dustpan with a clatter.
Grandfather Nat turned to get the brandy-bottle again. Mrs. Grimes's head drooped faintly, and her eyelids nearly closed. Nevertheless I observed that the eyes under the lids were very sharp indeed, following my grandfather's back, and traversing the shelf where he had left the photograph; yet when he brought the brandy, he had to rouse her by a shake.
I went to bed early that night—as soon as Mrs. Grimes was gone, in fact. My grandfather had resolved that such a late upsitting as last night's must be no more than an indulgence once in a way. He came up with me, bringing the cash-box to put away in the little wall-cupboard against his bed-head where it always lay, at night, with a pistol by its side. Grandfather Nat peeped to see the pocket-book safe once more, and chuckled as he locked it away. This done, he sat by my side, and talked till I began to fall asleep.
The talk was of the pocket-book, and what should be done with the money. Eight hundred pounds was the sum, and two five-pound notes over, and I wondered why a man with so much money should come, the evening before, to sell his watch.
"Looks as though the money wasn't his, don't it?" commented Grandfather Nat. "Though anyhow it's no good to him now. You found it, an' it's yours, Stevy."
I remembered certain lessons of my mother's as to one's proper behaviour toward lost property, and I mentioned them. But Grandfather Nat clearly resolved me that this was no case in point. "It can't be his, because he's dead," Captain Nat argued; "an' if it's the other chap's—well, let him come an' ask for it. That's fair enough, you know, Stevy. An' if he don't come—it ain't likely he will, is it?—then it's yours; and I'll keep it to help start you in life when you grow up. I won't pay it into the bank—not for a bit, anyhow. There's numbers on bank notes: an' they lead to trouble, often. But they're as good one time as another, an' easy sent abroad later on, or what not. So there you are, my boy! Eight hundred odd to start you like a gentleman, with as much more as Grandfather Nat can put to it. Eh?"
He kissed me and rubbed his hands in my curls, and I took the occasion to communicate my decision as to being a purlman. Grandfather Nat laughed, and patted my head down on the pillow; and for a little I remembered no more.
I awoke in an agony of nightmare. The dead man, with blood streaming from mouth and eyes, was dragging my grandfather down into the river, and my mother with my little dead brother in her arms called me to throw out the pocket-book, and save him; and throw I could not, for the thing seemed glued to my fingers. So I awoke with a choke and a cry, and sat up in bed.
All was quiet about me, and below were the common evening noises of the tavern; laughs, argumentation, and the gurgle of drawn beer; though there was less noise now than when I had come up, and I judged it not far from closing time. Out in the street a woman was singing a ballad; and I got out of bed and went to the front room window to see and to hear; for indeed I was out of sorts and nervous, and wished to look at people.
At the corner of the passage there was a small group who pointed and talked together—plainly discussing the murder; and as one or two drifted away, so one or two more came up to join those remaining. No doubt the singing woman had taken this pitch as one suitable to her ware—for she sang and fluttered at length in her hand one of the versified last dying confessions that even so late as this were hawked about Ratcliff and Wapping. What murderer's "confession" the woman was singing I have clean forgotten; but they were all the same, all set to a doleful tune which, with modifications, still does duty, I believe, as an evening hymn; and the burden ran thus, for every murderer and any murder:—