“Hotel!” gasped the bewildered shipmate.  “Have you had money left you?  You always were a good sort.”

“No,” said his companion; “I have had no money left me, but I thought I would stay in an hotel this time.  I can go out and in whenever I like, and I find it an advantage to do so.  The doors are always open.  Come along!”

The two friends walked up the highway arm in arm, Jimmie observing a patronising silence while his companion covered him with affectionate compliments.  After they had walked a considerable distance in meditation, the shipmate said—­

“Where is the hotel?  Are we far off?”

“No,” said the accommodating Jimmie; “here it is.  I must make one condition with you before we get any nearer.  You must go in by the back door.”

“I will go in by any b——­ door you like.  I am not a particular chap in that way!”

“Very well,” said Jimmie, pointing to an object in the middle of the road; “then you go in there, and I will go in by the front.”

“But,” said his shipmate, “that is a boiler.”

“You” said the philanthropic James, “may call it what you like, but, for the time being, it is my hotel!  It has been my residence for two weeks, and I offer you the end I do not use.  If you accept it, all that you require to make you perfectly comfortable is a bundle of straw.  We shall sit rent free!”

Needless to say the offer was accepted, and the two “plants” lived together until they got a ship.

Mr. Hall’s knowledge of the Highway, as it was called, enabled him to be of occasional service to the police, hence he was on the most cordial terms of friendship with them.  He could swoop plain-clothes men through intricacies which flashed with the flames of crime, without exciting the slightest suspicion of the object he had in view.  He could talk, swear, and drink in accurate harmony with his acquaintances, and was looked upon with favour by a circle of estimable friends.  Members of the constabulary were always considerate and accommodating towards him during his periodic outbursts of alcoholic craving.  He owed much to the care they took of him during his fits of debauchery; and he was not unmindful of it when he had the wherewithal to compensate them.  Like most of those wayward inebriates who followed the sea as a calling, he was a perfect sailor; and even his capricious sensual habits did not prevent him being sought to rejoin vessels he had sailed in.

Jimmie Hall was only one among thousands of fine fellows who were encouraged to go to bestial excesses by gangs of predatory vermin (men and women) who infested Wapping and Ratcliffe Highway.