Talking of coals, on board the big ship, out of which great white bales, strapped with bars of iron, were being pulled up by machinery, and caught and flung about by the “unloaders,” there was a man whose business it seemed to be to look after the fires, and who seemed also to have taken a roll in the coal-hole for pleasure; and I saw him find a tin basin and a square of soap, and a decent rough towel to wash his face and hands, such as would have been reckoned luxurious in a dormitory at Snuffy’s.  Altogether—­when a heavy hand was laid suddenly on my shoulder, and a gruff voice said,

“Well, my young star-gazing greenhorn, and what do you want?”

I replied with alacrity, as well as with more respect than the stranger’s appearance was calculated to inspire, “Please, sir, I want to go to sea, and I should like to ship for America.”

He was not a nice-looking man by any means—­far too suggestive of 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.