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 old woman who was bending over me.

She was dressed, apparently, in several skirts of unequal lengths, each one dingier and more useless-looking than the one beneath it.  She had a man’s coat, with a short pipe in the breast-pocket; and what her bonnet was like one could not tell, for it was comfortably tied down by a crimson handkerchief with big white spots, which covered it completely.  Her face was as crumpled and as dirty as her clothes, but she had as fine eyes and as kind eyes as mine had ever met.  And every idea of needful wariness and of the wickedness of the world went quite naturally out of my head, and I said, “Did you think I was dead, Mother?”