The Project Gutenberg EBook of Self-Help, by W.W. Jacobs

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Title: Self-Help
Sailor's Knots, Part 4.

Author: W.W. Jacobs

Release Date: January 22, 2004 [EBook #10783]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SELF-HELP ***

Produced by David Widger

SAILORS' KNOTS

By W.W. Jacobs

1909

SELF-HELP

The night-watchman sat brooding darkly over life and its troubles. A
shooting corn on the little toe of his left foot, and a touch of liver,
due, he was convinced, to the unlawful cellar work of the landlord of the
Queen's Head, had induced in him a vein of profound depression. A
discarded boot stood by his side, and his gray-stockinged foot protruded
over the edge of the jetty until a passing waterman gave it a playful rap
with his oar. A subsequent inquiry as to the price of pigs' trotters
fell on ears rendered deaf by suffering.

"I might 'ave expected it," said the watchman, at last. "I done that
man--if you can call him a man--a kindness once, and this is my reward
for it. Do a man a kindness, and years arterwards 'e comes along and
hits you over your tenderest corn with a oar."

[Illustration: "''E comes along and hits you over your tenderest corn
with a oar.'"]

He took up his boot, and, inserting his foot with loving care, stooped
down and fastened the laces.

Do a man a kindness, he continued, assuming a safer posture, and 'e tries
to borrow money off of you; do a woman a kindness and she thinks you want
tr marry 'er; do an animal a kindness and it tries to bite you--same as a
horse bit a sailorman I knew once, when 'e sat on its head to 'elp it get
up. He sat too far for'ard, pore chap.

Kindness never gets any thanks. I remember a man whose pal broke 'is leg
while they was working together unloading a barge; and he went off to
break the news to 'is pal's wife. A kind-'earted man 'e was as ever you
see, and, knowing 'ow she would take on when she 'eard the news, he told
her fust of all that 'er husband was killed. She took on like a mad
thing, and at last, when she couldn't do anything more and 'ad quieted
down a bit, he told 'er that it was on'y a case of a b