had been light work
after cleaning the school-room at Snuffy's. My hands were never likely
to be more chapped at sea than they had been with dirt and snow and want
of things to dry oneself with at school; and as to coal-carrying--

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 la