ed), because it sometimes gave
the crowd a wrong impression when the bodies in this temporary state of
inanition were carried out.

The small crowd in the street, however, seemed in no mind to hinder us.
Possibly experience had taught them composure. At any rate they were
apathetic, though curious enough to follow us down to the quay and stand
watching whilst we embarked our unconscious burdens. A lamp burned
foggily at the head of the steps by which we descended to the waterside,
and looking up I saw the child who had called herself Meliar-Ann standing
in the circle of it, and gazing down upon the embarkation with dark
unemotional eyes. Hartnoll spied her too, and waved his recovered dirk
triumphantly. She paid him no heed at all.

"But look here," said the lieutenant, turning on me, "we can't take you on
board to-night--and without your chests. Oh yes--I have your names; Rodd
and Hartnoll . . . and a deuced lucky thing for you we tumbled upon you as
we did. But Captain Suckling's orders were--and I heard him give 'em,
with my own ears--to fetch you off to-morrow morning. From the Blue
Posts, eh? Well, just you run back, or Blue Billy,"--by this irreverent
name, as I learned later, the executive officers of his Majesty's Navy had
agreed to know Mr. Benjamin Sheppard, proprietor of the Blue Posts: a
solid man, who died worth sixty thousand pounds--"or Blue Billy will be
sending round the crier."

"But, sir, we don't know where to find the Blue Posts!"

He stared at me, turning with his foot on the boat's gunwale. "Why, God
bless the boy! you've only to turn to your left and follow your innocent
nose for a hundred and fifty yards, and you'll run your heads against the
doorway."

We watched the boat as it pushed off. A few of the crowd still lingered
on the quay's edge, and it has since occurred to me to wonder that, as
Hartnoll and I turned and ascended the steps, no violence was offered to
us. We had come out to flaunt our small selves in his Majesty's uniform.
Here, if ever, was proof of the respect it commanded; and we failed to
notice it. Meliar-Ann had disappeared. The loungers on the quay-head let
us pass unmolested, and, following the lieutenant's directions, sure
enough within five minutes we found ourselves under the lamp of the Blue
Posts!

The night-porter eyed us suspiciously before admitting us. "A man might
say that you've made a pretty fair beginning," he ventured; but I had
warned Har