night, sergeant!

It was a rough night, or meant to be one in an hour or so. But it was
impossible for an Official to accept another person's opinion without
loss of dignity. Therefore the sergeant, always working the boat
edgewise towards the ladder, only responded, "Roughish!" qualifying the
night, and implying a wider experience of rough nights than his
hearer's. If impressions derived from appearance are to be relied on,
his experience must have been a wide one. For one thing, he himself
seemed a dozen years at least the younger of the two. He added, as the
boat touched the ladder, bringing each in full view of the other, and
making speech easy between them:--"A man don't make the voyage out to
Sydney without seeing some rough weather."

A very attentive observer might have said that he watched the man he
addressed more closely than the talk warranted, and certainly would
have seen that the latter started. He half began "Who the Hell ...?" but
flagged on the last word--just stopped short of Sheol--and the growl
that accompanied it turned into "I've never been in those parts,
master."

"Never said you had. _I_ have though." One might have thought, by his
tone, that this officer chuckled secretly over something. He was
pleased, at least. But he gave no clue to his thoughts. He seemed
disconcerted at the height above the water of the projecting grating and
slung-up ladder. An active man, unencumbered, might easily enough have
landed himself on it from the boat. Yet a boy might have made it
impossible, standing on the grating. A resolute kick on the first
hand-grip, or in the face of the climber, would have met the case, and
given him a back-fall into the boat or the water. A chilly thought that,
on a day like this. But why should such a thought cross the mind of this
man, now? It did, probably, and he gave up the idea of landing.

Instead, he felt in his pocket, and drew out a spirit-flask. "Maybe,"
said he, "your mate would oblige so far as to ask the young lady at the
bar to fill this up with Kinahan's LL? _She_ won't make any bones about
it if he says it's for me, Sergeant Ibbetson--_she'll_ know." He
inverted it to see that it was empty, and the man who had not spoken
accepted the mission at a nod from his companion, whose social headship
the speech of the policeman seemed somehow to have taken for granted.

The sergeant watched him out of sight; then, the moment he had vanished,
said:--"Now I come to think o