rough the crowded
streets with my spirits down in my boots, and my fists thrust deep
into the pockets of my small-clothes.

In this dejected mood I reached the Market Strand just as Captain
Coffin came up it from the Plume of Feathers public-house, cursing
and striking out with his stick at a mob of small boys.

CHAPTER III.

A STREET FIGHT, AND WHAT CAME OF IT.

He emerged upon the street which crosses the head of Market Strand,
and, dropping his arms, stood for a moment us if in doubt of his
bearings. He was flagrantly drunk, but not aggressively.
He reminded me of a purblind owl that, blundering Into daylight, is
set upon and mobbed by a crowd of small birds.

The 'longshoremen and loafers grinned and winked at one another, but
forbore to interfere. Plainly the spectacle was a familiar one.

The man was not altogether repulsive; pitiable, rather; a small, lean
fellow, with a grey-white face drawn into wrinkles about the jaw, and
eyes that wandered timidly. He wore a suit of good sea-cloth--
soiled, indeed, but neither ragged nor threadbare--and a blue and
yellow spotted neckerchief, the bow of which had worked around
towards his right ear. His hat, perched a-cock over his left eye,
had made acquaintance with the tavern sawdust. Next to his
drunkenness, perhaps, the most remarkable thing about him was his
stick--of ebony, very curiously carved in rings from knob to ferrule,
where it ended in an iron spike; an ugly weapon, of which his
tormentors stood in dread, and small blame to them.

While he stood hesitating, they swarmed close and began to bay him
afresh.

"Captain Coffin, Captain Coffin!" "Who killed the Portugee?"
"Who hid the treasure and got so drunk he couldn't find it?"
"Where's your ship, Cap'n Danny?" These were some of the taunts
flung; and as the urchins danced about him, yelling them, the passion
blazed up again in his red-rimmed eyes.

Amongst the crowd capered Ted Bates. "Hallo, Brooks!" he shouted,
and, catching at another boy's elbow, pointed towards me.
Beyond noting that the other boy had a bullet-shaped head with ears
that stood out from it at something like right angles, I had time to
take very little stock of him; for just then, us Captain Coffin
turned about to smite, a stone came flying and struck him smartly on
the funny-bone. His hand opened with the pain of it, but the stick
hung by a loop to his wrist, and, gripping it again, he charged among
his tormentors, l