lam had broken loose: shouts,
yells, an awful shrill shriek--and at that noise all these heads
vanished from behind the bars.

"Look at this," marvelled the constable. "It's a wonder to me they
didn't make off with your things while you were waiting."

"I would have taken good care of that," I said defiantly. But the
constable wasn't impressed.

"`Much you would have done. The bag going off round one dark corner;
the chest round another. Would you have run two ways at once? And
anyhow you'd have been tripped up and jumped upon before you had run
three yards. I tell you you've had a most extraordinary chance that
there wasn't one of them regular boys about to-night, in the High
Street, to twig your loaded cab go by. Ted here is honest... You are
on the honest lay, Ted, ain't you?'

"`Always was, orficer,' said the big ruffian with feeling. The other
frail creature seemed dumb and only hopped about with the edge of its
soldier coat touching the ground.

"`Oh yes, I dare say,' said the constable. `Now then, forward, march...
He's that because he ain't game for the other thing,' he confided to
me. `He hasn't got the nerve for it. However, I ain't going to lose
sight of them two till they go out through the gate. That little chap's
a devil. He's got the nerve for anything, only he hasn't got the
muscle. Well! Well! You've had a chance to get in with a whole skin
and with all your things.'

"I was incredulous a little. It seemed impossible that after getting
ready with so much hurry and inconvenience I should have lost my chance
of a start in life from such a cause. I asked: `Does that sort of thing
happen often so near the dock-gates?'

"`Often! No! Of course not often. But it ain't often either that a
man comes along with a cab-load of things to join a ship at this time of
night. I've been in the dock police thirteen years and haven't seen it
done once.'

"Meantime we followed my sea-chest which was being carried down a sort
of deep narrow lane, separating two high warehouses, between honest Ted
and his little devil of a pal who had to keep up a trot to the other's
stride. The skirt of his soldier's coat floating behind him nearly
swept the ground so that he seemed to be running on castors. At the
corner of the gloomy passage a rigged jib boom with a dolphin-striker
ending in an arrow-head stuck out of the night close to a cast iron
lamp-post. It was the quay side. They set down their lo