re I'm not
fat enough for the spit _yet_!'

"Hallo, bub! it's death by the law to walk into the river without a
license. Guess you want to keep farther off the edge o' the pier."

The boy's head seemed to reel with his sudden plunge into all this
bustle and uproar, to which even that of the crowded streets outside was
as nothing. Men were rushing hither and thither, as if their lives
depended on it, with tools, coils of rope, bundles of clothing, and
trucks of belated freight. Dockmen, sailors, stevedores, porters,
hackmen, outward-bound passengers, and visitors coming ashore again
after taking leave of their friends, jostled each other; and all this,
seen under the fitful lamp-light, with the great black waste of the
shadowy river behind it, seemed like the whirl of a troubled dream.

And the farther he went, the more did the confusion increase. Here stood
a portly gray-beard shouting and storming over the loss of his purse,
which he presently found safe in his inner pocket; there a timid old
lady in spectacles was vainly screaming after a burly porter who was
carrying off her trunk in the wrong direction; an unlucky dog, trodden
on in the press, was yelling; and an enormously fat man, having in his
hurry jammed his carpet-bag between two other men even fatter than
himself, was roaring to them to move aside, while they in their turn
were asking fiercely what he meant by "pushing in where he wasn't
wanted."

Suddenly the clang of a bell pierced this Babel of mingled noises, while
a hoarse voice shouted, "All aboard that's going! landsmen ashore!"

The boy sprang forward, flew across the gang-plank just as it began to
move, and leaped on deck with such energy as to run his head full butt
into the chest of a passing sailor, nearly knocking him down.

"Now, then, where are yer a-shovin' to?" growled the aggrieved tar, in
gruff English accents. "If yer thinks yer 'ead was only made to ram into
other folks' insides, it's my b'lief yer ought to ha' been born a
cannon-ball."

But the lad had flown past, and darting through a hatchway, reached the
upper deck, where a group of sailors were gathered round a cannon. On
its breech an officer had spread a paper, which a big good-natured
Connaught man was awkwardly endeavoring to sign. After several
floundering attempts with his huge hairy right hand, he suddenly shifted
the pen to his left.

"Are you left-handed, my man?" asked the officer.

"Faith, my mother used to say