I
catch 'em at it! Not big burglars, of course, but the small pilfering
lot. Get in during the day they do, and hide behind bales and in odd
corners. Then they come out when it's dark and nose around, and their
little fingers, in spite of their Catechism, start right away at picking
and stealing.... Funny lot, these jolly Lascars. If I was manager of a
music-hall and I wanted a real good star turn--something fresh--I'd
stand at my gate and bag the crew of a Dai Nippon, just as they come
off, and then bung 'em on just as they are, and let 'em sing and dance
just as they do when they've drawn their pay. That'd be a turn, old son.
I bet that'd be a goer. Something your West End public ain't ever seen;
something that'd knock spots off 'em and make their little fleshes
creep. Of course it looks fiercer'n it really is. All that there
chanting and chucking knives about is only, as you might say,
ceremonial. But if they happen to come off at two o'clock of a foggy
winter morning--my word, it don't do to be caught bending then! But
lucky for me I know most of 'em. And they know me. And even if they're
away for three months on end, next time they're back at West India they
bring some little 'love gift' for the bloke at the gate--that's me.
Often I've had to patch 'em up at odd times, after they've had a thick
night with the boys and have to join their boats. Sometimes one of 'em
tumbles into the dock half an hour before she sails, with a smashed lip
and that kind of air about him that tells you he can see a dock jam full
of shipping and is trying to sort 'em out and find his little show. Of
course, as a watchman and a man, I kind of sympathize. We've all done it
one time or another. I remember one night ..."

And when Johnnie remembers, that is the time to drink up and have
another, for once he starts yarning he is not easily stopped. Wonderful
anecdotes he has to relate, too; not perhaps brilliant stories, or even
stories with a point of any kind, but stories brimful of atmosphere,
stories salt of the sea or scented with exotic bloom. They begin,
perhaps, "Once, off Rangoon," or "I remember, a big night in Honolulu,"
or Mauritius, or Malabar, or Trinidad. Before the warning voice cries,
"Time, gentermen!" you have circled the globe a dozen times under the
spell of Johnnie's rememberings.

You may catch him any night of the week, and find him ready to yarn,
save on Saturdays. Saturday night is always dedicated to the missus and