Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, No. 728, December 8, 1877

'A little,' I said, limping as I moved; 'not very bad: a kick from a horse some years ago.'

'Ah! you won't do for us then,' he said; 'but I'm sorry for you. I'm lame too, from a kick of a horse; I can't stand without my stick;' here he rose up to let me see him; 'but you see I was hurt in the service, and the firm have provided for me. I'm very sorry for you, for it's hard to be slighted because you are a cripple. Here is sixpence, old fellow, to get half a pint with, and I wish I could make it more.'

I took the sixpence, and thanked him for his kindness; he deserved my thanks, because he wasn't getting more than a pound a week, and had four or five little children. I found this out afterwards.

I was satisfied at having made a friend who might prove useful; but I had one or two more questions to ask him, and was thinking how I could best bring them in, when he said hurriedly: 'If you could get hold of Mr Byrle by himself, he might do something for you, for he is a very good sort; and you seem strong enough in every other way, and would make a good watchman, I should think.'

Yes; he did not know how good a one!

'Mr Byrle senior or junior?' I asked, on the strength of my information from the hands at the Anchor.

'Junior! O lor! that wouldn't do at all!' exclaimed he with quite a gasp, as if the idea took his breath away. 'It's a case of "O no, we never mention it" with him. He's seldom at home, and when he is, he and the old gentleman lead the very – Here you have it! Here's Mr Forey, the only foreman in the place who would listen to you. Now, speak up!'

Mr Forey, a dark-whiskered, stoutly built man, came up, glancing keenly at me as a stranger; so touching my cap, I again preferred my request to be taken on as a labourer.

'I don't like lame men,' he said; 'but there does not seem to be a great deal the matter with you. You say you can have a first-rate character. We shall be making changes next week, and there's no harm in your looking round on Monday morning at nine sharp. – Stop! I can give you a job now. Do you know how to get to T – ?'

'Yes, sir,' I said.

'Then take this letter to Mr Byrle, and bring back an answer,' said Mr Forey. 'If he is not at home, ask for Miss Doyle, who may open it. I want an answer this afternoon; so cut off! Stay! here's a shilling for your fare; it's only tenpence, you know; and I'll leave eighteenpence with Bob here at the gate for your trouble.'

I took the shilling, Bob winking triumphantly at me, as if to say it was as good as done, and I left the yard.

I was amused at having the commission, for I wondered what Mr Byrle would say when he saw me, and whether my disguise was so complete that he would not recognise me at all. That would be something like a triumph, and I almost made up my mind that it would be so. Had Mr Forey seen me hurrying to the station, he might again have said that there did not seem much the matter with me; but I walked slowly enough through the street in which the Yarmouth Smack was situated, and had a pretty good trial of my disguise and my nerves as I passed it. Peter Tilley, dressed in a blue slop and cord trousers, so as to look like a dock labourer or something of that kind, was leaning against the door-post, lazily watching the passers-by. I made up my mind to try him; so stopping at a lamp-post just opposite to him, I took out my pipe, struck a match on the iron, coolly lit the tobacco, and after one or two puffs, threw the match into the road and walked on. He never knew me. It was all right.

The drizzling rain came down again as I got out at T – ; but luckily Mr Byrle's house was not more than a quarter of a mile from the station; and so resuming my limp, I got there without delay. The man-servant who answered the door took my letter, but told me that the old gentleman was not at home; then on finding Miss Doyle was to open the letter and send an answer, told me to wait in a little room which looked as if it was used as an office, having floor-cloth instead of carpet, wooden chairs, and so forth. He was a careful servant, and would not ask a stranger to wait in the hall, where coats and umbrellas might be had by a sharp party.

I had not waited long, when the door opened, and a young lady, whom I of course judged to be Miss Doyle, came into the room. She was a dark, keen-looking young party, and spoke rather sharply. 'You are to take an answer back, I believe?' she said.

'Yes, miss,' I answered, touching my forehead, for as you may suppose, I held my cap in my hand.

'Mr Forey only wishes me to send word; I am not to write,' she went on; 'he wants to know if Mr Byrle will be at the works to-morrow. He will not. Tell Mr Forey he will leave town to-night, and not return until the day after to-morrow. You understand?' She spoke very sharply; so I said: 'Yes, miss,' sharply too, and touched my forehead again.

'You need not wait,' she said; and opening the door, I saw the servant waiting to let me out. I knuckled my forehead again, and putting on rather a clumsier limp than before, got out of the house into the rain and mud. Rain and mud! What did I care for rain and mud now?

'Sergeant Nickham,' says I, when I got fairly out of range of her windows, for I wouldn't trust her with so much as a wink of mine – 'Sergeant Nickham,' I said, 'you are the boy! If you can't command your face, there isn't a man in the force as can. If you haven't got a memory for faces, find me the man who has, that's all about it!'

Why, of all the extraordinary capers that I ever tumbled to in my life, I never came near such a caper as this. Miss Doyle! That was Miss Doyle, was it? Right enough, no doubt; but if she wasn't also the sham clerk who came and found that I was put on the watch by Mr Byrle, I didn't know a horse from a hedgehog – that's all. The quick look of her eye, her sharp quick voice, the shape of her face, the very way she stood – lor! it was all as clear as daylight. But then I thought, and I kept on thinking till I had got back to the works, what could she have to do with stealing engine-fittings? 'Twasn't likely as she had anything to do with that. It was past all question in my mind as to her being the same party. I knew it for certain; and then came the point – What did she dress herself up for and come a-spying on me and her uncle? – for she was Mr Byrle's niece.

I hadn't got to the bottom of this by any means, by the time I got back to the works; however, I gave my message very respectfully to Mr Forey; and offered Bob the gatekeeper his sixpence back, with many thanks.

'No, old chap,' he says; 'keep it at present. If you get on regular, I'll take it off you and a pint into the bargain the day you draw your first week's cash; but a fellow out of work knows the vally of a sixpence.'

The same ferryman took me back; and his temper hadn't improved, I found. I fancied too that he was particular watchful of me, and so I was particular watchful of him; and from long practice I could do it better and more secretly than he could, although he had got a cross-eye. Lor! I could tell when we were nearing that same ship that the man climbed out of; I could tell it by the cunning way in which the boatman looked at me, to see if I would take any special notice of it. I didn't know what his little game might be, but I determined to spoil it; so I stooped down, and was tying up my shoe, making quite a long job of it, till after we had fairly passed the craft, and then I looked up with an innocent face that quite settled him.

Just as we pushed up to the hard (that's the landing-place), he says to me: 'Do you often cross here?'

'Not often,' I said; 'at anyrate, not yet. I generally cross a little higher up.' (That was very true; about Westminster Bridge was my place; if he liked to think I meant somewhere about Tooley Street or Billingsgate, of course I couldn't help it.) 'But I have left my old quarters, and so I shall often go this way.'

'Ah,' he says, 'you live at the Yarmouth Smack, don't you?'

'The what?' I said. 'Where's that?'

'The Yarmouth Smack,' he says again, pointing to the side we had come from. I knew where the Yarmouth Smack was well enough; but I shook my head, and said: 'No; I live on this side of the water; but I shall live anywhere when I can get work.'

He didn't say any more; I did not suppose he would; but there was something uncommonly suspicious in his talking about the Yarmouth Smack, something more than I could believe came from chance.

In the lane, just as I was about to turn into the side door of the Anchor, I met the foreign-looking captain, who must have crossed the river before me, as I had last seen him on the other side. He knew me, I could tell well enough, and I knew him; but I was not going to let him see where I was going, so I passed the door of the Anchor, limping on till he was clear; then I hurried in, went upstairs at once, and was out in the old ruined arbours I have spoken of in a minute. These overhung the river at high-water (it was nearly high-tide now), and the landing-place of the ferry was close to them. The ferryman and the captain were talking, as I expected they would be, while the boat was waiting for passengers; and by standing in the corner box, I could have heard every word they said, if they had spoken out, as honest people should speak. But they were that artful and suspicious, although they could not have known there was anybody listening, that they talked almost in whispers, and I only caught the last bit from the ferryman. 'No,' he says; 'he's not the party; but I'll go up to the Smack to-night and make sure of the man.'

Ah! as I thought; they were both in it somehow. But what a most extraordinary fuss and Gunpowder Plot sort of business there was about stealing a few bits of metal. I actually should have felt ashamed of the East-enders, who are really some of the sharpest folks I ever came across, if I had not felt there was a something behind, and that, by a lucky accident, I seemed upon the point of finding it out.

The night – my first night in the east too – was not to pass without an adventure, and I had not seen the last of my new acquaintance the captain. I got very tired of the company in the Anchor– not that I mind who I mix with, and if there had been any of the factory hands about the place, I would have sat with them until the house closed; but they only came there at meal-times it seemed, or on their road home. So I walked about the neighbourhood a bit; not because it was pleasant, for it was a wet night; and what with the rain and the mud and the drunken sailors and the fried-fish shops and the quarrelling there was going on, it was anything but agreeable. The fact is I like to know every court and alley in my district, and there were some pretty courts and alleys here. However, nobody thought me worth robbing, and besides, I am always civil, so I never get interfered with. It's a capital rule; the best I know; and costs nothing.

When I was coming back, and had got pretty nearly to the Anchor and Five Mermaids again (it is very absurd to give such long signs to public-houses), I saw a very pretty girl whom I had noticed before, standing at a corner out of the rain; but it was not raining very much now. She wasn't – well, I won't say what she was not, or what she was. She was very pretty, I say, and was doing no harm there; but two or three fellows coming by at the moment, one of them took hold of her roughly, and finished by almost pushing her down. She got away from him, and drew a door or two off; but his companions laughing at him for being bested by a woman, he followed her, and on her pushing him from her, gave her a back-handed smack in the face. There were several men loitering about, smoking and so forth, and I heard one or two say it was a shame; but none of them interfered; and I, being a little way off, and not wanting to get into a row, might have passed this over; but she called him a brute and a coward, and he went at her to strike her again. She ran across the road to where I stood, to avoid him, and he followed her. Then I saw it was my acquaintance the captain.

He swore more horribly than ever I heard any one swear, and springing forward, would certainly have hit her down; but I jumped between them and knocked up his arm. 'Brayvo!' said some women, who had been attracted by the girl's scream; and 'Brayvo!' said the men who hadn't interfered. At once the captain turned on me, and let fly desperately at my head; but I was not to be had in that way, and I stopped him and returned a hit that I know must have loosened a couple of teeth; and then he swore again, and began to pull off his coat. So did I.

'Don't fight wid him, my darlin',' said an old Irishwoman, who was selling herrings, laying her hand on my arm. 'You 're an honest English boy, and these fellows will have a knife in ye if they can't bate ye fair.'

'No, Biddy, they shan't,' said one of the men coming forward, followed by half-a-dozen more. 'If there's to be a fight, it shall be a fair one; and mates, we'll put any fellow into six feet of mud who only shews a knife.'

His mates said so too, and they were a rough and likely lot for it, and the river was within a score or so of yards. So with a scowl at them (for I do believe now he meant murder; I didn't think of it then, although I was a policeman), he rolled up his sleeves and came at me.

He was a strong fellow, not so tall perhaps, but certainly heavier than I was, and I daresay, from his manner, fancied he could fight. But fight me! Why, a gent once offered through Alec Keene (he had seen me spar in private at Alec's), to make it worth my while to leave the police, and he would back me against any ten-stone-four man I fancied, for a hundred; and I was half inclined to take it too, only something important turned up just then. Well, in two rounds I settled the captain. He tried to catch hold of me and throw me; but I knocked him clean off his legs each round; and then his friends took him away.

'There's one comfort at any rate in having had the row,' I thought: 'he'll never suppose I'm a detective after this.'

I wished, however, it had never come off, there was such a fuss. Why, if I could have drunk shillings and sixpences, I might have had them, I do believe. In a place like that you get a crowd directly; and although the affair did not last three minutes, there was a hundred men and as many women too, anxious to treat me; and I was naturally obliged to drink with one or two; not at the Anchor though.

The affair made such a stir, that I read in one of the local papers the next week how Jem Mace had been down in the neighbourhood of the Docks, incog.; and that for once the brute strength of a boxer had been used in a good cause, and all that sort of nonsense. I know I have always found the best class of boxers very good fellows.

Of course I was vexed at this shindy having taken place so early, as the quieter I kept myself the better; and I would have given five pounds to have been out of it. My wishing this only shews you never know what is coming; and something came out of this street fight that I never expected.

SEA-LIONS

The domestication of a pair of 'sea-lions' at the Brighton Aquarium, and the subsequent addition, some few months ago, of a 'little stranger' to this interesting family circle, afford an opportunity for a brief description of some of the more prominent points in the structure and habits of these little-known animals. The name 'sea-lion,' to begin with, is by no means so inappropriate or far fetched as popular designations are usually found to be, when submitted to scientific criticism. For the 'sea-lion' is included by zoologists along with the seals and walruses in the great Carnivorous order of quadrupeds, to which, it need hardly be remarked, the lions, tigers, bears, dogs, and other flesh-eaters belong. The sea-lion is in fact a large seal, and seals and walruses are simply marine bears; and if we can imagine the body of a familiar bear to be somewhat elongated, and that the limbs were converted into swimming paddles, we should obtain a rough but essentially correct idea of the zoological position of the seals and their neighbours.

But whilst the seals and sea-lions are united with the walruses to form a special group of carnivorous quadrupeds, adapted to lead a life in the sea, there exist some very prominent points of difference between the common seals and the less familiar sea-lions. The sea-lions and their nearest allies are thus sometimes named 'Eared' seals, from the possession of an outer ear; the latter appendage being absent in the common or True seals. And whilst the common seals waddle in a most ungainly fashion on land, the sea-lions are able to 'walk,' if not elegantly, at least with a better show of comfort than their more familiar neighbours. A glance at the structure of the sea-lion's feet, or better still, a comparison of its members with those of the seal, shews the reason of its greater skill and ability in progression on the land. The fore-limbs of the seal are, so to speak buried in the skin, below the elbow; only a small part of the fore-arm and hand being thus free from the body. The hind-limbs of the seals, again, exist in a permanently extended condition, and are disposed backwards in a line with the tail and body. The hind-limbs, moreover, are frequently united with the tail by means of a connecting fold of skin, and the whole hinder extremity of the body in a seal may thus be regarded as forming a large tail-fin. In swimming, the fore-limbs of the seal are applied closely to the sides of the body, and serve as rudders; whilst the hinder portion of the body, hinder limbs, and tail, constitute the swimming-organs – a work for which by their great flexibility they are perfectly adapted.

In the sea-lions on the other hand the fore-limbs are free from the skin and body to a much greater extent than in the seals. The 'hand' itself in the sea-lion is exceedingly flexible, although completely enclosed in a horny or leathery skin. The thumbs of this hand further exist in a well developed state; all five fingers being of nearly the same length in the seal. As regards the hind-feet of the sea-lion, these members, like the fore-limbs, are freely separated from the body, at least as far as the ankle and foot are concerned, and the foot is turned outwards, forcibly reminding one of the conformation of that organ in the bear. But we may only note by way of conclusion to these zoological characters that the teeth of the sea-lion are decidedly of a carnivorous type. Any one regarding the skull of a sea-lion could readily form the idea that the animal which possessed it was a flesh-eater. These animals usually possess thirty-six teeth; the 'eye' teeth being of very large size, and so placed in the jaws that any substance entering the mouth is firmly held by these teeth and the adjoining front teeth. The 'grinders' of the sea-lion are small, and do not appear to be of any very great use to the animal. These creatures swallow their food – consisting of fishes, molluscs, and sea-birds – whole, and when a large fish is divided in two, the portion retained in the mouth is swallowed; the portion which tumbles into the water being afterwards seized and duly swallowed in its turn.

That the sea-lions are by no means destitute of the craft and cunning of their land-neighbours, is proved by the fact that they capture such birds as the penguins by lying motionless in the water, allowing merely the tip of the nose to appear at the surface. The unwary bird, swooping down upon the floating object, presumed to consist of something eatable, is then seized and devoured by the concealed enemy.

Sea-lions may be regarded as the unknown, or at anyrate unrecognised benefactors of the fair sex, inasmuch as, from the rich under-fur which they possess, the favourite material known as 'seal-skin' is obtained. This latter name is entirely misleading in its nature; the much prized material being the produce of the sea-lion and not of a true seal. The possession of this valuable under-fur has contributed very largely to the causes of the indiscriminate attack which has for years past been made upon the sea-lions. The spirit of commercial enterprise has resulted in a war of extermination against these animals in certain regions, from the effects of which it is doubtful if the species can ultimately recover.

The sea-lions differ materially from the seals in their geographical distribution. The latter animals, as every casual reader of a natural history text-book knows, inhabit temperate and northern seas. The sea-lions, on the other hand, are found to be absent from all parts of the Atlantic Ocean save its most southern portions. They are common on the South American coasts, and are found inhabiting island-groups which may be regarded as belonging to the same zoological province as the latter continent. The mouth of the River Plate is stated as the most northern boundary of these animals on the eastern side of South America, whilst on the western or Pacific side of the New World they are found on the Californian coasts, and are even met with on the coasts of the Aleutian Isles and of Japan. The Pribylov Islands, included in the Alaska group, are regarded as forming the most northerly point of the sea-lions' distribution; and these islands – now in the possession of the United States – together with the Falkland Islands and the Cape of Good Hope, still form the three chief sources from which the seal-fur or seal-skin of commerce is obtained. It is also well ascertained that sea-lions occur at Kerguelen's Land, on the New Zealand coasts, on the Tasmanian shores, and the east and south coasts of Australia.

The average length of a large male sea-lion ranges from six to seven or eight feet, his weight averaging six hundred pounds. The females are of much smaller size than the males, and measure from four and a half to five feet in length; their weight being from one hundred to one hundred and fifty pounds. These animals, as might be expected, grow slowly, and attain their full dimensions the males in six, and the females in four years. The habits of these animals are not only of curious and interesting nature, but evince a decidedly high order of intelligence. The haunts of the sea-lions are, in whalers' parlance, named 'rookeries;' and in the disposition of what may be termed their domestic arrangements, as well as in the regulation of their family and personal matters, these creatures appear to be guided by instincts which, like the social order of the ants and bees, are duly perpetuated, and have become of hereditary character. The sea-lions are migratory in habits, and disappear from the majority of the haunts and breeding-places in winter. The males are few in number as compared with the females or 'cows,' as they are termed; and each male receives under his protection a larger or smaller number of females; the oldest males possessing the largest number of dependants. In the early spring, some old males appear to return first to the haunts and do duty as reconnoitring parties; the advance-guard swimming about for several days, then landing and cautiously investigating the state of the land; their shore-visits being spent in a state of perpetual sniffing, and in the careful examination of their old haunt. About a month or six weeks after the arrival of the advance-guard, and after the inspection of the land has been duly carried out, sure signs of the coming race begin to appear in the form of hundreds of males, who select advantageous positions on the beach, and await the arrival of their partners. Nor is the period of waiting an uneventful one. The best situations on the beach are fought for with eagerness, not to say ferocity. The descriptions given of the combats of the males indicate that they are of the most sanguinary description; frequent mutilations being the results of this fight for a place on the reception-ground.