SHIP'S COMPANY

By W.W. Jacobs



[Illustration: 'I tell you, I am as innercent as a new-born babe'.]


SKILLED ASSISTANCE


The night-watchman, who had left his seat on the jetty to answer the
gate-bell, came back with disgust written on a countenance only too well
designed to express it.

"If she's been up 'ere once in the last week to, know whether the
Silvia is up she's been four or five times," he growled. "He's forty-
seven if he's a day; 'is left leg is shorter than 'is right, and he talks
with a stutter. When she's with 'im you'd think as butter wouldn't melt
in 'er mouth; but the way she talked to me just now you'd think I was
paid a-purpose to wait on her. I asked 'er at last wot she thought I was
here for, and she said she didn't know, and nobody else neither. And
afore she went off she told the potman from the 'Albion,' wot was
listening, that I was known all over Wapping as the Sleeping Beauty.

"She ain't the fust I've 'ad words with, not by a lot. They're all the
same; they all start in a nice, kind, soapy sort o' way, and, as soon as
they don't get wot they want, fly into a temper and ask me who, I think I
am. I told one woman once not to be silly, and I shall never forget it