pedlar (I wonder whether he is dead or has made a fortune), while
sitting on the rail of the old Duke of S- (she's dead, poor thing!
a violent death on the coast of New Zealand), fascinated by the
monotony, the regularity, the abruptness of the recurring cry, and
so exasperated at the absurd spell, that I wished the fellow would
choke himself to death with a mouthful of his own infamous wares.

A stupid job, and fit only for an old man, my comrades used to tell
me, to be the night-watchman of a captive (though honoured) ship.
And generally the oldest of the able seamen in a ship's crew does
get it. But sometimes neither the oldest nor any other fairly
steady seaman is forthcoming. Ships' crews had the trick of
melting away swiftly in those days. So, probably on account of my
youth, innocence, and pensive habits (which made me sometimes
dilatory in my work about the rigging), I was suddenly nominated,
in our chief mate Mr. B-'s most sardonic tones, to that enviable
situation. I do not regret the experience. The night humours of
the town descended from the street to the waterside in the still
watches of the night: larrikins rushing down in bands to settle
some quarrel by a stand-up fight, away from the police, in an
indistinct ring half hidden by piles of cargo, with the sounds of
blows, a groan now and then, the stamping of feet, and the cry of
"Time!" rising suddenly above the sinister and excited murmurs;
night-prowlers, pursued or pursuing, with a stifled shriek followed
by a profound silence, or slinking stealthily along-side like
ghosts, and addressing me from the quay below in mysterious tones
with incomprehensible propositions. The cabmen, too, who twice a
week, on the night when the A.S.N. Company's passenger-boat was due
to arrive, used to range a battalion of blazing lamps opposite the
ship, were very amusing in their way. They got down from their