DEEP WATERS

By W.W. JACOBS




DIRTY WORK

It was nearly high-water, and the night-watchman, who had stepped aboard
a lighter lying alongside the wharf to smoke a pipe, sat with half-closed
eyes enjoying the summer evening. The bustle of the day was over, the
wharves were deserted, and hardly a craft moved on the river. Perfumed
clouds of shag, hovering for a time over the lighter, floated lazily
towards the Surrey shore.

"There's one thing about my job," said the night-watchman, slowly, "it's
done all alone by yourself. There's no foreman a-hollering at you and
offering you a penny for your thoughts, and no mates to run into you from
behind with a loaded truck and then ask you why you didn't look where
you're going to. From six o'clock in the evening to six o'clock next
morning I'm my own master."

He rammed down the tobacco with an experienced forefinger and puffed
contentedly.

People like you 'ud find it lonely (he continued, after a pause); I did
at fust. I used to let people come and sit 'ere with me of an evening
talking, but I got tired of it arter a time, and when one chap fell
overboard while 'e was showing me 'ow he put his wife's mother in 'er