proof of his identity. Then he left the shipping office, and met some
friends.

Those friends! "That was a fine girl," he said, speaking more to the
rain than to me. "I never seen a finer." I began to show signs of
moving away. "Don't go, mister. She was all right. I lay you never
seen a finer. Look here. I reckon you know her." He plunged an eager
hand into an inner pocket. "Ever heard of Angel Light? She's on the
stage. It's a fact. She showed me her name herself on a programme
last night. There y'are." He triumphed with a photograph, and his
gnarled forefinger pointed at an exposed set of teeth under an
extraordinary hat. "Eh, ain't that all right? On the stage, too. Met
her at the corner of Pennyfields."

It was still raining. He flung another shower from his cap. I was
impatient, but he took my lapel confidentially. "Guv'nor," he said,
"if I could find the swab as took my money, I lay I'd make him look so
as his own mother 'ud turn her back on him. I would. Ten quid."

He had, it appeared, lost those friends. He was now seeking, with
varying emotions, both the girl and the swab. I suggested the dock and
his ship would be a better quest. No, it was no good, he said. He
tried that late last night. Both had gone. The policeman at the gate
told him so. The dock was there again this morning, but a different
policeman; and whatever improbable world the dock and the policeman of
midnight had visited, there they had left his ship, inaccessible,
tangled hopelessly in a revolving mesh of saloon lights and collapsing
streets. Now he had no name, no history, no character, no money, and
he was hungry.