pocket was too lordly a treasure for such a throng; and, in order that
all invidious distinctions might be removed, I emptied out the coppers.
Then I bade good-bye to my friends, and with my heart going pit-a-pat,
slouched down the street and took my place at the end of the line. Woeful
it looked, this line of poor folk tottering on the steep pitch to death;
how woeful it was I did not dream.

Next to me stood a short, stout man. Hale and hearty, though aged,
strong-featured, with the tough and leathery skin produced by long years
of sunbeat and weatherbeat, his was the unmistakable sea face and eyes;
and at once there came to me a bit of Kipling's "Galley Slave":-

"By the brand upon my shoulder, by the gall of clinging steel;
By the welt the whips have left me, by the scars that never heal;
By eyes grown old with staring through the sun-wash on the brine,
I am paid in full for service . . . "

How correct I was in my surmise, and how peculiarly appropriate the verse
was, you shall learn.

"I won't stand it much longer, I won't," he was complaining to the man on
the other side of him. "I'll smash a windy, a big 'un, an' get run in
for fourteen days. Then I'll have a good place to sleep, never fear, an'
better grub than you get here. Though I'd miss my bit of bacey"--this as
an after-thought, and said regretfully and resignedly.

"I've been out two nights now," he went on; "wet to the skin night before
last, an' I can't stand it much longer. I'm gettin' old, an' some
mornin' they'll pick me up dead."