suddenly put up my shoulders, and ran at him as if my head were a
battering-ram, and his moleskin waistcoat the wall of a beleaguered
city, and then wrenching myself from his grasp, and dodging the leg he
had put out to trip me, I fled blindly down the quay.

No one can take orange-peel into account, however. I slipped on a large
piece and came headlong, with the aggravation of hearing my enemy
breathing hoarsely close above me. As regards him, I suppose it was
lucky that my fall jerked the shilling and the penny out of my pocket,
for as the shilling rolled away he went after it, and I saw him no more.
What I did see when I sat up was the last of my penny (which had rolled
in another direction), as it gave one final turn and fell into the dock.

I could have cried with vexation, and partly with fatigue, for it was
getting late, and I was getting tired. I had fallen soft enough, as it
happened, for I found myself on a heap of seeds, some kind of small
bean, and the yielding mass made a pleasant resting-place. There was no
one very near, and I moved round to the back of the heap to be still
more out of sight, and sat down to try and think what it was best to do.
If my slops were really a sort of uniform to which I was not entitled,
they would do me more harm than good. But whom could I ask? If there
were an honest, friendly soul in all this crowd, and I could come across
him, I felt that (without telling too much of my affairs) I could
explain that I had exchanged some good shore clothes of my own for what
I had been told were more suitable to the work I was looking out for,
and say further that though I had never yet been at sea, I was hardy,
and willing to make myself useful in any way. But how could I tell whom
to trust? I might speak fair to some likely-looking man, and he might
take me somewhere and strip me of my slops, and find my leather
money-bag, and steal that too. When I thought how easily my