me his assistance in getting my ship down to the sea, without steam. A
six-hundred-ton barque, drawing nine feet aft. I proposed to give
him eighteen dollars for his local knowledge; and all the time I was
speaking he kept on considering attentively the various aspects of the
banana, holding first one side up to his eye, then the other.

"You've forgotten to apologise," he said at last with extreme precision.
"Not being a gentleman yourself, you don't know apparently when you
intrude upon a gentleman. I am one. I wish you to understand that when I
am in funds I don't work, and now . . ."

I would have pronounced him perfectly sober hadn't he paused in great
concern to try and brush a hole off the knee of his trousers.

"I have money--and friends. Every gentleman has. Perhaps you would like
to know my friend? His name is Falk. You could borrow some money. Try to
remember. F-A-L-K, Falk." Abruptly his tone changed. "A noble heart," he
said muzzily.

"Has Falk been giving you some money?" I asked, appalled by the detailed
finish of the dark plot.

"Lent me, my good man, not given me. Lent," he corrected suavely.
"Met me taking the air last evening, and being as usual anxious to
oblige--Hadn't you better go to the devil out of my compound?"

And upon this, without other warning, he let fly with the banana which
missed my head, and took the constable just under the left eye. He
rushed at the miserable Johnson, stammering with fury. They fell. . . .
But why dwell on the wretchedness, the breathlessness, the degradation,