When Thomas left Rotherhithe with Jim Salter, he had no idea in his head but to get away somewhere. Like the ostrich, he wanted some sand to stick his head into. But wherever he went there were people, even policemen, about, and not one of the places they went through looked more likely to afford him shelter than another. Had he given Jim any clearer information concerning the necessity he was in of _keeping dark_, perhaps he would have done differently with him. As it was, he contented himself with piloting him about the lower docks and all that maritime part of London. They walked about the whole day till Thomas was quite weary. Nor did refuge seem nearer than before. All this time the police might be on his track, coming nearer and nearer like the bloodhounds that they were. They had some dinner at an eating-house, where Thomas's fastidiousness made yet a farther acquaintance with dirt and disorder, and he felt that he had fallen from his own sphere into a lower order of things, and could never more climb into the heaven from whence he had fallen. But the fear of yet a lower fall into a prison and the criminal's dock kept him from dwelling yet upon what he had lost. At night Jim led him into Ratcliff Highway, the Paradise of sailors at sea--the hell of sailors on shore. Thomas shrunk from the light that filled the street from end to end, blazing from innumerable public-houses, through the open doors of which he looked across into back parlors, where sailors and women sat drinking and gambling, or down long passages to great rooms with curtained doorways, whence came the sounds of music and dancing, and through which passed and re-passed seafaring figures and gaily bedizened vulgar girls, many of whom, had the weather been warmer, would have been hanging about the street-doors, laughing and _chaffing_ the passers-by, or getting up a dance on the pavement to the sound of the music within. It was a whole streetful of low revelry. Poor Jack! Such is his coveted reward on shore for braving Death, and defying him to his face. He escapes from the embrace of the bony phantom to hasten to the arms of his far more fearful companion--the nightmare Life-in-Death--"who thicks man's blood with cold." Well may that pair casting their dice on the skeleton ship symbolize the fate of the sailor, for to the one or the other he falls a victim. Opposite an open door Jim stopped to speak to an acquaintance. The door opened directly upon a room ascending a few steps from the street. Round a table sat several men--sailors, of course--apparently masters of coasting vessels. A lithe lascar was standing with one hand on the table, leaning over it, and talking swiftly, with snaky gestures of the other hand. He was in a rage. The others burst out laughing. Thomas saw something glitter in the hand of the Hindoo. One of the sailors gave a cry, and started up, but staggered and fell.