The Impending Sword: A Novel (Vol. 2 of 3)Yates, Edmund
General
The Impending Sword: A Novel (Vol. 2 of 3)
Yates, Edmund
Fiction
On his road he passed a trough provided for the watering of cattle on
their way from shipment. A lamp stood near, so that, though the
darkness of the night had increased, there was light on that spot. The
sailor took his cap off, pulled up the sleeves of his jersey, and
pumped a quantity of water over his head and face. This done, he once
more inspected the premises, and finding himself perfectly free from
any danger of observation, he took off his shoes and examined his feet
by the gaslight. It was as he supposed. There were traces of blood
upon them, but it had dried before he had put on his stockings, so
that no tell-tale marks had extended to them. He swung himself up on
the side of the trough, and carefully washed first one foot, then the
other; after which he sat swinging them in the air until they were
perfectly dry, when he resumed his shoes and stockings, and again went
on his way.
The lodging-house was even more crowded than it had been on the
previous night, and the proprietor was more drunk and less
accommodating. A couple of dirty sacks on the landing, outside the
wretched dormitory, was all that the sailor could procure by way of a
bed; and when he asked for a pillow, he was told that he might roll up
his clothes, and use them for that purpose--they hadn't got no
pillows--advice which was accompanied by a coarse jest at the
luxuriousness of his requirements, and which was overheard by one of
the men whose efforts at conversation the sailor had met, on the
previous night, with sullen moroseness.
'Pillow,' said this man; 'what do you want with a pillow? Where's that
'ere bundle you were so particular about last night? One would think
it was stuffed with diamonds, you was so fond of it.'
'I've been robbed of it,' replied the man, with an oath. 'Worse luck.'
'Well, you weren't robbed of it here,' said the proprietor of the
establishment.
'No, that you weren't, Tom Summers,' struck in his neighbour; 'we
ain't fine gentlemen here as are above being spoken to, but we're on
the square, and pals is safe with us.' With which testimony to the
virtues of the company, and protest against the surliness of the
new-comer, this gentleman turned on his bed of sacking and went to
sleep.
And so the night wore on in Liverpool, and the dawn brightened over
the fair ship with her happy and hopeful company out at sea, and over
the stark figure of the dead man who lay with wide-open eyes upon the
landing of the great warehouse, where many hurrying feet would shortly
be arrested beside him in horror at the fate of the unknown, unclaimed
stranger.
CHAPTER III.
HELEN'S JOURNAL.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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