Several battered visages, evidently belonging to _habitués_ of the place, were bent suspiciously in my direction; perhaps because my rig-out, though rough, had no flavour of sea-salt or river-mud, for no one took the least notice of Dorking, except the comely attendant. I waited with some curiosity for my fare, which turned out to be nothing more mysterious than a pint of coffee and one thick slice of bread and butter. Not to appear ignorant of the prices ruling, I tendered Jenny a sixpence, whereupon she returned me fourpence-halfpenny. This appeared to me so ridiculously cheap that I had not the courage to offer her the change as I had intended, nor did she seem to expect it. The pint of coffee was served in one great hulking cup such as Gargantua might have quaffed. I took a sip, and found it of the flavour of chalybeate springs. But it was hot, and I made shift to drink a little, casting furtive glances at Dorking, three boxes off across the gangway. My gentleman sailor seemed quite at home, swallowing stolidly as though at his own breakfast-table. I grew impatient for him to have done, and beguiled the time by studying a placard on the wall offering a reward for information as to the whereabouts of a certain ship's cook who was wanted for knifing human flesh. And presently, curiously enough, in comes a police-sergeant on this very matter, and out goes Dorking (rather hastily, I thought), with me at his heels. No sooner had he got round a corner than he started running at a rate that gave me a stitch in the side. He did not stop till he reached a cab-rank. There was only one vehicle on it, and the coughing, red-nosed driver, unpleasantly suggesting a mixture of grog and fog, was climbing to his seat when I came cautiously and breathlessly up, and Dorking was returning to his trousers' pocket a jingling mass of gold and silver coins, which he had evidently been exhibiting to the sceptical cabman. He seemed to walk these regions with the fearlessness of Una in the enchanted forest. I had no resource but to hang on to the rear, despite the alarums of "whip behind," raised by envious and inconsiderate urchins.