Page 58 - for-the-term-of-his-natural-life

four. What could they want with them at that hour?
‘I tell you there’s something up on deck,’ says one to the
group nearest him. ‘Don’t you hear all that rumbling and
rolling?’
‘What did they lower boats for? I heard the dip o’ the
oars.’
‘Don’t know, mate. P’r’aps a burial job,’ hazarded a short,
stout fellow, as a sort of happy suggestion.
‘One of those coves in the parlour!’ said another; and a
laugh followed the speech.
‘No such luck. You won’t hang your jib for them yet
awhile. More like the skipper agone fishin’.’
‘The skipper don’t go fishin’, yer fool. What would he do
fishin’?—special in the middle o’ the night.’
‘That ‘ud be like old Dovery, eh?’ says a fifth, alluding to
an old grey-headed fellow, who—a returned convict—was
again under sentence for body-snatching.
‘Ay,’ put in a young man, who had the reputation of being
the smartest ‘crow’ (the ‘look-out’ man of a burglars’ gang)
in London—‘‘fishers of men,’ as the parson says.’
The snuffling imitation of a Methodist preacher was
good, and there was another laugh.
Just then a miserable little cockney pickpocket, feeling
his way to the door, fell into the party.
A volley of oaths and kicks received him.
‘I beg your pardon, gen’l’men,’ cries the miserable wretch,
‘but I want h’air.’
‘Go to the barber’s and buy a wig, then!’ says the ‘Crow’,
elated at the success of his last sally.