



Produced by David Widger




SHIP'S COMPANY

By W.W. Jacobs



[Illustration: 'I tell you, I am as innercent as a new-born babe'.]


SKILLED ASSISTANCE


The night-watchman, who had left his seat on the jetty to answer the
gate-bell, came back with disgust written on a countenance only too well
designed to express it.

"If she's been up 'ere once in the last week to, know whether the
<i>Silvia</i> is up she's been four or five times," he growled.  "He's forty-
seven if he's a day; 'is left leg is shorter than 'is right, and he talks
with a stutter.  When she's with 'im you'd think as butter wouldn't melt
in 'er mouth; but the way she talked to me just now you'd think I was
paid a-purpose to wait on her.  I asked 'er at last wot she thought I was
here for, and she said she didn't know, and nobody else neither.  And
afore she went off she told the potman from the 'Albion,' wot was
listening, that I was known all over Wapping as the Sleeping Beauty.

"She ain't the fust I've 'ad words with, not by a lot.  They're all the
same; they all start in a nice, kind, soapy sort o' way, and, as soon as
they don't get wot they want, fly into a temper and ask me who, I think I
am.  I told one woman once not to be silly, and I shall never forget it
as long as I live-never.  For all I know, she's wearing a bit o' my 'air
in a locket to this day, and very likely boasting that I gave it to her.

"Talking of her reminds me of another woman.  There was a Cap'n Pinner,
used to trade between 'ere and Hull on a schooner named the Snipe.  Nice
little craft she was, and 'e was a very nice feller.  Many and many's the
pint we've 'ad together, turn and turn-about, and the on'y time we ever
'ad a cross word was when somebody hid his clay pipe in my beer and 'e
was foolish enough to think I'd done it.

"He 'ad a nice little cottage, 'e told me about, near Hull, and 'is
wife's father, a man of pretty near seventy, lived with 'em.  Well-off
the old man was, and, as she was his only daughter, they looked to 'ave
all his money when he'd gorn.  Their only fear was that 'e might marry
agin, and, judging from wot 'e used to tell me about the old man, I
thought it more than likely.

"'If it wasn't for my missis he'd ha' been married over and over agin,'
he ses one day.  'He's like a child playing with gunpowder.'

"''Ow would it be to let 'im burn hisself a bit?' I ses.

"'If you was to see some o' the gunpowder he wants to play with, you
wouldn't talk like that,' ses the cap'n.  'You'd know better.  The on'y
thing is to keep 'em apart, and my pore missis is wore to a shadder a-
doing of it.'

"It was just about a month arter that that he brought the old man up to
London with 'im.  They 'ad some stuff to put out at Smith's Wharf,
t'other side of the river, afore they came to us, and though they was
on'y there four or five days, it was long enough for that old man to get
into trouble.

"The skipper told me about it ten minutes arter they was made snug in the
inner berth 'ere.  He walked up and down like a man with a raging
toothache, and arter follering 'im up and down the wharf till I was tired
out, I discovered that 'is father-in-law 'ad got 'imself mixed up with a
widder-woman ninety years old and weighing twenty stun.  Arter he 'ad
cooled down a bit, and I 'ad given 'im a few little pats on the shoulder,
'e made it forty-eight years old and fourteen stun.

"'He's getting ready to go and meet her now,' he ses, 'and wot my
missis'll say to me, I don't know.'

"His father-in-law came up on deck as 'e spoke, and began to brush
'imself all over with a clothesbrush.  Nice-looking little man 'e was,
with blue eyes, and a little white beard, cut to a point, and dressed up
in a serge suit with brass buttons, and a white yachting cap. 