"A vycytion, eh?
for the likes o' me?
Just fancy, now!--Mind yer feet!"-- this last sharply, and to me, as I stumbled over the rotten threshold.
Down near the West India Dock I came upon a young fellow staring disconsolately at the muddy water.

A fireman's cap was pulled down across his eyes, and the fit and sag of his clothes whispered unmistakably of the sea.
"Hello, mate," I greeted him, sparring for a beginning.

"Can you tell me the way to Wapping ?" "Worked yer way over on a cattle boat ?" he countered, fixing my nationality on the instant.
And thereupon we entered upon a talk that extended itself to a public- house and a couple of pints of "arf an' arf." This led to closer intimacy, so that when I brought to light all of a shilling's worth of coppers (ostensibly my all), and put aside sixpence for a bed, and sixpence for more arf an' arf, he generously proposed that we drink up the whole shilling.
"My mate, 'e cut up rough las' night," he explained.

"An' the bobbies got 'm, so you can bunk in wi' me.

Wotcher say ?" I said yes, and by the time we had soaked ourselves in a whole shilling's worth of beer, and slept the night on a miserable bed in a miserable den, I knew him pretty fairly for what he was.