“The main thing is to kape up th' organization! Better twinty like that Sheeny Joe should learn th' lockstep than weaken Tammany Hall. Besides, I'm not like th' law. I belave in sindin' folks to prison, not for what they do, but for what they are. An' this la-ad was a har-rd crackther.”
The day upon which Sheeny Joe went to his prison was election day. Tammany Hall took possession of the town; and for myself, I was made an alderman by a majority that counted into the skies.
CHAPTER IX—HOW BIG KENNEDY BOLTED
BEFORE I abandon the late election in its history to the keeping of time past, there is an episode, or, if you will, an accident, which should find relation. Of itself it would have come and gone, and been of brief importance, save for an incident to make one of its elements, which in a later pinch to come of politics brought me within the shadow of a gibbet.
Busy with my vote-getting, I had gone to the docks to confer with the head of a certain gang of stevedores. These latter were hustling up and down the gangplanks, taking the cargo out of a West India coffee boat. The one I had come seeking was aboard the vessel.
I pushed towards the after gangplank, and as I reached it I stepped aside to avoid one coming ashore with a huge sack of coffee on his shoulders. Not having my eyes about me, I caught my toe in a ringbolt and stumbled with a mighty bump against a sailor who was standing on the string-piece of the wharf. With nothing to save him, and a six-foot space opening between the wharf and the ship, the man fell into the river with a cry and a splash. He went to the bottom like so much pig-iron, for he could not swim.
It was the work of a moment to throw off my coat and go after him. I was as much at ease in the water as a spaniel, and there would be nothing more dangerous than a ducking in the experiment. I dived and came up with the drowning man in my grip. For all his peril, he took it coolly enough, and beyond spluttering, and puffing, and cracking off a jargon of oaths, added no difficulties to the task of saving his life. We gained help from the dock, and it wasn't five minutes before we found the safe planks beneath our feet again.
The man who had gone overboard so unexpectedly was a keen small dark creature of a Sicilian, and to be noticed for his black eyes, a red handkerchief over his head, and ears looped with golden earrings.