That same evening Mr. George Sinnett was taking his ease in the bar-parlour of the “Flag and Pennant” when Mr. Samuel Clark entered the apartment a little precipitously and flung himself into a chair beside Mr. Sinnett.
“Never mind!” passionately remarked Mr. Clark. “I’ll get me rights yet! Fair’s fair, ain’t it, Sinnett?”
Mr. Sinnett turned and regarded the ferryman with considerable coldness, for Mr. Clark was presumptuously flinging a bridge across a well-defined social space. Mr. Sinnett, noting that the ferryman was a little glassy of orb and rather reckless about the disposition of his legs, frowned unencouragingly and looked away again.
“Fair’s fair!” again asserted Mr. Clark, dogmatically. “’Im and me was both in it, and that’s what I got for a start-off! Look!”
Mr. Sinnett aloofly disdained the invitation, and next became aware that the back of a huge hand was floating to and fro a few inches below his nose.
“You look at that afore it slips!” directed Mr. Clark, forcefully. “See that scar? That’s what I got for my share.”
“Indeed,” said Mr. Sinnett, not quite comfortably.
“In-blooming-deed!” asserted Mr. Clark. “Just as I was climbing over the railings of the temple.”
“Temple? What temple?” asked Mr. Sinnett puzzled.
“Ah, I ain’t such a fool as to tell you that!” vaunted Mr. Clark. “But the nigger on guard gave me a lick across the back of the ’and with ’is sword, and— My chum got away all right, though. At least, ’e was my chum in those days. But now—”