"Sorry I can't oblige," he said. "I haven't started smoking yet."
"What, my lively! ain't started smokin' yet?" came from the bigger man. "Strike me, Bob, but here's a lubber as don't even chew, let alone take hold of a pipe!"
There came a giggle from the smaller man, who sidled forward, and coming from behind his companion, edged up to Tom's side.
"Don't smoke nor chew," he giggled in a queerly deep, gruff voice. "Most like he's a young gent that has got out o' nights without his mother knowing."
He dropped a parcel which he was carrying beneath one arm, and then stooped at once to pick it up. A moment later he had sprung up behind Tom, and with a quick movement had swung his parcel above our hero's head. What followed took the young fellow so utterly by surprise that he was completely dumbfounded; for a sack was drawn down over his head and shoulders, and long before he could lift his arms the bigger man had flung a coil of rope around him, pinning Tom's arms to his side. But still he could fight, and, seized with desperation and with anger, Tom lurched this way and that, kicking out in all directions, hustling his captors from side to side till what appeared to them at first a game began to annoy them. The bigger man clenched a huge fist and drove hard at the centre of the sack with it.
"That's silenced him and made him quit foolin'," he grunted brutally, for Tom dropped instantly and lay inert on the ground. "Jest get a lift on to his toes, Bob; I'll take his head. We'll have him in chokey afore he's shook the stars out of his eyes."
Without the smallest show of haste the two ruffians picked up their burden and went off down the narrow alley leading from the street. There was no need for them to fear interference, for police hardly existed in those days, while respectable individuals did not patronize the neighbourhood of the docks once night had fallen. Business men, living as they did in the early years of the nineteenth century above their premises, sat in the candlelight behind their shutters once evening had come, and if they ventured forth at all, took some sort of guard with them. It followed, therefore, that no one even observed the two men strolling away with their burden. Even had they been seen, the observer would in all likelihood have hurried away in the opposite direction, for drunken sailors were inclined to be more than rough. Robbery was not by any means unknown, while even murder was now and again committed in the slums adjacent to the river.
In less than ten minutes from the moment when Tom had been so hardly treated the two men came to a halt at a low doorway, the bigger of the two beating upon it heavily.
"Open!" he shouted, as if there were no need for concealment, and he had no reason to fear being overheard. "Open quick, or Sam here'll want to know the reason why there's delay."