"We were speaking to this gentleman," said one of the men, but not the one who had spoken to Scholar.
"O, you were, were you. Why can't yer speak for yerself?" and Cockney turned to the other, he who had tried to lure Mike into combat. "Wot do you want him for?"
"It's none of your business!" replied the man.
"Yus it is! We're shipmites! I'll give yer a bash in the ear-'ole for tuppence! I'll put yer nose up among yer 'air for ten cents! Won't hi do instead? We're shipmites, 'im and me."
The man lunged at Cockney to deliver a blow; and Cockney, with a wriggle and a snarl, smashed a blow in his assailant's wind, and, next moment, when they grappled, set his teeth in the man's wrist.
"Bull!" somebody shouted, so the farther combat of weasel and boar was not to be seen, for the call of "bull!" was genuine. There he was, there was the policeman pacing slowly towards them like a fate, broad, determined, left hand at side nonchalant, right hand slightly raised, nonchalant too, twirling his club gently at the end of its short leather wristlet—like a stout Georgian dandy, swinging a cane.
None of the "Push" of the S.S. Glory had any desire to see the inside of a lock-up, and evidently the two men who had been curious regarding Mike's whereabouts, were not in league with the police. By the time that his slow patrol brought him to the end of the block, that bull had the pavement to himself; the two "toughs" had disappeared in one of the narrow streets, in one of its narrow entrances; the "Push" was stumbling about over hawsers and round bales on the dark wharf-side. The policeman, turning gently about, gave ear. He heard a thin sound of fiddles, a sound of clapping and table-thumping behind closed windows over at Dutch Ann's dance house; the quick, coughing sound of a donkey-engine somewhere along the docks, and a voice chanting: "Up again!"—pause—"All right! Up again!" Slow puffs of a locomotive drew near, sepulchral cling-clang of the bell; there came a shout of voices: "Yo-ho! Let her go!" a rattle of iron, a rattle of wheels over cobbles; and all through this was a querulous lowing of cattle, puzzled, despondent, irritable, after their week's journey from the long green rolls of Alberta, from lush bottoms of the Milk River.
The Salvation Army people had gone; but away along towards where the masts and the smoke-stack top of the S.S. Glory showed over the wharf, Cockney's voice sang high and piping and exulting: "Longer fer me! Longer fer me!"