Frederick L. C. Harcourt, Viscount Ratcliff, was extremely natty in his flannels, buckskins, and yachting cap, and consequently he aroused tremendous excitement, plainly being nothing more or less than a "toff" of the first water.
As he strode along the cattle-wharf at Deptford, he looked as much out of place as would a royal highness if suddenly dropped among the habitués of Sally Tucker's pub.
Nevertheless, because of the Royal Yacht Club insignia on his cap, and also because his face was very brown and square-chinned and his shoulders rather broader than most, his "sunfish" prodding the long-horns down the gangs kept their comments strictly to themselves.
Harcourt, who was strolling along in a rather aimless fashion, nodded quietly to the astonished S.P.C.A. inspector, replied to the latter's flurried greeting that it certainly was a fine day, and passed on. His dark-blue eyes settled on an ancient and dishonorable well-deck cargo tank of some three thousand tons, from which the last batch of cattle were being driven into the wharf pens.
As he passed down beneath her counter, on the edge of the wharf, his sauntering ceased rather abruptly. From somewhere came a well-directed stream of blue, evil-smelling, pipe smoke, which shot down with the wind squarely athwart his face.
Harcourt looked up to see a man, obviously a "sunfish" or cattle-boat hand, leaning lazily upon the rail above him and grinning amiably at the intruder.
Foul beyond the ordinary foulness of the bullock waiter was the man, his clothes a mere mass of tattered rags, and dirt; but there was a twinkle in his grey eyes, and his face and neck were brown and rough and muscled. His tousle of black hair was crowned by a battered felt hat, whose brim flapped at weird angles about his ears; but from brow to chin his face was aquiline, sharp, while, as he addressed the other, white teeth flashed on his pipe-stem.
"Slumming, pardner?"
Harcourt smiled, his cheeks rosy through their bronze, and something of the cool insolence that had rested in the grey eyes above him died away before his look.
"Perhaps. Come down here, my man. I'd like a word with you, don't you know."