Presently he heard the voice of a man singing, and coming towards him, and the words rang out on the night air with wonderful distinctness—
“I’m off to Charlestown early in the morning,
I’m off to Charlestown before the break of day;
To give my respects to all the pretty yellow girls,
I’m off to Charlestown before the break of day!”
“Evidently a sailor half tanked,” thought Alec, as he watched the man with peaked cap and pilot coat, half reel, half walk up the Quay. The progress forward of the singer was more like tacking against a head-wind than a plain, straight-away course. He zig-zagged first over to the wool warehouses, then across to the water’s edge, and each time Alec expected him to tumble over, but he always seemed to “wear ship” just in time, singing the while as though he were the happiest fellow in all the world.
By accident or design one of these tacks brought the drunken sailor just to the corner of the heap of casks behind which Alec stood hidden.
He pulled up short before turning again, and, seeing Alec, called out—
“Hullo, mate! can you give us a match?”
Alec, not from meanness, but to get rid of the man’s presence, told him he had not got one.
“I say, mate, give us a match, there’s a good fellow”—and the sailor put his hand on Alec’s shoulder.
At that moment a woman’s form could be seen approaching from the distance, clad in a light costume. She might, for all that light revealed, be Bertha in a walking-dress.
Instinctively Alec turned away his eyes to look at the newcomer, and then the drunken sailor, like one who had waited for a signal at the moment Alec turned his head, pulled out a bag that had been hidden beneath his coat, clapped it over the face and round the neck of Alec, where a spring appeared to hold it fast, and then, with a rush and a push, sent his victim over the Quay into the dark water of the harbour.