The Law in its majesty looked at the Sailor. The Sailor in his simplicity looked at the majesty of the Law. There was a time, six long, long years ago, when he would not have ventured such a liberty with the most august of human institutions. But he was through that phase of his career. By comparison with all the stripes that had since been laid upon him even the police were gentle and humane.
There was not a soul in sight except this solemn London bobby, who stood four square in the Sailor's path.
"Mornin', mister." The Sailor lifted his cap, partly from a sense of fraternity, partly from a proud feeling of being no longer afraid to do so.
The bobby surveyed the strange nondescript that had been washed up by the tide of Wapping. He looked gravely at the bundle and at the fur cap, and then decided in quite an impersonal way not to return their owner's salutation.
The Sailor was not hurt by the aloofness of the Law. He had not expected anything else. After all, the police were the police. He knew that a gulf of several hemispheres was fixed between a real three-stripe rozzer of the Metropolitan Force and a thing it had pleased fate to call by the name of Henry Harper.
"A wrong un, I expect," was the reflection of Constable H23, who always expected a wrong un at that hour of the morning. Upon the spur of this thought, the bobby suddenly turned on his heel, and saw the wrong un, bundle, fur cap and all, crossing the road like an early morning fox at the lure of a favorite hencoop. Moreover, he was crossing it for the reason that he was frantically hungry.
Across the road, at a junction it formed with three others as mean and dismal as itself, was a sight supremely blessed in the eyes of the Sailor. It was nothing less than a coffee stall in the panoply of matutinal splendor. Steaming fluids, with flames glowing under them, flanked one half of its counter; rock cakes, ham sandwiches, beef sandwiches, rolls and butter, and pork pies, splendidly honest and genuine pork pies, flanked the other half of it.
The proprietor of the stall, an optimist in white apron and shirt sleeves, being unmistakably of the male sex had no terrors for the Sailor. Besides, he was flushed with the knowledge that he had just said good morning to the police.
"Cup o' coffee, mister, and one o' them."
Nothing less than a pork pie could meet the need of the Sailor. Moreover, he dived in his pocket, took the first coin that came, which happened to be half a crown, and laid it with true Klondyke magnificence on the counter.