Ah! as I thought; they were both in it somehow. But what a most extraordinary fuss and Gunpowder Plot sort of business there was about stealing a few bits of metal. I actually should have felt ashamed of the East-enders, who are really some of the sharpest folks I ever came across, if I had not felt there was a something behind, and that, by a lucky accident, I seemed upon the point of finding it out.
The night—my first night in the east too—was not to pass without an adventure, and I had not seen the last of my new acquaintance the captain. I got very tired of the company in the Anchor—not that I mind who I mix with, and if there had been any of the factory hands about the place, I would have sat with them until the house closed; but they only came there at meal-times it seemed, or on their road home. So I walked about the neighbourhood a bit; not because it was pleasant, for it was a wet night; and what with the rain and the mud and the drunken sailors and the fried-fish shops and the quarrelling there was going on, it was anything but agreeable. The fact is I like to know every court and alley in my district, and there were some pretty courts and alleys here. However, nobody thought me worth robbing, and besides, I am always civil, so I never get interfered with. It's a capital rule; the best I know; and costs nothing.
When I was coming back, and had got pretty nearly to the Anchor and Five Mermaids again (it is very absurd to give such long signs to public-houses), I saw a very pretty girl whom I had noticed before, standing at a corner out of the rain; but it was not raining very much now. She wasn't—well, I won't say what she was not, or what she was. She was very pretty, I say, and was doing no harm there; but two or three fellows coming by at the moment, one of them took hold of her roughly, and finished by almost pushing her down. She got away from him, and drew a door or two off; but his companions laughing at him for being bested by a woman, he followed her, and on her pushing him from her, gave her a back-handed smack in the face. There were several men loitering about, smoking and so forth, and I heard one or two say it was a shame; but none of them interfered; and I, being a little way off, and not wanting to get into a row, might have passed this over; but she called him a brute and a coward, and he went at her to strike her again. She ran across the road to where I stood, to avoid him, and he followed her. Then I saw it was my acquaintance the captain.
He swore more horribly than ever I heard any one swear, and springing forward, would certainly have hit her down; but I jumped between them and knocked up his arm. 'Brayvo!' said some women, who had been attracted by the girl's scream; and 'Brayvo!' said the men who hadn't interfered. At once the captain turned on me, and let fly desperately at my head; but I was not to be had in that way, and I stopped him and returned a hit that I know must have loosened a couple of teeth; and then he swore again, and began to pull off his coat. So did I.
'Don't fight wid him, my darlin',' said an old Irishwoman, who was selling herrings, laying her hand on my arm. 'You 're an honest English boy, and these fellows will have a knife in ye if they can't bate ye fair.'
'No, Biddy, they shan't,' said one of the men coming forward, followed by half-a-dozen more. 'If there's to be a fight, it shall be a fair one; and mates, we'll put any fellow into six feet of mud who only shews a knife.'
His mates said so too, and they were a rough and likely lot for it, and the river was within a score or so of yards. So with a scowl at them (for I do believe now he meant murder; I didn't think of it then, although I was a policeman), he rolled up his sleeves and came at me.
He was a strong fellow, not so tall perhaps, but certainly heavier than I was, and I daresay, from his manner, fancied he could fight. But fight me! Why, a gent once offered through Alec Keene (he had seen me spar in private at Alec's), to make it worth my while to leave the police, and he would back me against any ten-stone-four man I fancied, for a hundred; and I was half inclined to take it too, only something important turned up just then. Well, in two rounds I settled the captain. He tried to catch hold of me and throw me; but I knocked him clean off his legs each round; and then his friends took him away.
'There's one comfort at any rate in having had the row,' I thought: 'he'll never suppose I'm a detective after this.'
I wished, however, it had never come off, there was such a fuss. Why, if I could have drunk shillings and sixpences, I might have had them, I do believe. In a place like that you get a crowd directly; and although the affair did not last three minutes, there was a hundred men and as many women too, anxious to treat me; and I was naturally obliged to drink with one or two; not at the Anchor though.