'No, old chap,' he says; 'keep it at present. If you get on regular, I'll take it off you and a pint into the bargain the day you draw your first week's cash; but a fellow out of work knows the vally of a sixpence.'
The same ferryman took me back; and his temper hadn't improved, I found. I fancied too that he was particular watchful of me, and so I was particular watchful of him; and from long practice I could do it better and more secretly than he could, although he had got a cross-eye. Lor! I could tell when we were nearing that same ship that the man climbed out of; I could tell it by the cunning way in which the boatman looked at me, to see if I would take any special notice of it. I didn't know what his little game might be, but I determined to spoil it; so I stooped down, and was tying up my shoe, making quite a long job of it, till after we had fairly passed the craft, and then I looked up with an innocent face that quite settled him.
Just as we pushed up to the hard (that's the landing-place), he says to me: 'Do you often cross here?'
'Not often,' I said; 'at anyrate, not yet. I generally cross a little higher up.' (That was very true; about Westminster Bridge was my place; if he liked to think I meant somewhere about Tooley Street or Billingsgate, of course I couldn't help it.) 'But I have left my old quarters, and so I shall often go this way.'
'Ah,' he says, 'you live at the Yarmouth Smack, don't you?'
'The what?' I said. 'Where's that?'
'The Yarmouth Smack,' he says again, pointing to the side we had come from. I knew where the Yarmouth Smack was well enough; but I shook my head, and said: 'No; I live on this side of the water; but I shall live anywhere when I can get work.'
He didn't say any more; I did not suppose he would; but there was something uncommonly suspicious in his talking about the Yarmouth Smack, something more than I could believe came from chance.
In the lane, just as I was about to turn into the side door of the Anchor, I met the foreign-looking captain, who must have crossed the river before me, as I had last seen him on the other side. He knew me, I could tell well enough, and I knew him; but I was not going to let him see where I was going, so I passed the door of the Anchor, limping on till he was clear; then I hurried in, went upstairs at once, and was out in the old ruined arbours I have spoken of in a minute. These overhung the river at high-water (it was nearly high-tide now), and the landing-place of the ferry was close to them. The ferryman and the captain were talking, as I expected they would be, while the boat was waiting for passengers; and by standing in the corner box, I could have heard every word they said, if they had spoken out, as honest people should speak. But they were that artful and suspicious, although they could not have known there was anybody listening, that they talked almost in whispers, and I only caught the last bit from the ferryman. 'No,' he says; 'he's not the party; but I'll go up to the Smack to-night and make sure of the man.'