I looked at ’im hard, but ’e stood there looking at me with his fat baby-face, and I knew he didn’t mean any harm; so I answered ’im perlite and wished ’im good night.
“I’ve ’ad pretty near everything a man can have,” he ses, casting anchor on a empty box, “but I think the rheumatics was about the worst of ’em all. I even tried bees for it once.”
“Bees!” I ses. “Bees!”
“Bee-stings,” he ses. “A man told me that if I could on’y persuade a few bees to sting me, that ’ud cure me. I don’t know what ’e meant by persuading! they didn’t want no persuading. I took off my coat and shirt and went and rocked one of my neighbour’s bee-hives next door, and I thought my last hour ’ad come.”
He sat on that box and shivered at the memory of it.
“Now I take Dr. Pepper’s pellets instead,” he ses. “I’ve got a box in my state-room, and if you’d like to try ’em you’re welcome.”
He sat there talking about the complaints he had ’ad and wot he ’ad done for them till I thought I should never have got rid of ’im. He got up at last, though, and, arter telling me to always wear flannel next to my skin, climbed aboard and went below.
I knew the hands was aboard, and arter watching ’is cabin-skylight until the light was out, I went and undressed. Then I crept back on to the jetty, and arter listening by the Peewit to make sure that they was all asleep, I went back and climbed down the ladder.
It was colder than ever. The cold seemed to get into my bones, but I made up my mind to ’ave that twelve quid if I died for it. I trod round and round the place where I ’ad seen that purse chucked in until I was tired, and the rubbish I picked up by mistake you wouldn’t believe.
I suppose I ’ad been in there arf an hour, and I was standing up with my teeth clenched to keep them from chattering, when I ’appened to look round and see something like a white ball coming down the ladder. My ’art seemed to stand still for a moment, and then it began to beat as though it would burst. The white thing came down lower and lower, and then all of a sudden it stood in the mud and said, “Ow!”