My fust idea was to take it to Mrs. Bullet, and then, all of a sudden, the thought struck me: “Suppose he ’adn’t come by it honest?”
I walked up and down agin, thinking. If he ’adn’t, and it was found out, it would blacken his good name and break ’is pore wife’s ’art. That’s the way I looked at it, and for his sake and ’er sake I determined to stick to it.
I felt ’appier in my mind when I ’ad decided on that, and I went round to the Bear’s Head and ’ad a pint. Arter that I ’ad another, and then I come back to the wharf and put the watch and chain on and went on with my work.
Every time I looked down at the chain on my waistcoat it reminded me of Sam. I looked on to the river and thought of ’im going down on the ebb. Then I got a sort o’ lonesome feeling standing on the end of the jetty all alone, and I went back to the Bear’s Head and ’ad another pint.
They didn’t find the body, and I was a’most forgetting about Sam when one evening, as I was sitting on a box waiting to get my breath back to ’ave another go at sweeping, Joe Peel, Sam’s mate, came on to the wharf to see me.
He came in a mysterious sort o’ way that I didn’t like: looking be’ind ’im as though he was afraid of being follered, and speaking in a whisper as if ’e was afraid of being heard. He wasn’t a man I liked, and I was glad that the watch and chain was stowed safe away in my trowsis-pocket.
“I’ve ’ad a shock, watchman,” he ses.
“Oh!” I ses.
“A shock wot’s shook me all up,” he ses, working up a shiver. “I’ve seen something wot I thought people never could see, and wot I never want to see agin. I’ve seen Sam!”
I thought a bit afore I spoke. “Why, I thought he was drownded,” I ses.