'I'm barmaid at the One Bell in Cable Street, nigh the London Docks.'
Here she paused, and looked at Miss Violet. The blood was red in her cheeks, and her eyes were wild and wet with tears. Her aspect, in the clear light of the lamp, was extraordinary. She seemed half a gipsy. Her beauty was coarse and masculine; her hair, black as streaming ink, lay upon her back in a wonderful quantity.
'It was all along of Bill,' she went on.
'Who's this bloomed Bill you've been talking about since you was lugged out of it?' said one of the officers.
'The young man I keeps company with,' she answered. 'We fell out because of a sailor man that's aboard this vessel. Fred Maul his name is, and it 'ud have been good for me this blessed night had they strangled him in the hour of his coming into this blistered world. Why,' she cried, turning upon Miss Violet, who shrank a little from the gathering ferocity of the woman, 'this beast of a Maul comes and 'angs about me, and Bill, he falls jealous. Bill and me 'ad a row over this 'ere Maul. He says to me: "I know the ship he's signed for; yer'd better foller him." "By God!" cries I, mad with feeling that he oughtn't to have said it, "say that again, and I'll do it." He says it again.' Here the unfortunate woman raised her voice till the little cabin rang; but though the gentlemen of Bow Street shouted, and though Captain Glew and Mr. Vanderholt sought, with a hundred gestures, to subdue her voice, nothing could soften the hysteric, piercing note. 'He s'ys it ag'in, I s'y, and, going away, the unfeeling devil comes back arter ten minutes, and chucks a bundle on to the counter, and says, with a low sneer: "There's your kit. Now go and foller Bill."'
'And so here y'are,' said one of the officers. 'A tidy lot, I allow, for a select hevening party. When I saw her boot, fired if I didn't think it was a man.'
The girl bit upon a sandwich, and glared fiercely at the officers while she chewed. Miss Violet, with the merciful heart of her sex, fetched some hairpins from her cabin, and gave them to the girl, who, with a curtsey, and a smile of shame and thanks, turned to a strip of mirror and swiftly coiled her hair upon her head.
'Go and fetch the young lady's hat,' said Mr. Vanderholt to the steward.
The Bow Street gentlemen, having drunk their glasses of cold brandy and water, got up, saying they must be off.
'Yer'll put me ashore, won't yer?' asked the girl.