For a policeman weighing nearly two hundred pounds, and armed with a big club and a revolver, patrolman McSweeny, it must be admitted, made his rounds among the bales with great caution. The ordinary tramp is a mere bag of dirt for the average policeman to prod and cuff and shake as he likes; but about ten days before Mr. McSweeny had stirred up two tramps on that same wharf who had more muscle than most of their clan, and in their anger they had turned upon him and thrown him overboard. So he felt that his dignity needed a little polishing up, and he was ready to polish it up on the next tramp he caught.
And tramps were not his only victims along the wharves. Sometimes he came across a boy,—a frowsy, ragged, shivering, homeless boy; and that always gave him great delight, for a boy, unless he is a big one, is not as troublesome to handle as a hungry and desperate man. Some policemen have big hearts, and would rather buy a cup of coffee and a roll for a hungry boy than take him to the station house and lock him up; but patrolman McSweeny was not of that kind. He was trying to make a record on “the foorce,” and every arrest added to his laurels.
It was about eleven o’clock when the patrolman made his fourth trip that evening among the hemp bales. Never very good-natured, he was particularly cross that night. Something at the station had annoyed him; and with his aching fingers and one or two draughts of a stronger beverage than coffee, he was rather a dangerous person to be trusted at large with a club and a revolver and the authority of law. His next victim on the wharf of Martin’s Stores was pretty sure to have an unpleasant time.
He went from pile to pile of the bales, poking his club viciously into every dark nook and corner, always ready for a sudden attack. And he had not gone far before he poked something soft, lying between two bales, and heard a voice cry out, in startled but still sleepy tones:—
“Hey! who’s there?”
The voice was a relief to him, for it was the voice of a boy.
“Git up here, ye young thafe, till I show ye who it is. Will ye come out or shall I fan yer carcase wid me club?”
In answer to this gentle summons a boy’s head and shoulders appeared above the bales, and the big policeman seized the section of coat collar that was visible and snatched the rest of the boy out with a jerk.
“Stop that! Let go of me!” said the boy.
Such resistance as that almost took the policeman’s breath away. He was accustomed to having boys beg him to let them off, and promise to go home, or go to work, or almost anything else, to get out of his clutches. But here was a boy who demanded his liberty instead of begging for it. In such a case it would have made no difference, probably, even if it had been light enough for him to see that instead of an ordinary vagabond or river thief this boy was clean and well dressed.