I didn't see it coming--or going
either--but probably it was the slice-bar." He bent his neck and parted
the heavy black hair. A white welt showed through the hair.
The head clerk flashed an enlightening wink toward the second head
clerk; but the second clerk, seeming to be less interested than
formerly, the wink was flashed over to the stenographer; but as she,
too, seemed preoccupied, the head clerk, rather less buoyantly,
inquired, "And what did you do to the two coal-passers?"
"For what I did to them--after I came to--I had to jump into the Mersey
and swim ashore. British justice, you know. Inflexible!--especially to a
foreigner who cracks a couple of domestic skulls."
"And then?"
"English navy."
The head clerk began to flash again. "And what, may I arsk, was
wrong--haw, haw!--wrong with the sair-vice?"
The new-comer almost smiled. "The grub, for one thing. My word, the
grub! Blow me for a bleedin' Dutchman, but I couldn't go the grub;
y'know. An' a man's a man, with a man's 'eart an' feelin's, even if
'e's nowt but a sailor, ain't he now? You're bloody well right 'e is.
But I took a fall out of a submarine before I quit. 'Ave you seen
'em--the little black chaps wot goes down an' comes up like bloomin'
little poppusses?"
The head clerk unobtrusively relapsed into his every-day speech. "And
weren't they exciting enough for you?"
"The one I was in was.
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