Page:Once a Week Volume V.djvu/164

. 3, 1861.] I had been in Bristol on that very day—the day on which this dreadful murder had been committed!

On my way to a friend’s house, I had missed at Bristol the train I had expected to catch, and having a couple of hours to spare, wandered into the town, and, entering the first hotel I came to, called for some luncheon. The annoyance I felt at having some hours to wait was aggravated by the noise a workman was making in replacing a pane of glass in one of the coffee-room windows. I spoke to him once or twice, and finding my remonstrances of no avail walked to the window, and, with the assistance of the waiter, forced the man to discontinue his work.

In an instant I recalled the features of the workman. It was the very man I had seen in the felons’ dock that morning. There was no doubt about it. That hideous face as it peered through the broken pane had fixed itself indelibly in my memory, and now identified itself beyond the possibility of doubt with the sinister countenance that had impressed me so painfully in the morning.

I have little more to add. I immediately hurried back to the town and laid these facts before the judge. On communicating with the landlady of the hotel at Bristol, she was able to prove the payment of a small sum on that day to a travelling glazier. She came down to X, and from among a crowd of felons unhesitatingly picked out the convicted man as the person to whom she had paid the money.

The poor fellow being a stranger at Bristol, and having only passed two or three hours there, was utterly unable to remember at what houses he had been employed. I myself had forgotten the fact of my having ever been in that town.

A week later the man was at liberty. Some matter-of-fact people may endeavour to divest these circumstances of their, to me, mysterious nature, by ascribing them to a disordered imagination and the fortuitous recognition of a prisoner condemned to die.

Nothing will ever efface from my mind the conviction that Providence in this case chose to work out its ends by extraordinary and supernatural means.

Here ended his story. I give it you without addition or embellishment, as he told it to me. It is second-hand, I confess, but hitherto I have never been fortunate enough to hear a story with aught of supernatural in it that was not open to the same objection.

we are at Aldgate Pump, the Alpha and Omega of English Cockneydom; and soon afterwards we are passing down the Minories in the direction of Tower Hill. On reaching the Mint, we find ourselves in a region which is unmistakeably devoted to. Here we meet him under every possible aspect. Young Jack, just going to sea, marching along with a careless jaunty step, and smiling at every pretty damsel whom he meets; Merchant Jack, with his wife clinging to his arm, a monkey or caged parrot in his tarry hands, and his honest, bluff, big-whiskered, sunburnt features all radiant with good-humoured delight; Shipwrecked Jack, penniless, woe-begone, and miserable, but stout-hearted and hopeful to the last; Man-o’-war Jack, clean, spruce, and jolly; American Jack, bowie-knife in girdle, and asserting his independence by continual expectoration; French Jack, all moustaches, shrugs, and grimace; Italian Jack, padrone-fearing, Garibaldi-loving, and heretic-hating; Spanish Jack, dark-featured, velvet-capped, and breath redolent of onions; Swedish Jack, fair-haired, blue-eyed, and with the old Scandinavian love of the Northern Sea; Russian Jack, brandy-loving, crouching, and cowardly; African Jack, all teeth, grins, and chatter; Australian Jack, Polynesian Jack, Canadian Jack, Arab Jack, Egyptian Jack, Greek Jack—in fact, every conceivable variety of the species. But, take care, we are impeding the traffic which surges along the pavement in front of this dingy, vile-smelling, fusty clothes-shop. A keen, tough old file is the owner. Ikey is quite up to the time of day, so don’t you ask him what o’clock it is. You had better not. Observe him as he warily and patiently gathers himself up—spider-like—in the midst of his artfully-woven web of “Nor’westers,” pea-jackets, linsey-woolseys, bearskins, comforters, oil-cloth capes, fur waistcoats, devil’s-dust unmentionables, and worsted gloves of fabulous thickness. He knows Jack. He can tell you in an instant, despite your fancy yachting-rig and sea-going airs, that you are merely a landlubber “as doesn’t know a ship’s-rope from a marlin-spike,” and he passes you by with supreme contempt; but when he catches sight of Jack—the real salt-water Jack—ah! you should see him.

He instantaneously brightens up, casts a rapid searching glance around him, and marching direct to the unconscious tar, soon wheedles and cajoles him into the purchase of sundry articles for which he has no earthly use, and which are frequently bought by Ikey’s victims at about 100 per cent. above the regular market price. Escaping as he best can from the enemy’s batteries, our poor sailor is immediately espied by Poll and Sue, two smart, roguish, saucy-looking craft, with gay coloured streamers fluttering at the fore. They bear down in full sail on him, pour in a heavy broadside of “soft sawder,” board him, and triumphantly take their prize in tow to the “Jolly Sailor,” where he is cozened, fleeced, and robbed by the merciless crimps into whose hands he falls, and is then turned adrift into the streets.

Evidences of a seafaring population now surround us on every side. Here is a chronometer-maker’s, there a naval book-store; here a ship’s-biscuit-baker’s, there a sail-cloth factory; here a ship’s-chandler’s, and there a curiosity-shop, wherein a multitude of monkeys are chattering all day long, while the din is increased by the incessant screaming, hallooing, combined with not a little swearing, on the part of numberless parrots and cockatoos, whose gorgeous hues of green, blue, yellow, and crimson, scarcely compensate for the deafening noise which they occasion amongst the gongs, shells, stuffed birds, corals, beads, Japanese ware, Chinese slippers, Indian arrows, Mexican