Page:The Iron Pirate 1905.djvu/184

170 my money in my new clothes; but leaving everything else in a heap on the floor.

"Dan," I said, "that Italian is going ashore, and I'm going to follow him. No, you mustn't come, or the thing will be spoilt. Tell the forward look-out to see nothing if the fellow passes, and get my rubber shoes from my trunk."

Dan scratched his head again, and must have thought that I was qualifying in lunacy; but he got the shoes, and not a moment too soon, for, as I came on deck, I saw a shadow on the gangway. The man was leaving the yacht at that moment, and I followed him, drawing my cap right over my eyes, and lurking behind every inch of cover.

Once out into the city, and having turned two or three times to satisfy, himself that he had no one after him, Paolo struck for Broadway; thence with staggering gait, the result of his weakness, he made straight for the City Hall, at which point he turned and so got into Chatham Street and the Bowery. At last, after a long walk, and when the man himself was almost failing from the exertion of it, he stopped before an open door in the dirtiest of the streets through which we had come, and disappeared instantly. I came up to the door almost as soon as he had passed through; and found myself before a steep flight of steps, at the bottom of which through a glass partition I could see men smoking and drinking, and hear them bawling uncouth songs.

It was a fearful hole, peopled by fearful men;