In this dejected mood I reached the Market Strand just as Captain
Coffin came up it from the Plume of Feathers public-house, cursing
and striking out with his stick at a mob of small boys.
CHAPTER III.
A STREET FIGHT, AND WHAT CAME OF IT.
He emerged upon the street which crosses the head of Market Strand,
and, dropping his arms, stood for a moment us if in doubt of his
bearings. He was flagrantly drunk, but not aggressively.
He reminded me of a purblind owl that, blundering Into daylight, is
set upon and mobbed by a crowd of small birds.
The 'longshoremen and loafers grinned and winked at one another, but
forbore to interfere. Plainly the spectacle was a familiar one.
The man was not altogether repulsive; pitiable, rather; a small, lean
fellow, with a grey-white face drawn into wrinkles about the jaw, and
eyes that wandered timidly. He wore a suit of good sea-cloth--
soiled, indeed, but neither ragged nor threadbare--and a blue and
yellow spotted neckerchief, the bow of which had worked around
towards his right ear. His hat, perched a-cock over his left eye,
had made acquaintance with the tavern sawdust. Next to his
drunkenness, perhaps, the most remarkable thing about him was his
stick--of ebony, very curiously carved in rings from knob to ferrule,
where it ended in an iron spike; an ugly weapon, of which his
tormentors stood in dread, and small blame to them.
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