James Greenwood - The True History of a Little Ragamuffin

It was quite evident that Spider (as was frequently the case) had a wakeful fit on him, and wanted to keep me awake, too, for company’s sake. Spider wasn’t the sort of chap one could downright like, but I am sure I felt a great deal of pity for him. So I thought of two or three stories of knowing dogs I had known or heard of in my time, and told Spider about them, one after the other.

“Ah! they’re knowin’er than all that, sometimes, Jim,” he answered, when I had exhausted my budget; “they’ve got a summat—a power in ’em a jolly sight more curious than what makes ’em kill rats and nail things off counters. Do you know anything about sharks, Jim?”

I did not

“Sharks is rummy things; if there’s a sailor what’s dyin’ in a ship, they’ll foller it till he does die, so as to get him for supper when they chucks him over.”

“Oh! come, I don’t want to be told any of them sort of stories. I wants to go to sleep; what do you want to give a feller the creeps for? I don’t mind layin’ awake a little while talkin’ about dawgs if you wants me to, but I ain’t goin’ to talk about dead people.”

“I was on’y tryin’ to make you understand what I meant ’bout that power in dawgs what I was speakin’ about,” observed Spider, apologetically. “It’s the same thing in dawgs at what it is in sharks, Jim.”

“Werry likely.”

“On’y dawgs is more dreaded of it than glad; ’course, you can tell in a minute that they are dreaded of it by their ’owlin, whenever they gets a scent on it.”

“Gets a scent of what?”

“Now, what do you want me to say it agin for? What was I just speakin’ about the sharks, and”—

“That’ll do, I tell yer, I don’t want to talk no more to you. Good-night; I’m goin’ to sleep.” Next day, while out with Mr. Belcher, although I trust not given to “telling tales out of school,” something was said about sharks, and being on easy terms with my master, I told him the shark story I had heard from Spider. He laughed.

“What brought that story up then?” he asked; “what was you and Spider talking about before you began to talk about sharks and dead sailors, Jim?”

“Oh, we was talkin’ about dawgs.” And then, never dreaming of the injury I was doing Spider. I told Mr. Belcher all about Pinch’s strange behaviour, and Spider’s remarks thereon. Mr. Perks was present, and they looked at each other in a queer sort of way, and presently afterwards sent me off. Spider’s dog Pinch never came home that night. To his master’s quenchless grief, he never came home any more.

I had been about six weeks with Mr. Belcher, when one Saturday night Sam came into the kitchen with the astonishing news that his mother had that day come up from Dorsetshire on Mr. Belcher’s invitation to consult with him on very important business, the upshot of the consultation being that in consideration of certain moneys handed to her by the master sweep, Sam’s indentures were to be cancelled, and Sam was to go home with his mother on Monday morning.

“So you’ll be all right now, Jim,” said Sam; “it’ll be your job to go with the guv’nor and Ned on them country jobs o’ nights. Now I’m a-goin’, I don’t mind lettin’ you into a secret which ain’t no further use to me. Every time you goes out with the brown horse, there’s sixpence for yer. Leastways that ain’t the secret, that’s what the guv’nor gives you every time for keepin’ of the secret.”

“Very well, I don’t mind,” I replied, mightily pleased at the change in my prospects, (I always envied Sam those night rides;) “I’m used to keepin’ secrets. Is it a werry hard secret the guv’nor wants keepin’, Sam?”

“Easy as nothink,” whispered Sam, (it was in a corner of the kitchen, and out of Spider’s hearing, that our conversation took place;) “the guv’nor ’ll tell yer.”

“No, you tell me, that’s a good chap; then I can go on practisin’ the keepin’ on it agin he asks me to.”

“You won’t tell Spider?”

“’Tain’t likely.”

“Nor ever open your mouth about it to any of the coves you plays with on the barges?”

“No fear.”

“Well, then, it’s about that soot what they brings home in the big cart of nights, and what we’ve often talked about. Here, come outside; old Spider’s a-prickin’ his ears up I can see.”

We went outside.

“What sort of soot do you think that is now, Jim?”

“What sort? I on’y knows one sort, it all comes out of chimbleys, I s’pose, don’t it?”

“Out of some sort of chimbleys cert’ny. Put you ear close, Jim. The sort what we brings home is out of church chimbleys.”

“I never knowed that churches had chimbleys,” I replied, not very awe-stricken by the “secret” that Sam made so much fuss about.

“Course they have, ain’t there the flues what keeps the church warm—ain’t there the fire in the westry?”

“Ah! I s’pose there is now you come to speak on it. Well, what on it? Why shouldn’t a church chimbley be swep?”

“Hu—sh, that’s what I said when fust the guv’nor told me. It’s a studyin’ the Acts o’ Parliament that puts you up to these things,” replied Sam, “and accordin’ to the Act there is a werry good reason for not sweepin’ the church chimbleys, leastways for keepin’ it dark if you do do it. It’s agin the laws. I don’t know ’zactly what laws, but religion’s got something to do with it. War’orks to yer if they caught yer at it. You’d be ex—execum—well, the guv’nor did tell me.”

“Executed, I know; tucked up at the Old Bailey: I’ve seed’em.”

“Executed be jiggered; forty times wuss than that. Crossin’ the roads, with a pinted stick drove through your stomack is a part of the sufferings I know, but there’s ever so much more on it. That’s why the job’s got to be done at night, when nobody ain’t lookin’. If you was to see how they go creepin’ in the shadders and hidin’ when they hears anybody comin’, just when they’re goin’ to start off with the machine and the bag, you’d know in a minute what a tickler it was.”

“And s’pose they was to ketch the boy what went with ’em to mind the horse?” I inquired; “would they make him cross the roads with a pinted stick in his stomack?”

“Lor’ bless yer, he’s right enough; it’s on’y when they ketches you in the hacshal fac, that they exy—what’s-o-names yer. You must be took in the church or else the churchyard with the soot on yer, afore they can prove it Sometimes arter doin’ the sweepin’ job, and you are comin’ away with the soot, you’re ’bliged to drop the lot and run for it. Three weeks ago we were served that werry trick down at Barnet.”

“Well, it’s a rummy sort of law what says to a feller, ‘Come down here and do a job for us, but don’t let us catch you at it, cos’ if you do we shall shove a pinted stick into your stomack!’ Sure you ain’t got hold on the wrong end of the stick, Sam?”

“I’ve got the end of it what the guv’nor give me, that’s all I knows about it,” replied Sam. “Don’t you see, Jim, it’s this way as far as I can make out. It’s the minister hisself what’s bound to do the job by Act of Parlyment, and he turns it over to the clark, and the clark turns it over to the beadle, and it’s the beadle wot writes to the guv’nor on the quiet. ‘You come down,’ says he ‘sich and sich a night, and I’ll have the key in the church-door, and the money for doin’ the job you’ll find on the westry mantle-shelf.’ I don’t say that’s how it is exactly, but it is summat like it, I know. It’s the same at hangin’s, as you may have heerd, Jim. It’s the Lord Mayor as the judge makes believe what’s goin’ to hang a feller, but the Lord Mayor don’t care about the job, and tells the next cove, which is the top-sheriff, to do it, and he turns it over to the next cove, which is the bottom-sheriff. ‘All right,’ ses the bottom sheriff, ‘I’ll tuck him up at eight o’clock to-morrow mornin’ without fail;’ but he doesn’t do it, he writes on the quiet to Jack Ketch, and he comes and does it, and stands something to the other coves for settin’ him on to the job, which so long as it’s done the judge don’t care; and so they makes it comforble all round. I dessay the guv’nor tips the beadle a trifle out of the sweepin’ money—which is a ’ansom sum I’ll be bound—and that makes that comforble all round. Course it oughter be a ’ansom sum,” continued Sam, “considerin’ the trouble, and the soot bein’ nothink in your pocket.”