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Updated: May 3, 2025
"Did you hear that?" asks the young Englishman in eager haste. "Hear what?" demands Ned Gancy, to whom the question is addressed. "That word `Eleparu. The old fellow has spoken it twice!" says Henry. "Well, and if he has?" queries Ned. "You remember our affair at Portsmouth with those three queer creatures and the wharf-rats?" "Of course I do. Why do you ask?"
As she left the office he turned to me and said, "I don't know whether it is so or not; they get up all sorts of excuses." As she was not yet out of sight, I followed her to the slab hut and found it true. An hour later and the baby of eight years was in the spirit world. "Now, missus, I can't go an' leave my dead baby for de wharf-rats to eat, an' de boat goes out at three o'clock."
Moreover, it recalled some of the features of another American town, my own dear native place, when I saw the seafaring people leaning against posts, and sitting on planks, under the lee of warehouses, or lolling on long-boats, drawn up high and dry, as sailors and old wharf-rats are accustomed to do, in seaports of little business.
Those were happy days, those were; and we lived well, share and share alike, and when we wanted a bit of fun, we chased the fat old wharf-rats. My! how they would squeal! Then the trouble came. It was no trouble to me. I was too young to care then. But mother took it so to heart that she grew ailing, and wouldn't go abroad with me by day.
The French marines, their scarlet and white very natty in contrast to most of our ragged wharf-rats at the guns, were mustered on poop and forecastle, and some were sent aloft to the tops to assist the tars there to sweep the British decks with handgrenade and musket. And, lastly, the surgeon and his mates went below to cockpit and steerage, to make ready for the grimmest work of all.
All three give glimpses of the shops of grocers, block-makers, slop-sellers, and ship-chandlers, around the doors of which are generally to be seen, laughing and gossiping, clusters of old salts, and such other wharf-rats as haunt the Wapping of a seaport.
He went presently into the street, where, indeed, his duty called him. When a capital, after years of war, is about to fall, the forces of evil are always unchained, and now it was so with Richmond. Out from all the slums came the men and women of the lower world, and down by the navy storehouses the wharf-rats were swarming.
The French marines, their scarlet and white very natty in contrast to most of our ragged wharf-rats at the guns, were mustered on poop and forecastle, and some were sent aloft to the tops to assist the tars there to sweep the British decks with handgrenade and musket. And, lastly, the surgeon and his mates went below to cockpit and steerage, to make ready for the grimmest work of all.
Those sad separations, she said, were much harder to bear than the death of this child. But she consented to go, on my promise to see that her child was buried before night. After she left for the boat I went to the captain to see his promise performed. He seemed very indifferent. "What is the difference if that child shouldn't be buried this afternoon or whether wharf-rats eat it or not?"
What he saw within needs no minute description; it may be seen there still, any day: a large, flagged court, surrounded on three sides by two stories of cells with heavy, black, square doors all a-row and mostly open; about a hundred men sitting, lying, or lounging about in scanty rags, some gaunt and feeble, some burly and alert, some scarred and maimed, some sallow, some red, some grizzled, some mere lads, some old and bowed, the sentenced, the untried, men there for the first time, men who were oftener in than out, burglars, smugglers, house-burners, highwaymen, wife-beaters, wharf-rats, common "drunks," pickpockets, shop-lifters, stealers of bread, garroters, murderers, in common equality and fraternity.
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