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Updated: June 3, 2025
"Next mornin' the strike was called, and the guy that breathed treachery and walk-outs was one 'Oily' Heegan, further submerged under the titles of President of the Federation of Fresh Water Firemen; also Chairman of the United Water-front Workmen, which last takes in everything doin' business along the river except the wharf-rats and typhoid germs, and it's with the disreputableness of this party that I infected myself to the detriment of labour and the triumph of the law.
Here she paused and looked about, and then as though satisfied that she had at last reached the place she sought, she pushed bravely into the interior of the vile den. A score of half-drunken sailors and wharf-rats looked up at the unaccustomed sight of a richly gowned woman in their midst.
Wharf-rats as long as the forearm of a man crept up the culverted channels of Dock Street to run through the apartments at will. Scores of clerks worked under gas-jets, where light and air were not any too abundant, keeping track of the firm's vast accounts.
At each of these ports he went through the same rounds, canvassed the same set of officials, and made the same inquiries. Then he would go to the native quarters, to the gambling houses, to the water-front and the rickshaw coolies and half-naked Malay wharf-rats, holding the departmental photograph of Binhart in his hand and inquiring of stranger after stranger: "You know? You savvy him?"
"I'm lawful master of this vessel," he called back, looking up at the men who lined the side. "I'll see you hanged from the yard-arm yet, you white-livered wharf-rats, and you, too, you cabin-window popinjay!" I knew that he meant me. "There'll come a day, by God! There'll come a day!" The men in the boat gave way, and it disappeared in the darkness and mist, its sides bristling with weapons.
He was not alone, and the instant I spied him with two hang-dog fellows, I knew he was like the hen in the story "laying for me!" Paul Downes knew half the riff-raff of Bolderhead which, like most small seaports, boasted more than a sufficient quantity of wharf-rats. Mr. Downes had been wont to expatiate to my mother on my taste for low company; but he must have had his own son in mind.
They were now for him almost what the mice had been formerly. Now it happened that these wharf-rats had heard some gossip from the village. And after the space of six years they brought Petter Nord information that Halfvorson had put the fifty crowns out for him to disqualify him as a witness. And in their opinion Petter Nord ought to go back to the town and punish Halfvorson.
What assurance have you, save that which comes from popular education, that these men will understand and do their duty? Who would like to trust his legal rights or his personal safety to the verdict of a jury of Neapolitan lazzaroni? In a few short years, the idle boys who are now prowling about the streets and alleys of our towns, the wharf-rats of our cities, will be a part of our jurymen.
I reported the death of the child and of the distress of the mother. "Tell her," said the officer, "we will see that her child is buried this afternoon, and I want her to go on this boat." I told the mother of the captain's wish, and that I would see that her child was buried. "Ob, missus, it 'pears like I can't leave him so; they'll leave him here to-night, an' dese wharf-rats are awful.
"I've figgered out that we aren't going to have things our own way down here," the other said earnestly. "I've been waiting for you to say something, Cap'n Rufe, ever since that Bug-eye accused Allen like he did. Ditty's on to our game has been on to it right along an' he selected this crew of wharf-rats for a purpose." "I agree with you, Mr. Grimshaw," Drew declared eagerly.
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