"But," said the seaman to himself, "it doesn't matter a bit. We are bound
for Liverpool, and I'll take the letter there myself, and then I'll send
it over to Paris for tuppence ha'penny, which I will have then, and
haven't now. And I bet another tuppence that it will go sooner than if I
posted it here, for it may be a month before a mail-steamer leaves the
other side of this beastly continent. Anyway, I'm doing the best I can."
He put the letter in the pocket of his pea-jacket, and the bottom of that
pocket being ripped, the letter went down between the outside cloth and
the lining of the pea-jacket to the very bottom of the garment, where it
remained until the aforesaid seaman had reached England, and had gone
down to see his family, who lived in the cottage in Sidmouth. And there
he had hung up his pea-jacket on a nail, in a little room next to the
kitchen, and there his mother had found it, and sewed on two buttons, and
sewed up the rips in the bottoms of two pockets. Shortly after this, the
sailor, happening to pass a post-office box, remembered the letter he had
brought to England. He went to his pea-jacket and searched it, but could
find no letter. He must have lost it--he hoped after he had reached
England, and no doubt whoever found it would put a tuppence ha'penny
stamp on it and stick it into a box. Anyway, he had done all he could.
One pleasant spring evening, the negro Mok sat behind a table in the
well-known beer-shop called the "Black Cat.
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