o’clock some morning, and never coming up again? He didn’t think
THAT of him, he replied. In fact, it was Waterloo’s opinion,
founded on his observation of that file, that he know’d a trick
worth two of it.
‘There’s another queer old customer,’ said Waterloo, ‘comes over,
as punctual as the almanack, at eleven o’clock on the sixth of
January, at eleven o’clock on the fifth of April, at eleven o’clock
on the sixth of July, at eleven o’clock on the tenth of October.
Drives a shaggy little, rough pony, in a sort of a rattle-trap armchair
sort of a thing. White hair he has, and white whiskers, and
muffles himself up with all manner of shawls. He comes back again
the same afternoon, and we never see more of him for three months.
He is a captain in the navy – retired – wery old – wery odd – and
served with Lord Nelson. He is particular about drawing his
pension at Somerset House afore the clock strikes twelve every
quarter. I HAVE heerd say that he thinks it wouldn’t be according
to the Act of Parliament, if he didn’t draw it afore twelve.’
Having related these anecdotes in a natural manner, which was the
best warranty in the world for their genuine nature, our friend
Waterloo was sinking deep into his shawl again, as having exhausted
his communicative powers and taken in enough east wind, when my
other friend Pea in a moment brought him to the surface by asking
whether he had not been occasionally the subject of assault and
battery in the execution of his duty? Waterloo recovering his
spirits, instantly dashed into a new branch of his subject. We
learnt how ‘both these teeth’ – here he pointed to the places where
two front teeth were not – were knocked out by an ugly customer who
one night made a dash at him (Waterloo) while his (the ugly
customer’s) pal and coadjutor made a dash at the toll-taking apron
where the money-pockets were; how Waterloo, letting the teeth go
(to Blazes, he observed indefinitely), grappled with the apronseizer,
permitting the ugly one to run away; and how he saved the
bank, and captured his man, and consigned him to fine and
imprisonment. Also how, on another night, ‘a Cove’ laid hold of
Waterloo, then presiding at the horse-gate of his bridge, and threw
him unceremoniously over his knee, having first cut his head open
with his whip. How Waterloo ‘got right,’ and started after the
Cove all down the Waterloo Road, through Stamford Street, and round
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to the foot of Blackfriars Bridge, where the Cove ‘cut into’ a
public-house. How Waterloo cut in too; but how an aider and
abettor of the Cove’s, who happened to be taking a promiscuous
drain at the bar, stopped Waterloo; and the Cove cut out again, ran
across the road down Holland Street, and where not, and into a
beer-shop. How Waterloo breaking away from his detainer was close
upon the Cove’s heels, attended by no end of people, who, seeing
him running with the blood streaming down his face, thought
something worse was ‘up,’ and roared Fire! and Murder! on the
hopeful chance of the matter in hand being one or both. How the
Cove was ignominiously taken, in a shed where he had run to hide,
and how at the Police Court they at first wanted to make a sessions
job of it; but eventually Waterloo was allowed to be ‘spoke to,’
and the Cove made it square with Waterloo by paying his doctor’s
bill (W. was laid up for a week) and giving him ‘Three, ten.’
Likewise we learnt what we had faintly suspected before, that your
sporting amateur on the Derby day, albeit a captain, can be – ‘if
he be,’ as Captain Bobadil observes, ‘so generously minded’ –
anything but a man of honour and a gentleman; not sufficiently
gratifying his nice sense of humour by the witty scattering of
flour and rotten eggs on obtuse civilians, but requiring the
further excitement of ‘bilking the toll,’ and ‘Pitching into’
Waterloo, and ‘cutting him about the head with his whip;’ finally