six
o'clock
At five minutes to three the Vaults spewed forth a squirt of roysterers who walked on the pavement as on a tight-rope ; among them was the bandsman , his silver instrument only half enveloped in its bag of green serge . He established an equilibrium in the gutter . It would not have mattered so seriously if he had not been a bandsman . The barman and the landlord pushed the ultimate sot by force into the street and bolted the door -LRB- till six o'clock -RRB- just as a policeman strolled along , the first policeman of the day . It became known that similar scenes were enacting at the thresholds of other inns . And the judicious were sad . When the altercation between the policeman and the musician in the gutter was at its height , Samuel Povey became restless ; but since he had scarcely stirred through the performances of the bands , it was probably not the cries of the drunkard that had aroused him .