Page 59 - for-the-term-of-his-natural-life

‘Oh, sir, my back!’
‘Get up!’ groaned someone in the darkness. ‘Oh, Lord,
I’m smothering! Here, sentry!’
‘Vater!’ cried the little cockney. ‘Give us a drop o’ vater,
for mercy’s sake. I haven’t moist’ned my chaffer this blessed
day.’
‘Half a gallon a day, bo’, and no more,’ says a sailor next
him.
‘Yes, what have yer done with yer half-gallon, eh?’ asked
the Crow derisively. ‘Someone stole it,’ said the sufferer.
‘He’s been an’ blued it,’ squealed someone. ‘Been an’ blued
it to buy a Sunday veskit with! Oh, ain’t he a vicked young
man?’ And the speaker hid his head under the blankets, in
humorous affectation of modesty.
All this time the miserable little cockney—he was a tailor
by trade—had been grovelling under the feet of the Crow
and his companions.
‘Let me h’up, gents’ he implored—‘let me h’up. I feel as if
I should die—I do.’
‘Let the gentleman up,’ says the humorist in the bunk.
‘Don’t yer see his kerridge is avaitin’ to take him to the Hop-
era?’
The conversation had got a little loud, and, from the top-
most bunk on the near side, a bullet head protruded.
‘Ain’t a cove to get no sleep?’ cried a gruff voice. ‘My
blood, if I have to turn out, I’ll knock some of your empty
heads together.’
It seemed that the speaker was a man of mark, for the
noise ceased instantly; and, in the lull which ensued, a shrill

For the Term of His Natural Life