Page:While the Billy Boils, 1913.djvu/39

 uglier to have a row with―about six-foot-six, wide in proportion, and stronger than Donald Dinnie.

He was meaner than a goldfield Chinaman and sharper than a sewer rat: he wouldn't give his own father a feed, nor lend him a sprat―unless some safe person backed the old man's I.O.U.

We knew that we needn't expect any mercy from Stiffner; but something had to be done, so I said to Bill:

'Something's got to be done, Bill! What do you think of it?'

Bill was mostly a quiet young chap, from Sydney, except when he got drunk―which was seldom―and then he was a lively customer from all round. He was cracked on the subject of spielers. He held that the population of the world was divided into two classes―one was spielers and the other was mugs. He reckoned that he wasn't a mug. At first I thought that he was a spieler, and afterwards I thought that he was a mug. He used to say that a man had to do it these times; that he was honest once and a fool, and was robbed and starved in consequence by his friends and relations; but now he intended to take all that he could get. He said that you either had to have or be had; that men were driven to be sharps, and there was no help for it.

Bill said:

'We'll have to sharpen our teeth, that's all, and chew somebody's lug.'

'How?' I asked.

There was a lot of navvies at the pub, and I knew one or two by sight, so Bill says:―