Page:While the Billy Boils, 1913.djvu/40

 'You know one or two of these mugs. Bite one of their ears.'

So I took aside a chap that I knowed and bit his ear for ten bob, and gave it to Bill to mind, for I thought it would be safer with him than with me.

'Hang on to that,' I says, 'and don't lose it for your natural life's sake, or Stiffner'll stiffen us.'

We put up about nine bob's worth of drinks that night―me and Bill and Stiffner didn't squeal: he was too sharp. He shouted once or twice.

By-and-by I left Bill and turned in, and in the morning when I woke up there was Bill sitting alongside of me, and looking about as lively as the fighting kangaroo in London in fog time. He had a black eye and eighteen-pence. He'd been taking down some of the mugs.

'Well, what's to be done now?' I asked. 'Stiffner can smash us both with one hand, and if we don't pay up he'll pound our swags and cripple us. He's just the man to do it. He loves a fight even more than he hates being had.'

'There's only one thing to be done, Jim,' says Bill, in a tired, disinterested tone that made me mad.

'Well, what's that?' I said.

'Smoke!'

'Smoke be damned,' I snarled, losing my temper. 'You know dashed well that our swags are in the bar, and we can't smoke without them.'

'Well, then,' says Bill, 'I'll toss you to see who's to face the landlord.'

'Well, I'll be blessed!' I says. 'I'll see you further first. You have got a front. You mugged that stuff away, and you'll have to get us out of the mess.'