Most of the men were suffering from tired feet, and they prefaced the meal by removing their shoes and unbinding the filthy rags with which their feet were wrapped.This added to the general noisomeness, while it took away from my appetite.
In fact, I found that I had made a mistake.I had eaten a hearty dinner five hours before, and to have done justice to the fare before me I should have fasted for a couple of days.The pannikin contained skilly, three-quarters of a pint, a mixture of Indian corn and hot water.The men were dipping their bread into heaps of salt scattered over the dirty tables.I attempted the same, but the bread seemed to stick in my mouth, and I remembered the words of the Carpenter: 'You need a pint of water to eat the bread nicely.'
I went over into a dark corner where I had observed other men going, and found the water.Then I returned and attacked the skilly.It was coarse of texture, unseasoned, gross, and bitter.This bitterness which lingered persistently in the mouth after the skilly had passed on, I found especially repulsive.I struggled manfully, but was mastered by my qualms, and half a dozen mouthfuls of skilly and bread was the measure of my success.The man beside me ate his own share, and mine to boot, scraped the pannikins, and looked hungrily for more.
'I met a "towny," and he stood me too good a dinner,' I explained.
'An' I 'aven't 'ad a bite since yesterday mornin',' he replied.
'How about tobacco?' I asked.'Will the bloke bother with a fellow now?'
'Oh, no,' he answered me.'No bloody fear.This is the easiest spike goin'.Y'oughto see some of them.Search you to the skin.'
The pannikins scraped clean, conversation began to spring up.
'This super'tendent 'ere is always writin' to the papers 'bout us mugs,' said the man on the other side of me.
'What does he say?' I asked.
'Oh, 'e sez we're no good, a lot o' blackguards an' scoundrels as won't work.Tells all the ole tricks I've bin 'earin' for twenty years an' w'ich I never seen a mug ever do.Las' thing of 'is I see, 'e was tellin' 'ow a mug gets out o' the spike, wi' a crust in 'is pockit.An' w'en 'e sees a nice ole gentleman comin' along the street 'e chucks the crust into the drain, an' borrows the old gent's stick to poke it out.An' then the ole gent gi'es 'im a tanner'