“Listening to those wild remarks from a drunken man, and a fugitive British criminal into the bargain, I put his wild sayings down as figures of speech that represented some bitterness in his heart over memories of other days. By now he was drivelling copiously at the mouth, the mop of hair had fallen and hung in ringlets on his brow. He resembled some giant chimpanzee as he squatted before us, his narrow eyes glittering, his reddish beard bunched to his neck, as he looked at Deny and me and volleyed forth terrible oaths.
“’Ow’s ole Fleet Street? Did yer chance ter know the barmaid at ole M——’s, Alice M’Gill eh? She was a fine wench; hell, what a figure, a body, he! he! she had!’
“Then he yelped forth another volley of disgusting ribaldry that I wouldn’t repeat if you wanted me to.
“While all this was going on, my eyes were squinting round, wondering where on earth the girl was whom we had heard so much about.
“Deny had started to sing with Yoraka, who had begun to sing in a drivelling voice:
‘There is a tavern in the town, in the town,
Where my true love sits him down, sits him down.’
“Then Yoraka continued:
‘I’ll ’ang me ’arp oner weepin’ willer tree
And may ther worle go well with thee.’