The third man pushed past him eagerly and sprang at the table, clawing at the food. He almost wept. "Two days—I ain't 'ad nuffink fer two days, mates," he whimpered between huge mouthfuls. He went on cramming himself with everything he could reach, uttering the while inarticulate cries of satisfaction that sounded like sobs.
The others were rivalled but not surpassed in this gastronomical performance. Less excitedly, they also were eating enormously. For long minutes the three men sat at the table under the hanging lamp without uttering a word. They fed like famished animals at a trough. As their hunger grew less fierce, however, the two comrades looked up and exchanged appraising glances with their new companion. He was a little fellow, with a cunning face and an ill-shaped head that needed no criminologist to class it. Petty rogue was stamped on him. The metal letters and number on the shoulder-strap of his dirty and ragged uniform showed that he, like themselves, belonged to a Cockney battalion. The two comrades were burly fellows of the navvy type, full-bodied, full-faced, narrow in the brows, powerful in the arms. Distress, the utter lack of work, had probably forced them into one of the new regiments. The little man, with equal probability, had enlisted for similar reasons and had found escape not so easy as he expected.
At last, replete, they desisted from their orgy of victuals. Bill stretched his legs and looked good-humouredly at his comrade.
"This ain't better than the army, I don't think!" he opined, qualifying the army by an epithet which in its circumstances was not inappropriate.
"Curse the army!" replied Sam, frowning from under his heavy sandy brows. He shivered with the commencement of digestion. "Light the fire, Bill," he commanded brutally. "And you," he added, turning to the little man, "go an' get some more beer—an' don't drink any or I'll smash your bloomin' 'ead in!"
Bill, always in awe of his friend, had already commenced to obey, but the little man was not yet broken to Sam's discipline.
"'Ere!—'Oo are you orderin' about?" he expostulated in his thin, aggrieved voice. Then he dodged quickly to escape a flying tankard. With a frightened glance at the burly tyrant, he hastened out, jug in hand.
When he returned, he deposited several packets of tobacco on the table and pushed them towards Sam. "Thought per'aps you'd be wantin' some, mate," he said humbly. "There's a 'ole barrel o' beer in the bar. If 'e'd 'elp me, I could get it in 'ere."
"Go and 'elp 'im, Bill," ordered Sam, pocketing the tobacco.