"Well, you'll all get the sack, you know, besides imprisonment, if you go on with this game."
"The sack! Ha! Ha! 'Ere's a bloke going to give us the sack, mates."
"That'll be nine 'undred and ninety-nine times wot I've 'ad the sack, then."
"S'pose we'll 'ave to starve, that's all."
"Same as we did afore, eh, mates? Ha! Ha!"
A man climbed up on to the step. "What say we goes for a drive?" he asked.
The words were hardly out of his mouth when Carstairs' fist took him in the face and knocked him backwards among his fellows.
"Hurray!" they shouted. "Hip, hip, hurray!" Five hundred of them roared it out in chorus.
"That's one for Charlie."
"You ain't going to take it lying down, Charlie?"