Finding myself alone, I set off up a tunnel. Presently I came to a notice—"Exit by Stairs." I didna know what "exit" meant, but I knew all about those terrible conjuring-trick stairs, and so I turned back and tried another tunnel. Seeing a lot of people going into a little room, I followed them. I gave ma ticket to another lassie, but she was so busy love-making to a bit of a boy that she took it without so much as a glance at it or me. There were advertisements in the room, and sort of sliding doors at each end of it. "It's a waiting-room," says I to maself; and thinking there might be some time before a train came and they opened the other door, I lit a "fag." Very wisely, I saw, they'd put up "Beware of Pickpockets," so I kept my eyes about me.
"No smoking!" barks the lassie; and she came into the room, closing the other gates behind her.
I was just going to argue with her, when all of a sudden the room started to move upwards. Losh! mon, it gave me an awfu' turn! I yelled out, and a man standing next to me laughed—anyway, he laughed till I turned round and ma rifle knocked against his head. Then, before I knew what had happened, the other gates swung open in a ghostly way. Mon, I'll swear there was no one to open them! I drew in a breath of fresh air, thinking I'd got to Piccadilly but, if you'll believe me, I'd walked the sewers of London and come out at place where I'd entered! And that old man said the "Tube" was an underground railway! Underground maze, I call it! I walked to Piccadilly after that; I was afraid of spending the rest of ma leave down there.
I have no doot that Piccadilly is gay enough. But I was feeling tired and hungry the noo there were officers thick as flies after jam; and there didn't seem room for me and ma kit on the pavement. And the lassies! Never have I seen such clothes, and some of 'em had enough fur on them to make twenty goatskin waistcoats. It's a queer thing, though, but all of them seemed to have their clothes too short for them; ma mither would have been horrified. They looked at me as if I was something out of a show, and I began to feel nervous. "Losh!" I says to maself, "I'll have a bit of dinner. I'll do maself well." So I walked into a restaurant, after dodging a naval officer who was standing at the entrance and seemed to have something to do with the place. As soon as I got in I saw I'd made a mistake, and I'd have retired at the double, but a foreigner in evening dress, with about four square feet of starched shirt on him, came rushing up quite excited.
"You can'd sdop here," says he. "Dis blace is for ladies and gendlemen."
"Mon," says I, "there's many a rule made to be broken, or you wouldna be here."
"I'll haf no insolence!" he cries, going very red. "You go to a common restaurant. We do not serve your sort here."
That roused what ma mither calls the devil in me.
"Mon," says I, catching him by the collar, "I've been killing the likes of you for the past sixteen months. The only difference is that they wore a grey uniform, instead of that fancy dress of yours. Say 'kamerad' and bring me some sausages and mashed and a pint of beer, or you'll be the thirteenth I've finished off at close quarters, and that might be unlucky for both of us!"