d the
language with which to express that feeling--"black jack" "white potion,"
"polishing off."

At eight o'clock we went down into a cellar under the infirmary, where
tea was brought to us, and the hospital scraps. These were heaped high
on a huge platter in an indescribable mess--pieces of bread, chunks of
grease and fat pork, the burnt skin from the outside of roasted joints,
bones, in short, all the leavings from the fingers and mouths of the sick
ones suffering from all manner of diseases. Into this mess the men
plunged their hands, digging, pawing, turning over, examining, rejecting,
and scrambling for. It wasn't pretty. Pigs couldn't have done worse.
But the poor devils were hungry, and they ate ravenously of the swill,
and when they could eat no more they bundled what was left into their
handkerchiefs and thrust it inside their shirts.

"Once, w'en I was 'ere before, wot did I find out there but a 'ole lot of
pork-ribs," said Ginger to me. By "out there" he meant the place where
the corruption was dumped and sprinkled with strong disinfectant. "They
was a prime lot, no end o' meat on 'em, an' I 'ad 'em into my arms an'
was out the gate an' down the street, a-lookin' for some 'un to gi' 'em
to. Couldn't see a soul, an' I was runnin' 'round clean crazy, the bloke
runnin' after me an' thinkin' I was 'slingin' my 'ook' [running away].
But jest before 'e got me, I got a ole woman an' poked 'em into 'er
apron."

O Charity, O Philanthropy, descend to the spike and take a lesson from
Ginger. At the bottom of the Abyss he performed as purely an altruistic
act as was ever performed outside the Abyss. It was fine of Ginger, and
if the old woman caught some contagion from the "no end o' meat" on the
pork-ribs, it was still fine, though not so fine. But the most salient
thing in this incident, it seems to me, is poor Ginger, "clean crazy" at
sight of so much food going to waste.

It is the rule of the casual ward that a man who enters must stay two
nights and a day; but I had seen sufficient for my purpose, had paid for
my skilly and canvas, and was preparing to run for it.

"Come on, let's sling it," I said to one of my mates, pointing toward the
open gate through which the dead waggon had come.

"An' get fourteen days?"

"No; get away."

"Aw, I come 'ere for a rest," he said complacently. "An' another night's
kip won't 'urt me none."

They were all of this opinion, so I was forced to "sling it" alone