ugh.

Just then a miserable little cockney pickpocket, feeling his way to the
door, fell into the party.

A volley of oaths and kicks received him.

"I beg your pardon, gen'l'men," cries the miserable wretch, "but I want
h'air."

"Go to the barber's and buy a wig, then!" says the "Crow", elated at the
success of his last sally.

"Oh, sir, my back!"

"Get up!" groaned someone in the darkness. "Oh, Lord, I'm smothering!
Here, sentry!"

"Vater!" cried the little cockney. "Give us a drop o' vater, for mercy's
sake. I haven't moist'ned my chaffer this blessed day."

"Half a gallon a day, bo', and no more," says a sailor next him.

"Yes, what have yer done with yer half-gallon, eh?" asked the Crow
derisively. "Someone stole it," said the sufferer.

"He's been an' blued it," squealed someone. "Been an' blued it to buy
a Sunday veskit with! Oh, ain't he a vicked young man?" And the speaker
hid his head under the blankets, in humorous affectation of modesty.

All this time the miserable little cockney--he was a tailor by
trade--had been grovelling under the feet of the Crow and his
companions.

"Let me h'up, gents" he implored--"let me h'up. I feel as if I should
die--I do."

"Let the gentleman up," says the humorist in the bunk. "Don't yer see
his kerridge is avaitin' to take him to the Hopera?"

The conversation had got a little loud, and, from the topmost bunk on
the near side, a bullet head protruded.

"Ain't a cove to get no sleep?" cried a gruff voice. "My blood, if I
have to turn out, I'll knock some of your empty heads together."

It seemed that the speaker was a man of mark, for the noise ceased
instantly; and, in the lull which ensued, a shrill scream broke from the
wretched tailor.

"Help! they're killing me! Ah-h-h-!"

"Wot's the matter," roared the silencer of the riot, jumping from his
berth, and scattering the Crow and his companions right and left. "Let
him be, can't yer?"

"H'air!" cried the poor devil--"h'air; I'm fainting!"

Just then there came another groan from the man in the opposite bunk.
"Well, I'm blessed!" said the giant, as he held the gasping tailor by
the collar and glared round him. "Here's a pretty go! All the blessed
chickens ha' got the croup!"

The groaning of the man in the bunk redoubled.

"Pass the word to the sentry," says someone more humane than the rest.
"Ah," says the humorist, "pass him out; it'll be one the less. We'd
rather have his room than his company