Silas handed him his glass, and he raised it high and shouted the usual “Good luck, gents!” The company shouted response. Bony edged nearer to him, and Ted Ramsay sat back on a crate of beer and went to sleep. Someone started to sing, and at once the company roared a ditty detailing the adventures of a lass having long brown hair. And then there arose a yell for ’Un.

’Unclambered to the counter-top, slid round on its liquor-drenched surface and proceeded to serve. Thenceforth, his work was to slip bottles from straw sheaths and set them up, and now and then remove the notes, pushed forward by Silas. He gave no change.

When ordinary men would have fallen senseless, those crowding this small bar were only now warming up to the evening’s debauch. The air was padded with tobacco smoke and Bony’s ears began to ache from the incessant roar.

In the middle of a verse, Silas looked down at Jasper, bent swiftly over him, brushed the black beard with the back of his hand. Withpantherish agility, he straightened and swung round to the company, and for a second his small blue eyes glittered and his mouth was fashioned in a ferocious snarl. Instantly, the expression vanished and he was calling for more whisky, and cursing ’Un for being so slow.

A man lurched between Bony and theBreens, and when next Bony was able to see them, Silas was again bending over Jasper and doing something with what appeared to be a length of dark-green whipcord. No one watched Silas, save Bony, and he watched ‘from the corner of an eye’. The postmaster implored him to take a dash from his rum bottle with his beer. His eyes were standing out like those of a crab. A hairy man of cubic proportions endeavoured to mount the bar counter and was hauled back by another hairy man.