"_I_ knocked Carroty out," said the man who accused me of working when the ganger was out of sight, and he looked covertly in my direction.
"There's a chance for you, Flynn!" cried Moleskin, in a delighted voice. "You'll never get the like of it again. Just pitch into Hell-fire Gahey and show him how you handle your pair of fives."
Gahey looked at me openly and eagerly, evincing all tokens of pleasure and willingness to come to fistic conclusions with me there and then. As for myself, I felt in just the right mood for a bit of a tussle, but at that moment Red Billy appeared from behind the crane handle and shouted across angrily:
"Come along, you God-damned, forsaken, lousy, beggarly, forespent wastrels, and get some work done!" he cried.
"Can a man not get time to light his pipe?" remonstrated Moleskin.
"Time in hell!" shouted Billy. "You're not paid for strikin' matches here."
We started work again; the fight was off for the moment, and I felt sorry. It is disappointing to rise to a pitch of excitement over nothing; and a fight keeps a man alert and alive.
Having bored the rock through to the depth of four or five feet, we placed dynamite in the hole, attached a fuse, lit it, and hurried off to a place of safety until the rock was blown to atoms. Then we returned to our labour at the jumper and hammer.
Dinner-time came around; the men shared their grub with my mate and me, Hell-fire Gahey giving me a considerable share of his food. Red Billy, who took his grub along with us, cut his bread into thin slices with a dirty tobacco-stained knife, and remarked that he always liked tobacco juice for kitchen. Red Billy chewed the cud after eating, a most curious, but, as I have learned since, not an unprecedented thing. He was very proud of this peculiarity, and said that the gift--he called it a gift--was the outcome of a desire when young and hungry to chew over again the food which he had already eaten.
No one spoke of my proposed fight with Gahey, and I wondered at this silence. I asked Moleskin if Hell-fire was afraid of me.
"Not at all," said Joe. "But he won't put his dinner-hour to loss by thrashin' a light rung of a cully like you. That's the kind of him."
I laughed as if enjoying Joe's remark, but in my mind I resolved to go for Gahey as soon as I got the chance, and hammer him, if able, until he shrieked for mercy. It was most annoying to know that a man would not put his time to loss in fighting me.