‘Just take charge. I want to speak to the girls a sec. Call if you want anything.’ And then he drew the others away, to say he thought there’d been enough of it, and considering the boys and new three men, perhaps we’d better chuck it and go home. We’d been benevolent nearly four hours anyway.
While this conversation and the objections of the others were going on, H. O. perpetuated an act which nearly wrecked the Benevolent Bar.
Of course Oswald was not an eye or ear witness of what happened, but from what H. O. said in the calmer moments of later life, I think this was about what happened. One of the big disagreeable men said to H. O.--
‘Ain’t got such a thing as a drop o’ spirit, ‘ave yer?’
H. O. said no, we hadn’t, only lemonade and tea.
‘Lemonade and tea! blank’ (bad word I told you about) ‘and blazes,’ replied the bad character, for such he afterwards proved to be. ‘What’s THAT then?’
He pointed to a bottle labelled Dewar’s whisky, which stood on the table near the spirit-kettle.
‘Oh, is THAT what you want?’ said H. O. kindly.
The man is understood to have said he should bloomin’ well think so, but H. O. is not sure about the ‘bloomin’.
He held out his glass with about half the lemonade in it, and H. O. generously filled up the tumbler out of the bottle, labelled Dewar’s whisky. The man took a great drink, and then suddenly he spat out what happened to be left in his mouth just then, and began to swear. It was then that Oswald and Dicky rushed upon the scene.
The man was shaking his fist in H. O.’s face, and H. O. was still holding on to the bottle we had brought out the methylated spirit in for the lamp, in case of anyone wanting tea, which they hadn’t. ‘If I was Jim,’ said the second ruffian, for such indeed they were, when he had snatched the bottle from H. O. and smelt it, ‘I’d chuck the whole show over the hedge, so I would, and you young gutter-snipes after it, so I wouldn’t.’
Oswald saw in a moment that in point of strength, if not numbers, he and his party were out-matched, and the unfriendly boys were drawing gladly near. It is no shame to signal for help when in distress--the best ships do it every day. Oswald shouted ‘Help, help!’ Before the words were out of his brave yet trembling lips our own tramp leapt like an antelope from the ditch and said--