[The Curtain rises on a room in an inn.]

    [Sniggers and Bill are talking.  The Toff is reading a paper. 
    Albert sits a little apart.]

Sniggers: 

What’s his idea, I wonder?

Bill: 

I don’t know.

Sniggers: 

And how much longer will he keep us here?

Bill: 

We’ve been here three days.

Sniggers: 

And ’aven’t seen a soul.

Bill: 

And a pretty penny it cost us when he rented the pub.

Sniggers: 

’Ow long did ’e rent the pub for?

Bill: 

You never know with him.

Sniggers: 

It’s lonely enough.

Bill: 

’Ow long did you rent the pub for, Toffy?

    [The Toff continues to read a sporting paper; he takes no notice
    of what is said.]

Sniggers: 

’E’s such a toff.

Bill: 

Yet ’e’s clever, no mistake.

Sniggers: 

Those clever ones are the beggars to make a muddle.  Their plans are clever enough, but they don’t work, and then they make a mess of things much worse than you or me.

Bill: 

Ah

Sniggers: 

I don’t like this place.

Bill: 

Why not?

Sniggers: 

I don’t like the looks of it.

Bill: 

He’s keeping us here because those niggers can’t find us.  The three heathen priests what was looking for us so.  But we want to go and sell our ruby soon.

Albert: 

There’s no sense in it.

Bill: 

Why not, Albert?

Albert: 

Because I gave those black devils the slip in Hull.

Bill: 

You give ’em the slip, Albert?

Albert: 

The slip, all three of them.  The fellows with the gold spots on their foreheads.  I had the ruby then, and I give them the slip in Hull.

Bill: 

How did you do it, Albert?

Albert: 

I had the ruby and they were following me....

Bill: 

Who told them you had the ruby?  You didn’t show it?

Albert: 

No....  But they kind of know.

Sniggers: 

They kind of know, Albert?

Albert: 

Yes, they know if you’ve got it.  Well, they sort of mouched after me, and I tells a policeman and he says, O they were only three poor niggers and they wouldn’t hurt me.  Ugh!  When I thought of what they did in Malta to poor old Jim.

Bill: 

Yes, and to George in Bombay before we started.

Sniggers: 

Ugh!

Bill: 

Why didn’t you give ’em in charge?

Albert: 

What about the ruby, Bill?

Bill: 

Ah!

Albert: 

Well, I did better than that.  I walks up and down through Hull.  I walks slow enough.  And then I turns a corner and I runs.  I never sees a corner but I turns it.  But sometimes I let a corner pass just to fool them.  I twists about like a hare.  Then I sits down and waits.  No priests.