They feel, themselves, that the forces of society tend to hurl them out of existence.  We were sprinkling disinfectant by the mortuary, when the dead waggon drove up and five bodies were packed into it.  The conversation turned to the “white potion” and “black jack,” and I found they were all agreed that the poor person, man or woman, who in the Infirmary gave too much trouble or was in a bad way, was “polished off.”  That is to say, the incurables and the obstreperous were given a dose of “black jack” or the “white potion,” and sent over the divide.  It does not matter in the least whether this be actually so or not.  The point is, they have the feeling that it is so, and they have created the language with which to express that feeling—­“black jack” “white potion,” “polishing off.”

At eight o’clock we went down into a cellar under the infirmary, where tea was brought to us, and the hospital scraps.  These were heaped high on a huge platter in an indescribable mess—­pieces of bread, chunks of grease and fat pork, the burnt skin from the outside of roasted joints, bones, in short, all the leavings from the fingers and mouths of the sick ones suffering from all manner of diseases.  Into this mess the men plunged their hands, digging, pawing, turning over, examining, rejecting, and scrambling for.  It wasn’t pretty.  Pigs couldn’t have done worse.  But the poor devils were hungry, and they ate ravenously of the swill, and when they could eat no more they bundled what was left into their handkerchiefs and thrust it inside their shirts.

“Once, w’en I was ’ere before, wot did I find out there but a ’ole lot of pork-ribs,” said Ginger to me.  By “out there” he meant the place where the corruption was dumped and sprinkled with strong disinfectant.  “They was a prime lot, no end o’ meat on ’em, an’ I ’ad ’em into my arms an’ was out the gate an’ down the street, a-lookin’ for some ‘un to gi’ ’em to.  Couldn’t see a soul, an’ I was runnin’ ’round clean crazy, the bloke runnin’ after me an’ thinkin’ I was ‘slingin’ my ‘ook’ [running away].  But jest before ‘e got me, I got a ole woman an’ poked ’em into ’er apron.”

O Charity, O Philanthropy, descend to the spike and take a lesson from Ginger.  At the bottom of the Abyss he performed as purely an altruistic act as was ever performed outside the Abyss.  It was fine of Ginger, and if the old woman caught some contagion from the “no end o’ meat” on the pork-ribs, it was still fine, though not so fine.  But the most salient thing in this incident, it seems to me, is poor Ginger, “clean crazy” at sight of so much food going to waste.

It is the rule of the casual ward that a man who enters must stay two nights and a day; but I had seen sufficient for my purpose, had paid for my skilly and canvas, and was preparing to run for it.

“Come on, let’s sling it,” I said to one of my mates, pointing toward the open gate through which the dead waggon had come.