“Yes, that will pass; you’re improving in the funny business. But about the yarn. There was two beds in my room at the pub, where I had to go away without shouting for the boss, and, as it happened, there was a strange chap sleeping in the other bed that night, and, just as I raised the window and was going to lower my bag out, he woke up.
“‘Now, look here,’ I said, shaking my fist at him, like that, ‘if you say a word, I’ll stoush yer!’
“‘Well,’ he said, ‘well, you needn’t be in such a sweat to jump down a man’s throat. I’ve got my swag under the bed, and I was just going to ask you for the loan of the rope when you’re done with it.’
“Well, we chummed. His name was Tom—Tom—something, I forget the other name, but it doesn’t matter. Have you got the matches?”
He wasted three matches, and continued—
“There was a lot of old galvanized iron lying about under the window, and I was frightened the swag would make a noise; anyway, I’d have to drop the rope, and that was sure to make a noise. So we agreed for one of us to go down and land the swag. If we were seen going down without the swags it didn’t matter, for we could say we wanted to go out in the yard for something.”
“If you had the swag you might pretend you were walking in your sleep,” I suggested, for the want of something funnier to say.
“Bosh,” said Jack, “and get woke up with a black eye. Bushies don’t generally carry their swags out of pubs in their sleep, or walk neither; it’s only city swells who do that. Where’s the blessed matches?
“Well, Tom agreed to go, and presently I saw a shadow under the window, and lowered away.
“‘All right?’ I asked in a whisper.
“‘All right!” whispered the shadow.
“I lowered the other swag.
“‘All right?’
“‘All right!’ said the shadow, and just then the moon came out.
“‘All right!’ says the shadow.
“But it wasn’t all right. It was the landlord himself!