I squirmed under the pain of it, and half lifted my head.

My chest was raw and red, and I could see tiny blood globules starting through the torn and inflamed cuticle.
"That'll do, Yonson," one of the men said.

"Carn't yer see you've bloomin' well rubbed all the gent's skin orf ?" The man addressed as Yonson, a man of the heavy Scandinavian type, ceased chafing me, and arose awkwardly to his feet.

The man who had spoken to him was clearly a Cockney, with the clean lines and weakly pretty, almost effeminate, face of the man who has absorbed the sound of Bow Bells with his mother's milk.

A draggled muslin cap on his head and a dirty gunny-sack about his slim hips proclaimed him cook of the decidedly dirty ship's galley in which I found myself.
"An' 'ow yer feelin' now, sir ?" he asked, with the subservient smirk which comes only of generations of tip-seeking ancestors.
For reply, I twisted weakly into a sitting posture, and was helped by Yonson to my feet.