Voices! They were coarse and deep, but not loud--voices of persons talking in low and concentrated tones in the room beneath, separated from him only by the ill-fitting boarding of the floor, between the joints of which lines of light were visible, and one bright upward flake, through a hole from which a knot had dropped out. 'Curse him, he's but a boy; I could smash the life out of him by one blow of my fist!' he heard his host, Josh Jarrett, say. Others responded to this, but in low, stealthy, and husky tones. Certain that some mischief with regard to himself was on the _tapis_. Florian crept softly to the orifice in the floor, and looked down. Round a dirty and sloppy table, covered with drinking-vessels, pipes and tobacco-pouches, bottles of squareface and Cape smoke, were Josh Jarrett and three other ruffians, digger-like fellows, with Nan among them, all drinking; and a vile-looking quintette they were, especially the woman, with her hair all dishevelled now, and her face inflamed by that maddening compound known as Cape smoke. 'When I was ass enough to be in the Queen's service,' said Jarrett with a horrible imprecation, 'these 'ere blooming officers and non-comms. led me a devil of a life; they said it was my own fault that I was always drunk and in the mill. Be that as it may, I've one of the cursed lot upstairs, and I'll sarve him out for what they made me undergo, cuss 'em. One will answer my purpose as well as another. Nan, you did your best to screw him, but he was wary--infernally wary. Blest if I don't think the fellow is a Scotsman after all, for all his English lingo.' 'Yes, he did shirk his liquor,' hiccupped the amiable Nan; 'you should have drugged it, Josh.' 'But then we didn't know that he had all this chink about him.' 'That must be ours,' growled a fellow who had not yet spoken, but was prodding the table with a knife he had drawn from his belt; 'we'll give him a through ticket to the other world--one with the down train.' 'And no return,' added Nan, laughing. Florian felt beads of perspiration on his brow; he was one against five--entrapped, baited, done to death--and if he did not appear at headquarters with the fatal money, what would be thought of him but that he had deserted with it, and his name would be branded as that of a coward and robber. Dulcie! The thought of Dulcie choked him, but it nerved him too. Another truculent-looking fellow now came in, making five men in all. 'He has money galore on him--Nan saw the gold--money in a canvas bag. How comes he, a sergeant, to have all this in his grab, unless he stole it?' said Jarrett, in explanation to the new-comer.