reading bits?

here's the problem. I'm passing char *somedata; witch is the stream that writes 120038846315this is message" the numbers are header of message. I know that first 4 bytes identifies int. i.e. the number 1 in the stream is type od stream. and in the end is the stream length 15. but since the numbers are connected I don't have the way of knowing witch is witch number. And I'm wondering is the solution, reading bits, i.e. reading the first 24bits and it is the first number and how that is done? thanx.