“W’at’s de mattaire wit’ you, hey?” he queried. “Mo’ Gee! I t’ink you eat too moche grub dat you ain’t chaw. S’pose you tak one leetle drink, encore, for help hold heem down.”
“I’ll kill you, you blasted pea-soup!” howled Hicks. “I’ll kick your backbone up through your hat; I’ll——” Here circumstances over which he had no control interrupted him.
“I’ t’ink you go crazee, me,” said Chartrand. “You eat lak one dam beeg cochon—de pork, de bean, de bread an’ molass’—tous les choses. All right. I tak heem one leetle drink, moi-meme. A votre sante, mon ami!"
He grinned pleasantly at Hicks and tilted the bottle to his own mouth, rolling a beatific eye as the liquid gurgled down. Suddenly he choked as Hicks had done.
“Sacré nom du bon Dieu!” he shrieked, spitting like a cat. “What is it that it is? Ah, holy Sainte Agathe, I am poison’ lak one wolf! Ah, bon Saint Jean Baptiste, venez mes secours, for I have been one sinful man! Sacré dam, I burn lak hell inside!”
Hicks, sitting weakly on a log, his hands clasped across his outraged epigastrium, watched Chartrand’s gyrations with huge satisfaction, and roared vindictive sarcasm at the final catastrophe.
“Eat too much grub that I don’t chaw, do I?” he mocked. “Make a pig of meself wid pork an’ beans, hey? Take some yerself, me laddybuck. That’s right—tie yerself in knots. How would ye like another little drink to help hold her down?”
In the end they sat together on the log, cursing in two languages, and regarding the fragments of the broken bottle balefully. Chartrand rose and picked up a heavy club.
“Bagosh, I bus’ up dat keg for sure!” he announced. But Hicks, whose wisdom was of the serpentine variety, demurred.
“Let the boys find it out for themselves,” he counselled. “If we give ourselves away we get the dirty laugh.”