All at once Jack saw the other start to feeling of his person eagerly as though some dazzling idea had burst upon his mind. As a rule these occasions were few and far between, and yet Perk had been actually known to originate some amazing schemes, that perhaps did not always turn out as successfully as he himself might have fancied would be the case.
“I could a sworn I fetched it along, thinkin’ there might be some pesky rattlers in this here coulie,” Jack heard him muttering; and then an exclamation of delight announced that whatever he had in mind it had eventually turned up in one of his numerous pockets.
“Hey! what’s in the wind now, I want to know?” Jack demanded, in idle curiosity, since he hardly anticipated that his chum would be able to offer any plausable plan for ridding themselves of that intolerable nuisance encamped below decks.
Perk was holding something up exultantly, and Jack could see it appeared to be a small flask—such things were very common nowadays, with prohibition in the land; but as he had never known his mate to use strong spirits Jack naturally felt more or less surprise to see such a bottle stowed away on Perk’s person. But the word “rattlers” may have given Jack a slight inkling of what it all meant.
“Fetched this here stuff ’long, Jack, in case either o’ us ran afoul o’ a pizen snake,” came the explanation; “kinder do hate to waste the same on sech a wretched beast; but seems like it might get us outen this nasty scrape.”
Jack was forced to laugh.
“Quite an original joke you’d play on Old Eph, I take it, partner—get the poor stick drunk, you mean, of course; but what makes you reckon he’d take to the bottle; for of course you couldn’t lean down far enough to pour the stuff into his open mouth—that’d be a heap too dangerous, I’d think.”
Perk gave him a reproachful look as he hastened to explain.
“Say, I aint quite that silly, I hopes, Jack ole hoss, as to give that critter half a chanct to nab me. I got another idee, it happens, such as ought to pan aout too, if I kin do what I want without spillin’ the beans, or in this case the bootleg stuff.”
“Sounds good to me, Perk,” Jack told him as if to encourage further explanations. “If you don’t expect him to swallow it what then, partner?”