"Never mix up whisky with anything," advised Madame sententiously.
"I never do," observed Ewing, grinning at her.
"Be quiet, Alexander. Willatopy has taken warning by that horrible countryman of yours in Thursday Island, and means always to be a good boy. He won't drink even when he hasn't a bag to guard. And now, Willie, tell us. Do you remember what part of England your father sailed from?"
Willatopy puckered his forehead. He was not accustomed to search his memory. The personality of the father had made a deep ineradicable impression upon the boy, but he knew very little of his origin and sought not to enquire. The savage half of him took everything as it came without comment.
"It was by the sea, I am sure," said he at last, "for there was a big battle long ago which the English won. It was a battle at sea. It is all in the history books at Murray Island." He dismissed the subject, but Madame stuck to her questions.
"Whom did the English beat?" she asked.
"I don't know," indifferently. "Yes, I remember. Spaniards."
"Was it the Spanish Armada?"
"Yes, that was it. The Spanish Armada. My father's father fought the Spaniards." Willatopy's conception of time did not reach much beyond a single generation. Centuries and historical dates conveyed nothing to him.
"Yon place must have been Plymouth," observed Ewing. Madame, for one, blessed the gratuitously informative Scot.