“You certain must have a big thirst,” observed Shawmut, as he produced a cold bottle and held it toward the sailor, who immediately arose and clutched it with both hands.
“Mates, it has been so long since I have looked a drink in the face that it seems like a total stranger to me. Excuse me while I absorb a small portion of mountain dew.”
His pipe was dropped, and he wiped the mouth of the bottle with his hand after drawing the cork. He then placed the bottle to his lips and turned its bottom skyward.
“So it is for that stuff you sell your friends, is it?” thought Frank.
Having remained with his eyes closed and the bottle upturned for some moments, the sailor finally lowered it and heaved a sigh of mingled satisfaction and regret.
“My only sorrow,” he said, “is that I haven’t a neck as long as a giraffe’s. If the giraffe should take to drink, what delight he would enjoy in feeling the ardent trickle down his oozle! Have something on me, boys.”
He then returned the bottle, and the ruffians drank from it.
“There,” said Wiley, picking up his pipe, “my interior anatomy glows with golden rapture. I am once more myself. Oh, booze, thou art the comforter of mankind! You cause the poor man to forget his sorrows and his misfortunes. For him you build bright castles and paint glorious pictures. For him you remove far away the cares and troubles of life. You make him a king, even while you make him still more of a pauper. You give him at first all the joys of the world and at last the delirium tremens.
“Next to women, you are the best thing and the worst thing in this whole wide world. Mates, you see I am both a poet and a philosopher. It’s no disparagement to me, for I was born that way, and I can’t help it. Ever since my joyful boyhood days on Negro Island I have looked with a loving eye on the beauties of nature and on the extracted fluid of the corn. But what of this world’s riches has my mighty intellect and my poetic soul brought me? I am still a poor man.”
“But you won’t be long arter we diskeevers this mine,” said Shawmut. “If you sticks by us, we gives you a third share.”