“Took the pledge, perhaps!” interjected the mid, with a slight curl of his lip.
“No! I determined to work more and play less. We had a capital naval instructor aboard, and our commander was as good an officer as ever trod the deck. I studied—a little too hard perhaps, for I was laid up again. The ‘Arrow’ was, as usual, as good as her name, and we shot across to Jamaica in five weeks. One evening as we were lying in Kingston harbor, Seton, who had come over to join the Commodore as full surgeon, told me what he had never ventured to divulge before.”
“What was that?”
“Why, that, on the very day I left London, James Barber died of a frightful attack of delirium tremens!”
“Poor Jemmy!” said the elder Fid, sorrowfully, taking a long pull of consolation from his rummer. “Little did I think, while singing some of your best songs off Belem Castle, that I had seen you for the last time!”
“I hadn’t seen him for the last time,” returned the lieutenant, with awful significance.
Philip assumed a careless air, and said, “Go on.”
“We were ordered home in eighteen forty-five, and paid off in January. I went to Portsmouth; was examined, and passed as lieutenant.”
This allusion to his brother’s better condition made poor Philip look rather blank.
“On being confirmed at the Admiralty,” continued Ferdinand, “I had to give a dinner to the ‘Arrows;’ which I did at the Salopian, Charing Cross. In the excess of my joy at promotion, my determination of temperance and avoidance of what is called ‘society’ was swamped. I kept it up once more; I went the ‘rounds,’ and accepted all the dinner, supper, and ball invitations I could get, invariably ending each morning in one of the old haunts of dissipation. Old associations with James Barber returned, and like causes produced similar effects. One morning while maundering home, I began to feel the same wild confusion as had previously commenced my dreadful malady.”