Tom found a weak grin. "Yes, so be it. We place ourselves and guide under your orders, though I reserve the right to beat him to a pleasing pulp when he gets sober enough to feel it. At present he reclines ungracefully within."
"You mean you got a drunk guide, in there?" demanded Bill angrily.
"He feels the yearning right away," observed George. "We 'll have to take turns thrashing Bacchus, I fear."
"How long's he been that way?" demanded Bill.
"I have n't known him long enough to answer that," responded Tom. "I doubt if he were ever really sober. He is a peripatetic distillery and I believe he lived on blotters even as a child. The first day—"
"—hour," inserted George.
"—he became anxious about the condition of the rear axle and examined it so frequently that by night he had slipped back into the Stone Age—he was ossified and petrified. He could neither see, eat nor talk. Strange creatures peopled his imagination. He shot at one before we could get his gun away from him, and it was our best skillet. How the devil he could hit it is more than I know. At this moment he may be fleeing from green tigers."
"Beg pardon," murmured George. "At this moment I have my foot on his large, unwashed face."
"Why, George! You'll hurt him!" gasped Mollie.
"No such luck. He 's beyond feeling."