At the appointed time the captain found Dick on the spot.
"Dick, how many times, since we have been acquainted, have I told you that you was an out-and-out fool?"
"Shiver my limbs if I know, cap'n; mayhap as many times as there are yarns in the best bower cable."
"It has done a great deal of good. You are just the same old sixpence you were when you sailed with me, fifteen years ago."
"Well, cap'n, you take a little something when you have a mind. Why shouldn't an old sailor—that nobody cares anything about, and that's going to be thrown overboard when he's worn out, just like the cook's hot water and ashes—take his comfort while he can? I tell you, cap'n, you don't know anything about it. It ain't so easy to get clear of your shipmates. Here's mayhap half a dozen, or mayhap twenty-five of us, been on a long vige or a short vige. We come ashore; go to a boarding house. They treats me. Of course I must treat them. One glass brings on another, till we are all blind drunk."
"Don't I know all about it? Haven't I been through it all? Wasn't I a sailor, before the mast, years and years?"
"Not such a sailor as Dick Cameron, poor, God-forsaken devil. When you got into port, you had something ahead. You had a good home, father, mother, brothers and sisters, way back in the bush, that you carried to sea with you in your heart. When you turned in, and when you turned out, they turned in and turned out with you. They were close by you all the while. When you was at the wheel, on the lookout, or walking the deck in the middle watch, they were there. When you got farther along you thought of that young wife, dutiful woman, the little children, the trees you had planted; and though, mayhap, your body was in Trieste, Antigua, or Calcutta, your heart was at home with the wife and the little ones. You could see their faces, hear the fire snap. The moment you got in, and the vessel was made fast, the grass didn't grow under your feet till you was at home. You didn't see anything else. You looked right over everything else to that home."
"That is true, Dick, every word of it."
"You see, cap'n, with all these shrouds, and head-stays, and back-stays to hold you up, you could take your liquor in moderation, and stop when you had enough. But here's old Dick comes ashore. He's no parents, no home; nothing but his shipmates. They go to a rum mill. He's a drunkard, they are drunkards, and you know the rest. I drew up a strong resolution this time. Before I come ashore, says I to myself, 'I'll take my glass in moderation, just as my old cap'n, Ben Rhines, used to, and not make a beast of myself.' But it all ended in smoke."
"I don't take my glass in moderation, Dick. I've knocked off; flung it all overboard. Ben has done the same. We don't drink, nor keep it in the house."