It was my first watch that night, and Swinburne was quarter-master on deck. "Swinburne," said I, "you have often been in the West Indies before, why did you not tell me that the men were 'sucking the monkey' when I thought that they were only drinking cocoa-nut milk?"
Swinburne chuckled, and answered, "Why, Mr Simple, d'ye see, it didn't become me as a ship-mate to peach. It's but seldom that a poor fellow has an opportunity of making himself a 'little happy,' and it would not be fair to take away the chance. I suppose you'll never let them have cocoa-nut milk again?"
"No, that I will not; but I cannot imagine what pleasure they can find in getting so tipsy."
"It's merely because they are not allowed to be so, sir. That's the whole story in few words."
"Well, I think I could cure them if I were permitted to try."
"I should like to hear how you'd manage that, Mr Simple."
"Why, I would oblige a man to drink off a half pint of liquor, and then put him by himself. I would not allow him companions to make merry with so as to make a pleasure of intoxication. I would then wait until next morning when he was sober, and leave him alone with a racking headache until the evening, when I would give him another dose, and so on, forcing him to get drunk until he hated the smell of liquor."
"Well, Mr Simple, it might do with some, but many of our chaps would require the dose you mention to be repeated pretty often before it would effect a cure; and what's more, they'd be very willing patients, and make no wry faces at their physic."
"Well, that might be, but it would cure them at last. But tell me,
Swinburne, were you ever in a hurricane?"
"I've been in everything, Mr Simple, I believe, except at school, and I never had no time to go there. Do you see that battery at Needham Point? Well, in the hurricane of '82, them same guns were whirled away by the wind, right over to this point here on the opposite side, the sentries in their sentry-boxes after them. Some of the soldiers who faced the wind had their teeth blown down their throats like broken 'baccy-pipes, others had their heads turned round like dog vanes, 'cause they waited for orders to the 'right about face,' and the whole air was full of young niggers blowing about like peelings of ingons."