"Go on, O'Grady, go on, the others are all waiting while you are looking at it. If you feel too surprised to take it, pass the jug on."
O'Grady grasped it. "I will defind it wid me life!" he exclaimed. In the meantime the colonel had filled his mug.
"Gentlemen," he said, solemnly, after raising it to his lips, "O'Grady is right; it is Irish whisky, and good at that."
"It is a cruel trick you've played on us," O'Grady said, with a sigh, as he replaced the empty mug upon the table. "I had almost forgotten the taste, and had come to take kindly to the stuff here. Now I shall have to go through it all again. It is like holding the cup to the lips of that old heathen Tartarus, and taking it away again."
"Tantalus, O'Grady."
"Och, what does it matter, when he has been dead and buried thousands of years, how he spilt his name. Where did you get it from, Terence?"
"I asked Herrara to try and find some for me at Lisbon; I thought it was most likely that some English merchant there would have laid in a stock, and it seems that he has found one."
"Do you hear that, Colonel? There is whisky to be had at Lisbon, and us not know it."
"Well, Captain O'Grady, all I can say is that I shall at dinner this evening move a vote of censure upon you as mess president for not having discovered the fact before."
"Don't talk of dinner, Colonel; there is not one of us could think of sitting down to ration beef after such a male as we have had--and with whisky here, too! I move, Colonel, that no further mintion be made of dinner. I have no doubt that Terence will give us some divilled bones-- there is as much left on the table as we have eaten--before we start home to-night."