“To wait a bit, and thin go round wid a thick shtick and bate all their heads.”
“Oh, nonsense!” cried Mr Braine.
“That’s what I said to meself, sor, for I saw while I was quieting one, he would make a noise, and—ye see if I could hit all their heads at wance.”
“Hush! silence!” said the doctor. “Braine, the only thing I can propose is to fill a vessel with wine and—drug it.”
“No,” said Mr Braine, sternly. “For one thing they are Mussulmans, and it is forbidden; some would not drink. For another—”
“They’d be suspicious, and would not touch it,” said Frank, quickly.
“Quite right, Frank,” said his father.
“Then if I medicated some cigars,” whispered the doctor.
“Oh, then,” said Frank, “they’d roll them in the waists of their sarongs, and save them to cut up and smoke in their hubble-bubbles to-morrow.”
“Yes; it is hopeless,” said the doctor, despondently; and there was a long silence broken by Tim.