“I’m willin’,” said Cleary, “but thought you was a dry ship.”
Satan winked, slipped below, and returned with a bottle of rum, a glass, and a water jar. There were three or four bottles of rum on board. Satan said he kept the stuff for “rubbing his corns”; he never drank it. There were also a revolver and a rifle on board. He never fired them: lethal weapons have their time and place.
Satan, having placed the bottle and jar on the deck, produced another glass from his pocket, filled out a four-finger peg for Cleary and another for himself.
“Here’s luck,” said Cleary.
“Here’s luck—no spittin’!”
They drained glasses.
“Holy Mike!” cried Cleary, his eyes bulging and his face injected. “What sorter bug-water’s this?”
“British Navy; thirty over proof.”
Cleary, with one eye shut, seemed turning over in his mind the activities going on in his stomach and on the whole approving.
“Well,” said he, “I’ve drunk wasp brandy and one or two nigger dopes—they don’t get near it, not in knots. A man’d want to be a centipede to carry a bottle of that stuff, I reckon. N’more, thanky. Well, I’m off, and I’ll fly a flag when Cark gives the signal he’s got the stuff ready for the fuse.”