"All ri'," came the voice, which seemed to be muffled in the pillows, "all ri', steward, set 'em down anywhere!"
"Sit what down?" I enquired, at a loss to grasp his meaning.
"Why, the drinks, of course," quoth the other.
At the risk of dropping some of my luggage, I drew myself up to my full height.
"Sir," I said, "I do not drink—I have never touched strong drink in all my life."
"Is it pozz'ble?" said this person (I endeavour for the sake of accuracy to reproduce his exact phrasing). "Why, what've you been doin' with your spare time all thesh years?"
He raised a face, red and swollen, and peered at me in seeming astonishment. I now apprehended that he was a victim of over-indulgence. So intensely was I shocked that I could but stare back at him, without speaking.
"Well," he continued, "it's never too late to learn—that's one con—conso—consolach——" Plainly the word he strove to utter was the noun consolation.
In a flash it came to me that be the consequences what they might, I could not endure to share the cribbed and cabined quarters provided aboard ship with a person of such habits and such trend of thought as this person so patently betrayed. Nor was it necessary. For, having quit his presence without further parley, I deposited a part of my burden in a nearby cross-hall and examined my ticket. By so doing I re-established a fact which in the stress of the prevalent excitement had escaped my attention and this was that the stateroom to which I had been assigned was not C-34, but B-34.
If this were C-deck, the deck immediately above must perforce be B-deck? Thus I reasoned, and thus was I correct, as speedily transpired. Pausing only to gather up my effects and to make my excuses to sundry impatient and grumbling voyagers who had packed themselves in the cross-hall beyond, while I was consulting my ticket, I journeyed upward to B-deck. Upon coming to No. 34, and again finding the key in the door and the door unlatched, I entered as before.