"All right! nobody but us," whispered Ned, clambering over the freight, accompanied by Frank.
"Come along, and make no noise, if you value your hides," said Harris. "Here, Frank, is something to console ye for your bad luck." And he held out something in a tin cup.
"What is it?" said Frank; "water?"
"Something almost as good," said Harris. "It was water the boys came down here in search of; and they've tapped five barrels of sirup in the operation, and finally they've stuck the gimlet into a cask of—taste on't."
Frank knew what it was by the smell. It was not the first time he had smelt whiskey; or tasted it, either. But hitherto he had stopped at the taste, having nothing but his curiosity to gratify. Now, however, he bad something else to gratify—a burning thirst of the body, aggravated by his feverish excitement, and a burning thirst of the soul, which demanded stimulus of any kind whatsoever that would allay the inward torment.
And so he drank. He did not love the liquor, although the rank taste of it was ameliorated by a liberal admixture of sirup. But he felt the internal sinking and wretchedness of heart and stomach braced up and assuaged by the first draught; so he took another. And for the same reason he indulged in a third. And so it happened that his head began shortly to swim, his eyes to see double, and things to look queer to them generally. The dim hold of the vessel might have been the pit of darkness, and the obscure grinning faces of his comrades might have been those of imps therein abiding, for aught he knew to the contrary, or cared. He began to laugh.
"What's the matter, Frank?"
"Nothing," he said, thickly; "only it's so droll." And he sat down on a cask, laughing again with uncontrollable merriment—at nothing; an infallible symptom that a person is either tipsy or a fool. But Frank was not a fool. Ergo: he was tipsy.
"Get him up as quick as we can, boys," he heard some one saying, "or else we can't get him up at all."
"Better leave him here till he gets over it," said another. "That'll be the best way."