“That mebbe, sor,” replied the undaunted Irishman, with a little of his old bravado; “but it warn’t the ould complaint, I till ye, sor.”
“What was it, then, that made you drunk, you rascal?” rejoined the doctor, with a twinkle in his eye, knowing his man, “for, drunk you were—ay, as drunk as Chloe?”
“Faix, sor,” said Macan, noting instantly the doctor’s change of mood, and grinning all over his face in consequence, “it wor the Cape shmoke that did it. Sure, it obfusticated me, sor, entirely!”
Chapter Twenty Four.
We join the Admiral at Singapore.
“Cape smoke?” said I, inquiringly, to Mr Stormcock, who happened to come up the hatchway on to the main deck as the doctor was thus cross-examining the ex-corporal of marines outside the sick bay, where poor Macan was now doing “sentry-go” after his reduction to the ranks, to make his humiliation the more complete. “What is that? It can’t be real smoke, I suppose!”
The master’s mate laughed.
“Smoke, eh, youngster?” he repeated in his ironical way, being the driest old stick we had in the gunroom and certainly, according to Larkyns, a judge of considerable experience of the article under discussion. “Bless you, it’s the most rotgut stuff any fellow ever put in his inside, and only a Dutchman could have invented it! I can tell you it’s a liquor that’s best left alone. Take my advice, Vernon, and don’t you have anything to do with it!”