Cummings, who seemed quite at home in the place, greeted her as Mother Jenny. He ordered “two colas.”
“Great place this, eh?” said Cummings with easy familiarity, leaning back. “You know I’ve made several voyages to the tropics, and when I’m in Kingston I always like to come in here. There’s a sort of local color about it.”
“And a lot of local dirt, too,” commented Jack, rather disgustedly sniffing at the atmosphere, which was an odd combination of stale tobacco smoke, mustiness and a peculiar odor inseparable from the native quarters of tropical cities.
However, the cola, when it arrived, quite made up for all these deficiencies. It was served in carved calabashes and tasted like a sort of sublimated soda pop.
“Great stuff, eh?” said Cummings, gulping his with great relish.
“It is good,” admitted Jack. “You’d be a lot better off, Cummings, if you only drank this sort of stuff.”
“Now don’t preach, Ready,” was the rejoinder. “You can’t be a man and not drink liquor.”
“That might have been true a hundred years ago, but it certainly isn’t to-day,” retorted Jack. “The great corporations won’t hire men who drink. It’s gone out of date. The man who drinks is putting himself on the toboggan slide.”
“Say, you ought to have been in the Salvation Army,” said Cummings, with what amounted to a veiled sneer.
Strangely enough Jack did not resent this. His head felt very heavy suddenly. The bright patch of sunlight outside began to sway and waver queerly.