"When drinkers are dry, and liquor is low,
A fray that takes off a good fellow or so,
Why, what does it do, but help us to bear
The loss of a comrade, in drinking his share?
Then heave and ho, and trombelow,
A fray and a feast are brothers, you know.
"The philosophers say it's a well-settled fact,
That a vessel will leak whose bottom is cracked;
And a belly that's drilled with a bullet, I think,
Is a very bad belly to stow away drink.
So heave and ho, and trombelow,
The dead will be dry to-night, I trow."
"There they are, captain," said one of the returning troopers, after the song, to which he and his companions had stood listening with delighted countenances, was brought to an end, "there they are. We found Dick Waters lying in the road, and when we first came to him he gave a sort of groan, but we didn't lift him until we came back from hunting Roger Bell; by that time the fellow was as dead as a pickled herring. Where do you think we found Clapper Claw? Why, half a mile, almost, down the stream. He was washed along and got jammed up betwixt the roots of a sycamore. We had a long wade after him, and trouble enough to get him—more, I'm thinking, than a dead man is worth. So, give us some more rum; this is ugly work to be done in the dark."
"Scratch a hole for them, lads, under the bushes," said Habershaw; "put a sod blanket over them before morning. That's the fortune of war, as Peppercorn calls it. How are the wounded men getting along?"
"Oh bravely, captain," replied Shad Green, or, according to his nickname, Red Mug: "this here physic is a main thing for a scratch."
"Bravely!" echoed Screech Owl, or Tom Dubbs, the same who had been reported by the dragoon as "kicked by the blacksmith;" "we are plastering up sores here with the jolly bottle:—
"Sing heave and ho, and trombelow,
The Jolly Bottle is a feather, I trow."
"What's a cracked crown, so as it holds a man's brains?" continued the drunken carouser, whilst a laugh deformed his stupid physiognomy.
"How are we off for provisions, quarter-master?" inquired the captain of one of the gang.
"Eaten out of skin, from nose to tail," replied Black Jack.