Chapter Seventy Six.
Mestizo and mulatto.
While their chief has been interrogating his prisoner, the robbers around the fire have gone on with their poker-playing, and whisky drinking.
Borlasse joining in the debauch, orders brandy to be brought out of his tent, and distributed freely around. He drinks deeply himself; in part to celebrate the occasion of such a grand stroke of business done, but as much to drown his disappointment at the captives not yet having come in.—The alcohol has its effect; and ere long rekindles a hope, which Chisholm strengthens, saying, all will yet be well, and the missing ones turn up, if not that night, on the morrow.
Somewhat relieved by this expectation, Borlasse enters into the spirit of the hour, and becomes jovial and boisterous as any of his subordinates. The cards are tossed aside, the play abandoned; instead, coarse stories are told, and songs sung, fit only for the ears of such a God-forsaken crew.
The saturnalia is brought to a close, when all become so intoxicated they can neither tell story nor sing song. Then some stagger to their tents, others dropping over where they sit, and falling fast asleep.
By midnight there is not a man of them awake, and the camp is silent, save here and there a drunken snore disturbing its stillness.
The great central fire, around which some remain lying astretch, burns on, but no longer blazes. There is no one to tend it with the pitchy pine-knots. Inside the tents also, the lights are extinguished—all except one. This, the rude skin sheiling which shelters the mestizo and mulatto. The two half-bloods, of different strain, are yet awake, and sitting up. They are also drinking, hobnobbing with one another.
Fernand has supplied the liquor freely and without stint. Pretending to fraternise with the new confederate, he has filled the latter’s glass at least a half-score of times, doing the same with his own. Both have emptied them with like rapidity, and yet neither seems at all overcome. Each thinks the other the hardest case at a drinking bout he has ever come across; wondering he is not dead drunk, though knowing why he is himself sober. The Spanish moss plucked from the adjacent trees, and littering the tent floor, could tell—if it had the power of speech.
Jupiter has had many a whiskey spree in the woods of Mississippi, but never has he encountered a convive who could stand so much of it, and still keep his tongue and seat. What can it mean? Is the mestizo’s stomach made of steel?