Not a drop, however, passed his lips.
“Ah!” he exclaimed, after his seemingly exhausting imbibation, and with the greatest difficulty suppressing a grimace, “there’s nothing like water to refresh one. It a’most gives a dyin’ man new lease o’ his life. I wonder I never tried it afore. There’s a smack o’ freedom about it that’s worth its weight in gold. Try it yourselves, and don’t stand staring, as if you was agoin’ to swallow me.”
The comical expression of their captive’s face, more than the long speech he made to the two men, induced them to oblige him.
Putting their lips to the gourd, each took a draught of the water.
They did not seem to coincide with him in his opinion of its virtues.
The old hunter laughed in his sleeve on perceiving their wry faces.
“Don’t like it, eh? Wal, you don’t know what’s good for ye. Poor benighted critters! how should ye?”
As he made the remark he fell back upon his log bolster, and again seemed to compose himself to sleep.
If the Indians had been somnolent before drinking the water, they were not rendered more wakeful by the indulgence, and it was almost ludicrous to see what useless efforts they made to battle against the potent narcotic.
In vain they talked to each other, got up, and paced the room, and endeavoured to stand up without leaning up against the wall.