And so in truth it was. For when our friend Sergeant Quacco bolted, on finding the shrine of the Fetish no sanctuary, and had whirled the image amongst us, the uncouth missile had brought up in the pit of poor Lennox's stomach sure enough, where it had told most fearfully.
All the wounded complained greatly of thirst, scarcely one of them in his groanings saying a word about the pain of his wounds.
Another poor fellow, an Irishman, who belonged to the frigate's mizen-top, had got a cruel cut transversely down his cheek, which it had fairly laid open.
"Well, Callaghan," said I, in my new capacity of surgeon's mate, "how do you get on? Ugly gash that—spoiled your beauty, my fine fellow. But never mind—Greenwich at the worst under your lee, you know."
He looked at me, with a face as pale as death, but with a comical expression notwithstanding, and a bright twinkle of his eye—"Please you, sir, tobacco juice nips like fury."
"I don't doubt it. But what have you to do with it at present? Wait until your wound gets better. Surely you have not a quid in your cheek now?"
He sucked in his sound cheek; but the exertion started the plaster-straps that had been applied across the wound in the other, and the blood began to flow.
"Blazes!" said he, "if that d—d quid won't be the death of me!" and thereupon he hooked it out of his potato-trap with his finger, and threw the cherished morsel with great violence from him.
Here our Scotch friend again broke in upon us—"I say, you Clinker—you master-at-arms—damn me (gude forgie me for swearing) if I think it is a dream after all. I am now sure it was a bona fide spree that we have had on shore, and that my days are numbered from the thump I received from the graven image. Lord, that Saunders Skelp should have been left to dree such weird! Hech, but the contusion was most awful sair!"
I pricked up my ears when, first of all in his ravings, I heard the poor fellow pronounce the words bona fide, but followed up as this was by his speaking of a contusion, a word utterly unknown amongst the crew on the berth-deck, I became riveted to the spot, and most anxiously desirous to know something more of our marine. I had stepped a few paces towards the ladder, but my curiosity again drew me to the side of his hammock.