I began to get tired of this, and was about moving from where I stood, and going on deck, when, on turning round, I found the ladder had been unshipped on purpose to afford access to some locker behind it, and Sprawl and I, unless we had chosen to give additional trouble to poor devils who were most of them sufficiently done already, were obliged to remain a little longer where we were. Immediately after this Lennox again sung out, "Neebour, can you tell me whar about we are, eh?"—and before I could answer he continued, "Hech, man, he's but a puir shilpit cretur, that Brail lad." I was half inclined to be angry at this unceremonious opinion of my personal qualifications, but to be thus apostrophized to my face, was so very absurd, that I laughed in spite of myself. "A puir bit animal, sir," the man continued—"and tak my word for it, Saunders Skelp's word, that he must have been ony thing but gleg at the uptak. The chiel, I'se warrant, was slow, slow at his lair—a kind of yird taid as it were—and what the deevil that hairum-scairum captain of ours, Sir Oliver, could see in the animal to take him to sea with him, I'm sure I canna tell. But then the commodore is siccan a throughither kind o' chap himsell, that when ane has time to reflect on't, there is nay miracle in his drawing to this camsteerie callant, Benjie Brail, after all."
I could no longer contain, so smothering my laughter the best way I could, I left him, and was in the act of ascending when I heard our friend Skelp again maundering to himself.
"God, to have seen the birr with which the wee deevil of a heathen god flew right through the air, and gied me siccan a devel in the wame. Hech, it is ominous—vary ominous, and I'll die o't, I'll die o't." Then, as he hove about on the other tack, "it is maist awfu' het in this cursed hole; oh for a green tree and a cool breeze!
'Tityre, tu patulæ recubans sub tegmine fagi.'"
A long pause.
"Lord, but it's chokey!"
I laughed outright, and so did Sprawl. Saunders noticed this, and in his delirium began to laugh too.
"What's that skirling like the curlew one moment, and grunting like a nine farrow pig the other? I say, friend, what kittles ye sae? Come here, my wee man, come here;" and raising himself in his hammock, he stared idly into my face, and then shook his head violently. "Heard ever any Christian the like o' that?" said the poor corporal; "hear till that," and he again walloped his cabeza from side to side; "dinna ye hear hoo my brain is dried up and knotted in my cranium by this vile fever? Safe us, it's a' into lumps like aitmeal in brose, and noo the lumps have hardened into a consistence like flint,—losh! how they rattle in my skull like chucky stanes in a wean's rash-basket!" Another shake of his head. "Ech, the very fire-sparks are fleeing from my ee. I wonder if they can be hardened ideas; at ony rate they have struck fire frae ilk ither. Do ye ken I could write poetry the noo—I'll be up and overboard, if you dinna haud me—I'll be up and overboard."
Discreet even in his madness, he had given warning and time for the hint to be taken by his mess-mates, and he was now forcibly held down.
As he lay back he continued to murmur, "Oh, puir Saunders Skelp, puir Saunders Skelp, that ye should hae gotten yer death-blow frae a bloody wee heathen god, and you the son of a minister's man—a godly bairn of the Reformation!" Then lifting his head, as if his own exclamation had startled him, "Saunders Skelp—wha ca's on Saunders Skelp—there is nae Saunders Skelp here, I trow? As for you, ye wee blackened deevil," (me, Benjie Brail, viz.) "Oh, man, if I had gotten the educating o' ye, my taws wad hae driven mair lair intil ye at the but-end, than ten Southern maisters wha appeal till the head."