There was a general laugh, as much at Joe’s lugubrious visage as at his melancholy tone.
“Why, what’s wrong with you, Stubs?” asked Fred.
“DT,” remarked the skipper of the Cormorant, who could hardly speak because of a bad cold, and who thus curtly referred to the drunkard’s complaint of delirium tremens.
“Nothin’ o’ the sort!” growled Joe. “I’ve not seed a coper for a week or two. Brandy’s more in your way, Groggy Fox, than in mine. No, it’s mulligrumps o’ some sort that’s the matter wi’ me.”
“Indeed,” said Fred, as he continued to dress the bruised hand. “What does it feel like, Stubs?”
“Feel like?” exclaimed the unhappy man, in a tone that told of anguish, “it feels like red-hot thunder rumblin’ about inside o’ me. Just as if a great conger eel was wallopin’ about an’ a-dinin’ off my witals.”
“Horrible, but not incurable,” remarked Fred. “I’ll give you some pills, boy, that’ll soon put you all to rights. Now, then, who’s next?”
While another of the invalids stepped forward and revealed his complaints, which were freely commented on by his more or less sympathetic mates, Fink had opened out a bale of worsted comforters, helmets, and mitts on deck, and, assisted by Pat Stiver, was busily engaged in distributing them. “Here you are—a splendid pair of mitts, Jack,” he said, tossing the articles to a huge man, who received them with evident satisfaction.
“Too small, I fear,” said Jack, trying to force his enormous hand into one of them.
“Hold on! don’t bu’st it!” exclaimed Pat sharply; there’s all sorts and sizes here. “There’s a pair, now, that would fit Goliath.”