“Ay, lad, it ain’t the cut or the blow as keeps him down, but the grog. Come, we must git him aboard sharp. Haul up the boat Gunter, while I stop the leak in his skull.”
With a kerchief, Luke soon bound up the slight wound that the wretched man had received, and then they tried to rouse him, but the effort was in vain. David did indeed recover sufficient intelligence to be able to bellow once or twice for more grog, but he could not be brought to the condition of helping himself in any way.
“What’ll we do, Luke?” asked Billy, in a tone and with a look of deep distress, as the huge form of his father lay, a scarcely animate mass, on the deck at his feet. “We must get him aboard somehow.”
“Never fear, Billy, my boy,” said Luke, cheerfully, “we’ll get him aboard somehow. It’s not the first time I’ve had to do it. Come along, Gunter, lend a hand.”
“Not I!” said Gunter, with a drunken swagger. “I’m not goin’ for an hour or more.”
“Oh yes, you are,” returned Luke, dipping one of the Coper’s buckets over the side and pulling it up full of water.
“No, I ain’t. Who’ll make me?”
“I will,” said Luke, and he sent the contents of the bucket straight into his comrade’s face.
“Hooray!” shouted Billy, convulsed at once with delight and surprise at the suddenness of the act to say nothing of its violence. “Give it ’im, Luke—polish ’im off!”
Luke did not however, take the pugnacious boy’s advice; instead of awaiting the attack of the enraged Gunter, he ran laughing round the capstan and defied him to catch him. Gunter soon found, after bruising his shins and elbows, and stumbling over ropes, etcetera, that the effort was hopeless, and gave it up.