"Weel, I must ha' walked in ma sleep. I thocht ma second—or mebbe 'twas ma thaird—wife was after me...."
McPhulach rambled on till Calamity, losing patience, pulled him up and demanded to know the truth. It came out gradually, and the Captain learnt that, just as the boats were putting off from the Hawk, McPhulach had been seized with an irresistible desire to feel dry land under him again. So, unobserved in the darkness, he had slipped into the last boat and been taken ashore. There he mingled with the men and advanced with them in the first attack. During the fight which followed, he succeeded in scaling the stockade and had just landed safely on the other side when a soldier sprang forward and clubbed him with the butt-end of a rifle. For a time he lay there unconscious, but, on coming to, quickly realised that he was inside the stockade and might be killed at any moment. As this latter contingency did not figure on his programme, he started to crawl away and at last came to an orderly-room which was untenanted. Taking careful observations, he noticed on the table several bottles of spirits, and drew the conclusion that the place was a sort of smoking-room used by the officers of the fort; at any rate, he decided to sample the contents of the bottles.
By the time he had finished what must have been nearly two pints of mixed spirits, he felt equal to taking the fort single-handed; in fact, as he now confessed to Calamity, he would have charged a whole battalion.
"I didna quite ken what to do," he said, gazing dreamily out of the porthole, "so I sat doon on the doorstep an' waited for ma temper to rise."
Apparently it rose pretty quickly, for soon afterwards he wandered out into the dark enclosure—having first placed the remains of a bottle of gin in his pocket—to see what he could do. As a start, he drew his revolver and one of the first shots, fired at random, hit a charge of powder as it was being removed from the magazine.
"An' after that," concluded the engineer wearily, "I kenned no mair."
"I see," murmured Calamity, for now the mysterious explosion which had resulted in the capture of the fort was explained. "I suppose," he added, with unwonted geniality, "you don't remember trying to kill pink snakes with an empty gin-bottle?"
McPhulach slowly shook his head.
"I ca' to mind seein' a green spider an' a blue centipede creepin' across yon bulkhead a whiles since," he replied. "But ye meet wi' unco' quare animals in these latitudes."
Calamity rose to his feet.