By Sunday morning he was frantic; the men were hale and well enough, though, perhaps, a trifle thin, and he began to believe with the cook that the age of miracles had not yet passed.
It was a broiling hot day, and, to add to his discomfort, the mate, who was consumed by a raging thirst, lay panting in the shade of the mainsail, exchanging condolences of a most offensive nature with the cook every time he looked his way.
All the morning he grumbled incessantly, until at length, warned by an offensive smell of rum that dinner was on the table, he got up and went below.
At the foot of the ladder he paused abruptly, for the skipper was leaning back in his seat, gazing in a fascinated manner at some object on the table.
“What’s the matter?” inquired the mate in alarm.
The other, who did not appear to hear the question, made no answer, but continued to stare in a most extraordinary fashion at a bottle which graced the centre of the table.
“What is it?” inquired the mate, not venturing to trust his eyes. “Water? Where did it come from?”
“Cook!” roared the skipper, turning a bloodshot eye on that worthy, as his pallid face showed behind the mate, “what’s this? If you say it’s water I’ll kill you.”
“I don’t know what it is, sir,” said the cook cautiously; “but Dick sent it to you with his best respects, and I was to say as there’s plenty more where that came from. He’s a nasty, under’anded, deceitful old man, is Dick, sir, an’ it seems he laid in a stock o’ water in bottles an’ the like afore you doctored the cask, an’ the men have had it locked up in their chests ever since.”
“Dick’s a very clever old man,” remarked the mate, pouring himself out a glass, and drinking it with infinite relish, “ain’t he, cap’n? It’ll be a privilege to jine anything that man’s connected with, won’t it?”