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?"
He paused for a reply, but none came, for the cap'n, with dim eyes, was
staring blankly into a future so lonely and uncongenial that he had lost
the power of speech--even of that which, at other crises, had never
failed to afford him relief.
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