"Poor old Billy Hockess told me that the only time I ever heard it before, and _didn't_ we have a glorious time that night! He'd just put all his money into the _Yenesei_--that blew up and took him with it only a year afterward--and he gave us a new kind of punch he'd got the hang of when he went East for the boat's carpets. 'Twas made of two bottles of brandy, one whisky, two rum, one gin, two sherry, and four claret, with guava jelly, and lemon peel that had been soaking in curacoa and honey for a month. It looks kind of weak when you think about it, but there were only six of us in the party, and it went to the spot by the time we got through. Golly, but didn't we make Rome howl that night!" Fred shuddered, and experimented upon his friend with song; he was rewarded by hearing the captain hum an occasional accompaniment; but, as Fred got fairly into a merry Irish song about one Terry O'Rann, and uttered the lines in which the poet states that the hero "--took whisky punch Ivery night for his lunch," the captain put such a world of expression into a long-drawn sigh that Fred began to feel depressed himself; besides, songs were not numerous in Fred's repertoire, and those in which there was no allusion to drinking could be counted on half his fingers. Then he borrowed the barkeeper's violin, and played the airs which had been his favorites in the days of his courtship, until Crayme exclaimed: "Say, Fred, we're not playing church; give us something that don't bring all of a fellow's dead friends along with it." Fred reddened, swung his bow viciously, and dashed into "Natchez Under the Hill," an old air which would have delighted Offenbach, but which will never appear in a collection of classical music.