Alcoholism -- Fiction; Christian life -- Fiction; Conduct of life -- Fiction; Evangelistic work -- Fiction; Reformers -- Fiction
Then the captain called on Dr. White, and announced such a collection
of symptoms that the doctor grew alarmed, insisted on absolute quiet,
conveyed Crayme in his own carriage to the boat, saw him into his
berth, and gave to Fred Macdonald a multitude of directions and
cautions, the sober recording of which upon paper was of great service
in saving Fred from suffering over the Quixotic aspect which the whole
project had begun, in his mind, to take on. He felt ashamed even to
look squarely into Crayme’s eye, and his mind was greatly relieved when
the captain turned his face to the wall and exclaimed,
“Fred, for goodness’ sake get out of here; I feel enough like a baby
now, without having a nurse alongside. I’ll do well enough for a few
hours; just look in once in a while.”
During the first day of the trip, Crayme made no trouble for himself
or Fred: under the friendly shelter of night, the two men had a
two-hour chat which was alternately humorous, business-like, and
retrospective, and then Crayme fell asleep. The next day was reasonably
pleasant out of doors, so the captain wrapped himself in a blanket
and sat in an extension-chair on the guards, where with solemn face
he received some condolences which went far to keep him in good humor
after the sympathizers had departed. On the second night the captain
was restless, and the two men played cards. On the third day the
captain’s physique reached the bottom of its stock of patience, and
protested indignantly at the withdrawal of its customary stimulus; and
it acted with more consistency, though no less ugliness, than the human
mind does when under excitement and destitute of control. The captain
grew terribly despondent, and Fred found ample use for all the good
stories he knew. Some of these amused the captain greatly, but after
one of them he sighed,
“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 whiskey, two rum, one gin, two sherry, and
four claret, with guava jelly, and lemon peel that had been soaking in
curaçoa 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 whiskey punch
Ivery night for his lunch,”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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