Seein’ this, the marman swallered his dose, and no sooner got it down than he squealed right out, and clapped his webby hands together, and wagged his tail like all creation. He swore it was elegant stuff, and he felt it tickle powerful from the top of his head to the eend of his starn-fin. Arter takin’ two or three horns together, the sonny cried for a drink, and I gin him one that sent him wrigglin’ on the sand like an eel in an uneasiness. So, the marman said as the licker was raal first-rate, and first-rater than that tew, he guessed he’d ask in his next door neighbour and his lady, jest to taste the godsend. Waell, in a minnit, in comes a huge marman of the most almighty size, looking jest like Black Hawk when he was bilious; he fotched up his lady with him, and his eldest son, a scraggy hobbadehoy marman, and his darters, two young marmaids or marmisses, jest goin’ out o’ their teens, who flapped their yaller-skinned paws over their punking-coloured chops, pretendin’ to be almighty skeered at comin’ afore a strannge man in a state o’ natur’—but they forgot all abeout that thar’ when the licker was handed to them. Arter takin’ a few smallers, the fresh marman said he guessed the clam-shell was altogether tew leetle to get a proper amount of licker whereby a feller could judge correctly of the raal taste o’ the stuff—so he went to his berth in the next cave, and fotched a large blue and silver shell that held abeout a pint. The news o’ the brandy-tub spred pretty slick, for in half an hour, I’d the hull grist o’ the marmen belongin’ to that settlement cooped up in the cavern. Sitch a noisy swillin’ set o’ wet souls I never did see; the drunk com’ on em almighty strong, for they kept me sarvin’ out the licker jest as quick as it would run. I thought if the capting could have seen me astridin’ his brandy-cask, in an underground grocery at the bottom o’ the sea, surrounded by sich a skeul of odd fish, how many dozen at the gangway would he have ordered the bosen’s mate to have sarved me out?