The Vital Spark | Page 6

the dinner he would
be found sound asleep on the head of a bucket, with a half-peeled
potato in his hand. He once crept out of the fo'c'sle rubbing his eyes
after a twelve-hours' sleep, saying, "Tell me this and tell me no more,
am I going to my bed or comin' from it?"

But there was something unusual and alarming about the illness which
overtook The Tar on their way up Loch Fyne to lift a cargo of timber.
First he had shivers all down his back; then he got so stiff that he could
not bend to lift a bucket, but had to kick it along the deck in front of
him, which made Dougie admiringly say, "Man! you are an aawful
handy man with your feet, Colin." His appetite, he declared, totally
disappeared immediately after an unusually hearty breakfast composed
of six herrings and two eggs; and finally he expressed his belief that
there was nothing for it but his bed.
"I'll maybe no trouble you long, boys," he moaned lugubriously. "My
heid's birling roond that fast that I canna even mind my own name two
meenutes."
"You should write it on a wee bit paper," said Dougie unfeelingly, "and
keep it inside your bonnet, so that you could look it up at any time you
were needin'."
Para Handy had kinder feelings, and told The Tar to go and lie down
for an hour or two and take a wee drop of something.
"Maybe a drop of brandy would help me," said The Tar, promptly
preparing to avail himself of the Captain's advice.
"No, not brandy; a drop of good Brutish spurits will suit you better,
Colin," said the Captain, and went below to dispense the prescription
himself.
The gusto with which The Tar swallowed the prescribed dram of
British spirits and took a chew of tobacco after it to enhance the effect,
made Para Handy somewhat suspicious, and he said so to Dougie when
he got on deck, leaving The Tar already in a gentle slumber.
"The rascal's chust scheming," said Dougie emphatically. "There iss
nothing in the world wrong with him but the laziness. If you'll notice,
he aalways gets no weel when we're going to lift timber, because it iss
harder on him at the winch."

The Captain was indignant, and was for going down there and then
with a rope's-end to rouse the patient, but Dougie confided to him a
method of punishing the malingerer and at the same time getting some
innocent amusement for themselves.
Dinner-time came round. The Tar instinctively wakened and lay
wondering what they would take down to him to eat. The Vital Spark
was puff-puffing her deliberate way up the loch, and there was an
unusual stillness on deck. It seemed to The Tar that the Captain and
Dougie were moving about on tiptoe and speaking in whispers. The
uncomfortable feeling this created in his mind was increased when his
two shipmates came down with slippers on instead of their ordinary
sea-boots, creeping down the companion with great caution, carrying a
bowl of gruel.
"What's that for?" asked The Tar sharply. "Are you going to paste up
any bills?"
"Wheest, Colin," said Para Handy, in a sick-room whisper. "You must
not excite yourself, but take this gruel. It'll do you no herm. Poor fellow,
you're looking aawful bad." They hung over his bunk with an attitude
of chastened grief, and Dougie made to help him to the gruel with a
spoon as if he were unable to feed himself.
"Have you no beef?" asked The Tar, looking at the gruel with disgust.
"I'll need to keep up my strength with something more than gruel."
"You daurna for your life take anything but gruel," said the Captain
sorrowfully. "It would be the daith of you at wance to take beef, though
there's plenty in the pot. Chust take this, like a good laad, and don't
speak. My Chove! you are looking far through."
"You're nose is as sherp as a preen," said Dougie in an awed whisper,
and with a piece of engine-room waste wiped the brow of The Tar, who
was beginning to perspire with alarm.
"I don't think I'm so bad ass aal that," said the patient. "It wass chust a
turn; a day in my bed'll put me aal right--or maybe two."

They shook their heads sorrowfully, and the Captain turned away as if
to hide a tear. Dougie blew his nose with much ostentation and stifled a
sob.
"What's the metter wi' you?" asked The Tar, looking at them in
amazement and fear.
"Nothing, nothing, Colin," said the Captain. "Don't say a word. Iss
there anything we could get for you?"
"My heid's bad yet," the patient replied. "Perhaps a drop of spurits--"
"There's no' another drop