The Vital Spark | Page 7

in the ship," said the Captain.
The patient moaned. "And I don't suppose there's any beer either?" he
said hopelessly.
He was told there was no beer, and instructed to cry if he was requiring
any one to come to his assistance, after which the two nurses crept
quietly on deck again, leaving him in a very uneasy frame of mind.
They got into the quay late in the afternoon, and the Captain and mate
came down again quietly, with their caps in their hands, to discover
The Tar surreptitiously smoking in his bunk to dull the pangs of hunger
that now beset him, for they had given him nothing since the gruel.
"It's not for you, it's not for you at aal, smokin'!" cried Para Handy in
horror, taking the pipe out of his hand. "With the trouble you have,
smoking drives it in to the hert and kills you at wance."
"What trouble do you think it iss?" asked the patient seriously.
"Dougie says it's--it's--what did you say it wass, Dougie?"
"It's convolvulus in the inside," said Dougie solemnly; "I had two
aunties that died of it in their unfancy."
"I'm going to get up at wance!" said The Tar, making to rise, but they
thrust him back in his blankets, saying the convolvulus would burst at

the first effort of the kind he made.
He began to weep. "Fancy a trouble like that coming on me, and me
quite young!" he said, pitying himself seriously. "There wass never
wan in oor femily had it."
"It's sleep brings it on," said Dougie, with the air of a specialist who
would ordinarily charge a fee often guineas--"sleep and sitting doon.
There iss nothing to keep off convolvulus but exercise and rising early
in the morning. Poor fellow! But you'll maybe get better; when there's
hope there's life. The Captain and me wass wondering if there wass
anything we could buy ashore for you--some grapes, maybe, or a
shullin' bottle of sherry wine."
"Mercy on me! am I ass far through ass that?" said The Tar.
"Or maybe you would like Macphail, the enchineer, to come doon and
read the Scruptures a while to you," said Para Handy.
"Macphail!" cried the poor Tar; "I wudna let a man like that read a
song-book to me."
They clapped him affectionately on the shoulders;
Dougie made as if to shake his hand, and checked himself; then the
Captain and mate went softly on deck again, and the patient was left
with his fears. He felt utterly incapable of getting up.
Para Handy and his mate went up the town and had a dram with the
local joiner, who was also undertaker. With this functionary in their
company they were moving towards the quay when Dougie saw in a
grocer's shop-door a pictorial card bearing the well-known monkey
portrait advertising a certain soap that won't wash clothes. He went
chuckling into the shop, made some small purchase, and came out the
possessor of the picture. Half an hour later, when it was dark, and The
Tar was lying in an agony of hunger which he took to be the pains of
internal convolvulus. Para Handy, Dougie, and the joiner came quietly
down to the fo'c'sle, where he lay. They had no'lamp, but they struck

matches and looked at him in his bunk with countenances full of pity.
"A nose as sherp as a preen," said Dougie; "it must be the galloping
kind of convolvulus."
"Here's Macintyre the joiner would like to see you, Colin," said Para
Handy, and in the light of a match the patient saw the joiner cast a rapid
professional eye over his proportions.
"What's the joiner wantin' here?" said The Tar, with a frightful
suspicion.
"Nothing, Colin, nothing--six by two--I wass chust passing--six by
two--chust passing, and the Captain asked me in to see you. It's--six by
two, six by two--it's no' very healthy weather we're havin'. Chust that!"
The fo'c'sle was in darkness and The Tar felt already as if he was dead
and buried. "Am I lookin' very bad?" he ventured to ask Dougie.
"Bad's no' the name for it," said Dougie. "Chust look at yourself in the
enchineer's looking-gless." He produced from under his arm the
engineer's little mirror, on the face of which he had gummed the
portrait of the monkey cut out from the soap advertisement, which
fitted neatly into the frame. The Captain struck a match, and in its brief
and insufficient light The Tar looked at himself, as he thought,
reflected in the glass.
"Man, I'm no' that awful changed either; if I had a shave and my face
washed. I don't believe it's convolvulus at aal," said he, quite hopefully,
and jumped from his bunk.
For the rest of the week he put