I could no longer contain, so smothering my laughter the best way I could, I left him, and was in the act of ascending when I heard our friend Skelp again maundering to himself.
"God, to have seen the birr with which the wee deevil of a heathen god flew right through the air, and gied me siccan a devel in the wame. Hech, it is ominous--vary ominous, and I'll die o't, I'll die o't." Then, as he hove about on the other tack, "it is maist awfu' het in this cursed hole; oh for a green tree and a cool breeze!
'Tityre, tu patulæ recubans sub tegmine fagi.'"
I laughed outright, and so did Sprawl. Saunders noticed this, and in his delirium began to laugh too.
"What's that skirling like the curlew one moment, and grunting like a nine farrow pig the other? I say, friend, what kittles ye sae? Come here, my wee man, come here;" and raising himself in his hammock, he stared idly into my face, and then shook his head violently. "Heard ever any Christian the like o' that?" said the poor corporal; "hear till that," and he again walloped his _cabeza_ from side to side; "dinna ye hear hoo my brain is dried up and knotted in my _cranium_ by this vile fever? Safe us, it's a' into lumps like aitmeal in brose, and noo the lumps have hardened into a consistence like flint,--losh! how they rattle in my skull like chucky stanes in a wean's rash-basket!" Another shake of his head. "Ech, the very fire-sparks are fleeing from my ee. I wonder if they can be hardened ideas; at ony rate they have struck fire frae ilk ither. Do ye ken I could write poetry the noo--I'll be up and overboard, if you dinna haud me--I'll be up and overboard."
Discreet even in his madness, he had given warning and time for the hint to be taken by his mess-mates, and he was now forcibly held down.
As he lay back he continued to murmur, "Oh, puir Saunders Skelp, puir Saunders Skelp, that ye should hae gotten yer death-blow frae a bloody wee heathen god, and you the son of a minister's man--a godly bairn of the Reformation!" Then lifting his head, as if his own exclamation had startled him, "Saunders Skelp--wha ca's on Saunders Skelp--there is nae Saunders Skelp here, I trow? As for you, ye wee blackened deevil," (me, Benjie Brail, viz.) "Oh, man, if I had gotten the educating o' ye, my taws wad hae driven mair lair intil ye at the but-end, than ten Southern maisters wha appeal till the head."