"I don't doubt it. But what have you to do with it at present? Wait until your wound gets better. Surely you have not a quid in your cheek _now_?"
He sucked in his sound cheek; but the exertion started the plaster-straps that had been applied across the wound in the other, and the blood began to flow.
"Blazes!" said he, "if that d--d quid won't be the death of me!" and thereupon he hooked it out of his potato-trap with his finger, and threw the cherished morsel with great violence from him.
Here our Scotch friend again broke in upon us--"I say, you Clinker--you master-at-arms--damn me (gude forgie me for swearing) if I think it is a dream after all. I am now sure it was a _bona fide_ spree that we have had on shore, and that my days are numbered from the thump I received from the graven image. Lord, that Saunders Skelp should have been left _to dree such weird_! Hech, but _the contusion_ was most awful sair!"
I pricked up my ears when, first of all in his ravings, I heard the poor fellow pronounce the words _bona fide_, but followed up as this was by his speaking of a _contusion_, a word utterly unknown amongst the crew on the berth-deck, I became riveted to the spot, and most anxiously desirous to know something more of our marine. I had stepped a few paces towards the ladder, but my curiosity again drew me to the side of his hammock.
"I say, friend, wha may ye be?" said the man--in the common routine of the ship, I had never noticed his Scotch accent before; more Scotch now, by the way, than it usually was--"I say, friend, what for do you persevere in haunting me in this way?"
"Why, my good man, I am only lending a hand to see you and the rest of the wounded properly cared for--believe me, I have no desire to bother you or any one else."
"It may be all vera true," said he, turning himself, apparently with great pain, on his back; "it may be vera true--but noo, sin' I am persuaded that I dinna dream, let me gather the sma' wits God has gi'en me weel about me. Let me see--let me see--we all ken the service we were ordered on this blessed morning--nane better than Saunders Skelp--what am I dreaming o'? Jack Lennox, I mean--gude hae a care o' us, my harns[1] are strangely confused." Then, after a pause, during which he appeared to be exerting himself to call in his scattered thoughts--"Weel a-weel, ye a' ken wha focht, and wha sang sma, and mony a stalwart blow was struck--_that_ I ken--and sickly as I was, it behoved me, the son o' auld Pate Skelp of Lincomdodie, to do my _devoir_, as Sir Walter says, and to it I buckled; but I shall believe in second sicht or any other miracle noo, for we drave a' obstruction before us like chaff, until we encountered wi' that wee wudden goddity; when, to stop our advance (I saw it as plain as peas), the creature whirled aff its perch, and flew crack against the midriff of me, Saunders, like a stane frae a _testudo_--Hoot, no, of Jack Lennox, I mean."