The Vital Spark | Page 7

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 in the work of two men.

IV: WEE TEENY
THE last passenger steamer to sail that day from Ardrishaig was a trip from Rothesay. It was Glasgow Fair Saturday, and Ardrishaig Quay was black with people. There was a marvellously stimulating odour of dulse, herring, and shell-fish, for everybody carried away in a handkerchief a few samples of these marine products that are now the only seaside souvenirs not made in Germany. The Vital Spark, in ballast, Clydeward bound, lay inside the passenger steamer, ready to start when the latter had got under weigh, and Para Handy and his mate meanwhile sat on the fo'c'sle-head of "the