'
"'And _then_?' I asked.
"'Oh, it'll rain,' said he, affecting confidence. 'It rained for a
hundred last night, didn't it? We've run south of the dry latitudes
and soon we'll be getting more rain than we've any use for.
There's the small keg of rum, too. . . . Great thing as we're
situated,' the fool continued, 'is to keep everyone in heart.
And anyway I don't stomach water with blood in it--specially Dago
blood. . . . Jarvis and Webster, fall to baling: and you, Prout, hand
us over the tiller and dig out something for breakfast.'
"I had found a plug of tobacco in my pocket and seated myself to
slice it: and as I cut it upon my palm, my eyes fell on Farrell's
yet-heaving shoulders. . . . Of a sudden then it came upon me that,
even with the luck we'd carried, men can't go through seven days and
eight nights in an open boat and emerge quite sane. Macnaughten had
put up a gallant, a magnificent pretence. 'The Old Man's Penny
Readings,' as Grimalson had dubbed those evenings when the boats had
closed up and the crews sang Moody and Sankey or _My Mary_--'The Old
Man's Penny Readings, or Pea-nuts on the Pacific'--had been just as
grandly simple as anything in the Gospel.
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