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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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said one glass wouldn’t hurt me. I’ll give you a golden guinea for a noggin, Jim.” He was growing more and more excited, and this alarmed me for my father, who was very low that day and needed quiet; besides, I was reassured by the doctor’s words, now quoted to me, and rather offended by the offer of a bribe. “I want none of your money,” said I, “but what you owe my father. I’ll get you one glass, and no more.” When I brought it to him, he seized it greedily and drank it out. “Aye, aye,” said he, “that’s some better, sure enough. And now, matey, did that doctor say how long I was to lie here in this old berth?” “A week at least,” said I. “Thunder!” he cried. “A week! I can’t do that; they’d have the black spot on me by then. The lubbers is going about to get the wind of me this blessed moment; lubbers as couldn’t keep what they got, and want to nail what is another’s. Is that seamanly behaviour, now, I want to know? But I’m a saving soul. I never wasted good money of mine, nor lost it neither; and I’ll trick ‘em again. I’m not afraid on ‘em. I’ll shake out another reef, matey, and daddle ‘em again.” As he was thus speaking, he had risen from bed with great difficulty, holding to my shoulder with a grip that almost made me cry out, and moving his legs like so much dead weight. His words, spirited as they were in meaning, contrasted sadly with the weakness of the voice in which they were uttered. He paused when he had got into a sitting position on the edge. “That doctor’s done me,” he murmured. “My ears is singing. Lay me back.” |
