of not getting
another opportunity, and altogether omitting to ask Puffin's leave for
these maraudings. When this had happened four or five times, Puffin,
acting on the instinct of the polar bear who eats her babies for fear
that anybody else should get them, surreptitiously poured the rest of
his bottle into his glass, and filled it up to the top with hot water,
making a mixture of extraordinary power.

Soon after this Major Flint came rambling round the table again. He was
not sure whether Puffin had put the bottle by his chair or behind the
coal-scuttle, and was quite ignorant of the fact that wherever it was,
it was empty. Amorous reminiscences to-night had been the accompaniment
to Puffin's second tumbler.

"Devilish fine woman she was," he said, "and that was the last that
Benjamin Flint ever saw of her. She went up to the hills next
morning----"

"But the last you saw of her just now was on the deck of the P. and O.
at Bombay," objected Puffin. "Or did she go up to the hills on the deck
of the P. and O.? Wonderful line!"

"No, sir," said Benjamin Flint, "that was Helen, _la belle Helene_. It
was _la belle Helene_ whom I saw off at the Apollo Bunder. I don't know
if I told you--By Gad, I've kicked the bottle over. No idea you'd put it
there. Hope the cork's in."

"No harm if it isn't," said Puffin, beginning on his third most fiery
glass. The strength of it rather astonished him.

"You don't mean to say it's empty?" asked Major Flint. "Why just now
there was close on a quarter of a bottle left."

"As much as that?" asked Puffin. "Glad to hear it."

"Not a drop less. You don't mean to say--Well, if you can drink that and
can say hippopotamus afterwards, I should put that among your
challenges, to men of four hundred and two: I should say forty-two. It's
a fine thing to have a strong head, though if I drank what you've got in
your glass, I should be tipsy, sir."

Puffin laughed in his irritating falsetto manner.

"Good thing that it's in my glass then, and not your glass," he said.
"And lemme tell you, Major, in case you don't know it, that when I've
drunk every drop of this and sucked the lemon, you'll have had far more
out of my bottle this evening than I have. My usual twice and--and my
usual night-cap, as you say, is what's my ration, and I've had no more
than my ration. Eight Bells."

"And a pretty good ration you've got there," said the baffled Major.
"Without your usual twice."

Puffin was beg