e was, with an
immense crock of punch between his knees. He was explaining down in
the kitchen to the other boarders--fifteen or twenty of the
thirstiest-looking fishermen I ever laid eyes on--just how it was he
made the punch. The bowl was about the size of a little beer keg.

"On the night of last Fourth of July," he was saying--"and I mind we
came in that morning with a hundred and seventy-five barrels we got
off Mount Desert--that night I warn't very busy. I gets this
crock--four gallons--let you all have a look--a nice cold stony crock
you see it is, and that they'd been using then in the house here for
piccalilli--and a fine flavor still hanging to it. Wait a minute now
till I tell you. It'll taste better, too, after you hear. And into the
crock I puts two gallons of rum--fine rum it was--for a bottom. Every
good punch has to have a bottom. It's like the big blocks they put
under a house by way of a foundation, or the ballast down near the
keel of a vessel--there'd be no stiffening without it, and the first
good breeze she'd capsize, and then where'd you be? Now, on top of
those two gallons--it was two o'clock in the morning, I mind, when I
started to mix it--whiskey, brandy, and sherry--no, I can't tell what
parts of each--for that's the secret of it. A fellow was dory-mate
with me once--a Frenchman from Bordeaux--told me and said never to
tell, and I gave my oath--down in St. Peer harbor in Miquelon it
was--and afterwards he was lost on the Heptagon--and of course, never
being released from the oath, I can't tell. Well, there was the rum,
the whiskey, the brandy, and the sherry--and on top o' that went one
can of canned pine-apple--canned pine is better than the pine-apple
right out of its jacket. Why? Well, that's part of the secret. Then a
dozen squeezed lemons and oranges. Then some maraschino. I'd got it
off an Italian salt bark skipper in the harbor once. On top o' that I
put one quart of green tea--boiled it myself--it was three in the
morning then, I mind--and I sampled a cup of it. Wait now--wait. Just
ease your sheets and let me tell it. Here's the best part of it. I
takes that crock with the fourteen quarts of good stuff in it and
lowers it to the bottom of the old well out in the yard with a lot of
cold round little stones above and below and more little stones packed
all around and then I lowers down two good-sized rocks on top o'
that--and nails boards over the well--that's why nobody could get into