'ee."

Now, Ned Spivin was one of those yielding good-natured youths who find
it impossible to resist what may be styled good-fellowship. If you had
tried to force Ned Spivin, to order him, or to frighten him into any
course, he would have laughed in your face and fought you if necessary;
but if you tempted Ned to do evil by kindly tones and looks, he was
powerless to resist.

"You're right, skipper, I can drink--sometimes." They all went below,
leaving Billy on deck "to look after the boat," as his father said,
though, being made fast, the boat required no looking after.

Immediately the party in the little cabin had a glass round. Ere long
it occurred to them that they might have another glass. Of course they
did not require to be reminded of their pipes, and as nearly all the
crew was in the little cabin, besides the visitors, the fumes from pipes
and glasses soon brought the atmosphere to a condition that would have
failed to support any but the strongest kind of human life. It
supported these men well enough, however, for they soon began to use
their tongues and brains in a manner that might have surprised a
dispassionate observer.

It is, perhaps, needless to say that they interlarded their conversation
with fearful oaths, to which of course we can do no more than make
passing reference.

By degrees the conversation degenerated into disputation, for it is the
manner of some men, when "in liquor," to become intensely pugnacious as
well as owlishly philosophical. The subject-matter of dispute may be
varied, but the result is nearly always the same--a series of amazing
convolutions of the brain, which is supposed to be profound reasoning,
waxing hotter and hotter as the utterances grow thicker and thicker, and
the tones louder and louder, until the culminating point is reached when
the point which could not be proved by the mind is hammered home with
the fist.

To little Billy, who had been left in sole charge of the deck, and whose
little mind had been strangely impressed on board the mission-ship, the
words and sounds, to say nothing of the fumes, which proceeded from the
cabin furnished much food for meditation. The babel of tongues soon
became incessant, for three, if not four or five, of the speakers had
become so impressed with the importance of their opinions, and so
anxious to give their mates the benefit, that they all spoke at once.
This of course necessitated much loud talking and gesticulati