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Better wine had been served before dessert, and they now shouted and sang so loudly and so out of tune that the air played by the strolling musicians could scarcely be distinguished. Many a table, too, groaned under blows from the clinched fist of some excited reveller. Every one seemed animated by a single desire-to drink again and again.
"Much obleeged," returned the lieutenant, as he took the bottle the reveller passed to him. "Here's success to us all in a heap, and success to our side in the battle that's go'n' on." "I'm with you up to the armpits," added Graines, as another of the four handed him a bottle.
The last reveller had drunk his fill, the dancing-girls had ceased their dancing, and silence lay upon the city. I drew near the gate, and was challenged by an officer who stood on guard, wrapped in a heavy cloak. "Who passes," said the voice of Brennus.
The reveller at the next table, who happened to be Tony Cornish, now drew his chair nearer. "Englishman?" he inquired. "That's me," answered Uncle Ben, with commendable pride, "from the top of my head to me boots. Not that I've anything to say against foreigners." "Nor I; but it's pleasant to meet a countryman in a foreign land." Cornish deliberately brought his chair forward.
Outside, in the distance I could hear the sounds of a city, the occasional roll of wheels, the shout of a reveller, the far-away echo of whistles and the rumbling of trains. The light was very, very low; the reflection of it under the green-shaded lamp was a dim relief to the darkness, rather than light. The green silk fringe of the lamp had merely the colour of an emerald seen in the moonlight.
"I seem to have broken all the rules of the place before getting out of bed," he told himself, as he rang for hot water. Then he laughed as he recalled an old "Punch" drawing of an intoxicated reveller in a Tube lift, who also contrived simultaneously to break all the rules by smoking, by not "standing clear of the gates" and, pre-eminently, by not being beware of pickpockets.
"The King of Egypt, who called himself 'the new Dionysus, was a weak man, whose birth did not give him the full right to the sovereignty. You know that the people called him the 'fluteplayer. He really had no greater pleasure than to hear music and listen to his own performances. He played by no means badly on more than one instrument, and, moreover, as a reveller did honour to the other name.
Johnson here alluded to being present as the faded reveller the barkeeper had lately put out, and as the alleged claim notoriously possessed no attractions whatever to capitalists, expectation naturally looked to him for some response to this evident challenge.
John Knox adds an explanation of his conduct in his narrative of the occurrence, which somewhat softens our feeling towards him. He refused to ask for the life of the unlucky reveller not without a reason, such as it was. "Who did answer that he had so oft solicited in their favour that his own conscience accused him that they used his labours for no other end but to be a patron to their impiety.
Already he had earned the reputation of a good boon companion, a cheery reveller, and withal a man of high temper, who would not take an insult even from the all-powerful Boss himself.
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