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As soon as this ceremony was over, a pail of whiskey, with a tea-cup floating on the surface, was handed round, followed by another pail containing spring-water. Every person present drank his Majesty's health; even the fair sex, on this propitious occasion, did not disdain to moisten their pretty lips with the beverage. The eating and drinking part of the festival now commenced in earnest.
The whale seems to be an exception to the above, as he receives water and spouts it out again from an organ, which I suppose to be a respiratory one. As spring-water is nearly of the same degree of heat in all climates, the aquatic plants, which grow in rills or fountains, are found equally in the torrid, temperate, and frigid zones, as water-cress, water-parsnip, ranunculus, and many others.
There they brought dry sea-weed and made it into beds, and lived on the fish and fruits, which they had not much difficulty in obtaining. They even dragged their beautiful shells into the cave, and made little closets and cupboards of them. Their cups and plates were made of smaller bivalve shells. Their drink was clear spring-water, which they discovered near by, mixed with the juice of fruits.
They appeared to know that their kind master was in a dilemma, and were determined to draw him out of it. Perhaps, too, they smelt the spring-water before them. At all events, before they had been many hours in harness, they were drawing the wagon through a pretty little valley covered with green, meadow-looking sward; and in five minutes more were standing halted near a cool crystal spring.
The whole process should be completed in three-quarters of an hour. We always used a large tub which was made for the purpose, and every article we were going to use was soaked in it for half an hour in boiling water; then that removed, and cold spring-water substituted; and the things we required remained in it till they were wanted.
"Ah," he said, "I have done fifty, without food, over the roughest and mossiest mountains. I lived on what I shot, and for drink I had spring-water. Nay, I am forgetting. There was another beverage, which I wager you have never tasted. Heard you ever, sir, of that eau de vie which the Scots call usquebagh? It will comfort a traveller as no thin Italian wine will comfort him.
But never before have I seen such noble consumers of good liquor as those four gentlemen from beyond the Atlantic. They drank the strong red Cyprus as if it had been spring-water. "The dust of your Italian roads takes some cleansing, Mr. Townshend," was their only excuse, but in truth none was needed. The wine seemed only to thaw their iron decorum.
There was nothing remarkable in the spectacle of a young lady who wanted a glass of spring-water, or of a waiter who was getting it for her. "Do you remember me at the inn on the night of the storm?" asked Blanche. Mr. "I'm no' saying I canna remember ye, miss. Whar's the man would mak' sic an answer as that to a bonny young leddy like you?"
Not without extreme difficulty is a manchet of bread, with or without a drop of wine, procured for the King's Majesty this day. Many a tired hero will have nothing but tobacco, with spring-water, to fall back upon. Never mind! says the King, says everybody. After all, it is a cheap price to pay for missing an attack from Pandours in the rear, while such crisis went on ahead.
"It just runs all the time, and we shan't have to pump or any thing. I do like that so much!" Then, as if the sound made her thirsty, she held her head under the spout, and took a good long drink. "Do taste it. It's the best water that ever was," she declared. This spring-water, always at hand, was the only luxury which the little house afforded. All the rest was bare and plain as could be.
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