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On the way, Marianna, who on these expeditions covered her head with a sort of veil of coarse muslin, would take her husband to the grocer's shop in the Faubourg Saint-Honore and give him two or three thimblefuls of brandy to make him tipsy; otherwise he could not play.
Weakness had made him querulous, as it does all of us, and he piped his grievances to me in a thin voice, with that finish of detail which chronic invalidism alone can command. He was starving, he could not get what he wanted to eat. He was in need of stimulants, and he held up a pitiful two-ounce phial containing three thimblefuls of brandy, his whole stock of that encouraging article.
"We shall be content to eat anything we can get our teeth into," cried Halliday. "Oh, do give me a cup of water, as we had only a few thimblefuls on board the big raft." Ben quickly drew a small-sized cupful from one of several casks ranged round the raft.
Of course the men had no objection to be treated. They had a small glass all round. "That's the stuff for my money!" cried Stubley, smacking his lips. "I say, old chap, let's have a bottle of it. None o' your thimblefuls for me. I like a good swig when I'm at it." "You'd better wait till we get aboard, Joe, before you begin," suggested Lockley, who was well aware of Joe's tendencies.
Mechanically he dismounted, stamped his feet, and beat his arms across his chest as the others were doing; a proceeding about as effective as thimblefuls of water flung on a fire. For every moment the iron clutch of frost tightened and penetrated; even, it seemed, to the life-blood in his veins. But through its deadening influence the thought of Quita struck like a knife-thrust.
Owen then went aft to attend to the first mate, who lay in the stern sheets unable to move. Owen brought him some water; he drank it eagerly, and opened his eyes. "Is there much more?" he asked. "Very little, sir; but we will take only what will keep us alive, you can have the rest." Owen, faithful to his promise, continued to give the apparently dying man a few thimblefuls at a time.
I said to my Sisters 'Give it them! and not by thimblefuls give them enough! Ah, poor things! it made some of them sleep. It was all we had. One day, I passed a soldier who was lying back in his bed with a sigh of satisfaction. And it was a large glass of Lachryma Christi!
"Stiffen up, Lynch. Don't give way to it. What sort of a sailor are you, that can't bear two thimblefuls of wine?" "That wine was camphene, I tell you. It feels just like a whole bunch of friction matches touched off at once in my stomach that's so. I'm a poor boy and no mistake, Grossbeck." Lynch suddenly stopped, and grasped his companion by the arm. "What's the matter," demanded Grossbeck.
I felt that I had acquired merit that eventful day when a pair of hummingbirds thimblefuls of fluff with flaming breastplates and caps of gold looked upon me with such favor that they made the strands of my hamaca their boudoir.
Grossbeck defended his conduct by saying that he had heard a great deal about the light wines of Europe, which people drank like water, and he did not suppose a couple of thimblefuls of it would hurt them. "Call for vin rouge next time," laughed Blount; "that means red wine, or claret. It isn't much stronger than water."
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