"Don't think of it. Put your mind on something else."
Caradoc gave a short mirthless laugh. "Stand in a fire--and consider the
lilies?"
"We've got to consider how we'll ever get out of here, if we can't run
this tug's engines..."
"We're stuck! We're stuck!" declared the Englishman miserably. "I don't
see why I don't go down and be a hog again... we'll finally starve...
Somehow I had a mind to die sober... God knows why I ever came on such a
junket."
"Starve nothing. We'll get out somehow. We can fish and eat seaweed and
distill our own water. I can make a still. And you'll get over that
appetite. Bound to--can't last always."
Smith relapsed into silence, staring over the dying colors of the sea.
Madden tried to think of simple remedies to abate a drunkard's appetite
for alcohol. He had heard of apples, lemon juice, but both were as
unobtainable as the gold cure itself.
"How long have you been like this?" he asked at last.
"Been bad two or three years. Drank some all my life. My governor taught
it to me when I was a baby. Then when I got older if I went too far he
kicked. Naturally I intended to stop in time, till I slipped in deep."
Leonard nodded understandingly. "It always gets a nervous high-strung
fellow. The better stuff you are the harder it hits you.
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