"I say, Sparks, it's getting late. The spatch-cock, old boy. Don't be slumbering."
"By-the-bye, Sparkie, what a mess you made of that pea-soup to-day! By Jove, I never felt so ill in my life!"
"Na, na; it was na the soup. It was something he pit in the punch, that's burning me ever since I tuk it. Ou, man, but ye're an awfu' creture wi' vittals!"
"He'll improve, Doctor; he'll improve. Don't discourage him; the boy's young. Be alive now, there. Where's the toast?--confound you, where's the toast?"
"There, Sparks, you like a drumstick, I know. Mustn't muzzle the ox, eh? Scripture for you, old boy. Eat away; hang the expense. Hand him over the jug. Empty--eh, Charley? Come, Sparkie, bear a hand; the liquor's out."
"Eat! Heavens, what a fellow for eating! By George, such an appetite is clean against the articles of war! Come, man, it's drink we're thinking of. There's the rum, sugar, limes; see to the hot water. Well, Skipper, how are we getting on?"
"Lying our course; eight knots off the log. Pass the rum. Why, Mister Sparks!"
And then, _omnes_ chorussing "Sparks!" in every key of the gamut, the luckless fellow would be obliged to jump up from his meagre fare and set to work at a fresh brewage of punch for the others. The bowl and the glasses filled, by some little management on Power's part our friend the cornet would be _drawn out_, as the phrase is, into some confession of his early years, which seemed to have been exclusively spent in love-making,--devotion to the fair being as integral a portion of his character as tippling was of the worthy major's.
Like most men who pass their lives in over-studious efforts to please,--however ungallant the confession be,--the amiable Sparks had had little success. His love, if not, as it generally happened, totally unrequited, was invariably the source of some awkward catastrophe, there being no imaginable error he had not at some time or other fallen into, nor any conceivable mischance to which he had not been exposed. Inconsolable widows, attached wives, fond mothers, newly-married brides, engaged young ladies were by some _contretemps_ continually the subject of his attachments; and the least mishap which followed the avowal of his passion was to be heartily laughed at and obliged to leave the neighborhood. Duels, apologies, actions at law, compensations, etc., were of every-day occurrence, and to such an extent, too, that any man blessed with a smaller bump upon the occiput would eventually have long since abandoned the pursuit, and taken to some less expensive pleasure. But poor Sparks, in the true spirit of a martyr, only gloried the more, the more he suffered; and like the worthy man who continued to purchase tickets in the lottery for thirty years, with nothing but a succession of blanks, he ever imagined that Fortune was only trying his patience, and had some cool forty thousand pounds of happiness waiting his perseverance in the end. Whether this prize ever did turn up in the course of years, I am unable to say; but certainly, up to the period of his history I now speak of, all had been as gloomy and unrequiting as need be. Power, who knew something of every man's adventures, was aware of so much of poor Sparks's career, and usually contrived to lay a trap for a confession that generally served to amuse us during an evening,--as much, I acknowledge, from the manner of the recital as anything contained in the story. There was a species of serious matter-of-fact simplicity in his detail of the most ridiculous scenes that left you convinced that his bearing upon the affair in question must have greatly heightened the absurdity,--nothing, however comic or droll in itself, ever exciting in him the least approach to a smile. He sat with his large light-blue eyes, light hair, long upper lip, and retreating chin, lisping out an account of an adventure, with a look of Listen about him that was inconceivably amusing.