"I've come to stay a month!" he cried; and dancing up, caught Heywood's hands and whirled him about. "I was fair bursting to see ye, my boy! And here we are, at last!"
Though his cheeks were flushed, and eyes alarmingly bright, he was beyond question sober. Over his head, Heywood and Rudolph exchanged an anxious glance.
"Good! but this is Hackh's house--the nunnery," said the one; and the other added, "You're just in time for dinner."
The captain found these facts to be excruciating. He clapped Rudolph on the arm, and crowed:--
"Nunnery? We'll make it a bloomin' chummery!--Dinner be 'anged! A banquet. What's more, I've brought the chow"--he swept the huddled boxes with a prodigal gesture,--"lashin's o' food and drink! That's what it is: a banquet!"
He turned again to his sweating followers, and flung the head coolie a handful of silver, crying, "_Sub-log kiswasti!_ Divide, and be off with ye! _Jao_, ye beggars! Not a pice more. Finish! I'll not spend it all on _you_!" Then, pouncing on the nearest crate, he burst it open with a ferocious kick. "Stores? The choicest to be 'ad in all Saigong! Look here"--He held up a tin and scanned the label triumphantly: "Chow de Bruxelles, what? Never saw chow spelt with an 'x' before, did ye? French, my boy. Bad spellers, but good cooks, are the French."
Heywood lost his worried frown. Something had happened,--evidently at Calcutta, for the captain always picked up his vernacular where he dropped his latest cargo; but at all events these vagaries were not the effect of heat or loneliness.
But now that the coolies had gone, Captain Kneebone's heels were busy, staving open boxes right and left. A bottle rolled out, and smashed in a hissing froth of champagne.
"Plenty more," he cried, rejoicing. "That shows ye how much _I_ care! Oho!" Suddenly he turned from this destruction, and facing Heywood, began mysteriously to exult over him. "Old fool and his earnings, eh? Fixed ideas, eh? 'No good,' says you. 'That cock won't fight,' says you. 'Let it alone.'--Ho-ho! What price fixed ideas now?"
The eyes of his young friend widened in unbelief.
"No," he cried, with a start: "you haven't?"
The captain seized both hands again, and took on--for his height--a Roman stateliness.