Page:Cruise of the Dry Dock.djvu/227

 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