Page:Lieut Gullivar Jones - His Vacation - Edwin Arnold (1905).djvu/205

 and death to your enemies!" Then he drank deep and long, and, passed the stuff to me:

"Here's to you, bully host, and the missus, and the children, if there are any, and more power to your elbow!"—the which gratified him greatly, though probably he had small idea of my meaning.

And right merry we were that evening. The host was a jolly good fellow, and his ale, with a pleasant savour of mint in it, was the heartiest drink I ever set lips to. We talked and laughed till the very jackals yapped in sympathy outside. And when he had told a score of wonderful wood stories as pungent of the life of these fairy forests as the aromatic scent of his bark-heaps outside, as iridescent with the colours of another world as the rainbow bubbles riding down his starlit rill, I took a turn, and told him of the commonplaces of my world so far away, whereat he laughed gloriously again. The greater the commonplace the larger his joy. The humblest story, hardly calculated to impress a griffin between watches on the main-deck, was a masterpiece of wit to that gentle savage; and when I "took off" the tricks and foibles of some of my superiors—Heaven forgive me for such treason!—he listened with the exquisite open-mouthed delight of one who wanders in a brand-new world of mirth.

We drank and laughed over that strong beer till the little owls outside raised their voice in combined accord, and then the woodman,