ere was enough in it, or
when he wanted to go away anywhere; then it would fill up again as
before, with like result.

"I suppose you know," said Smith, in his wooden, expressionless manner,
"I've got the sack on your account?"

Gerard started.

"On my account! Surely not. Why, I thought you were going anyhow."

"So? Well, I wasn't. Soon as you came, Anstey gave me notice to
clear."

"Good heavens! But that would be beastly unfair to you," cried Gerard,
in great distress. "I'll tell him I won't agree. I'll go and tell him
now at once."

"Sit still, Ridgeley. That wouldn't help me any. You're a good fellow,
I believe, and if it was any one but Anstey, I'd say it was kind of
natural to want to stick in his own relation. Still, I've done very
well for him, and for less pay than most chaps would ask. But, to tell
the truth, I'm sick of the berth, dead sick of it, and had made up my
mind to clear anyhow. Don't you get bothering Anstey over it. I say,
though. He was pretty boozy last night, eh?"

Gerard shrugged his shoulders with a look of mingled distress and
disgust. He had noted with some anxiety that his relative was too much
addicted to the bottle, but he had never seen him quite so bad as on the
occasion just alluded to. Anstey himself had referred to this failing
once or twice, declaring that the sort of life was of a nature to make
any man feel "hipped," and take a "pick-me-up" too many, but that now he
had got a decent fellow for company he reckoned it might make a
difference. He seemed, in fact, to have taken a real liking to his
young kinsman, and would sit at home of an evening on purpose to talk to
him, instead of riding off to the nearest bar. Gerard had begun to
think he might even be instrumental in getting him out of his drinking
habits.

One day Smith, while absent for some minutes from the store, was
attracted back again by something of a hubbub going on therein.
Returning, he beheld Gerard confronted by three natives, the latter
haranguing and gesticulating wildly in remonstrance, the former
gesticulating almost as wildly, but tongue-tied by reason of his
inability to master more than a few words of their language. The
natives were holding out to Gerard two large bottles filled with some
liquid, which he was as emphatically refusing to accept.

"What's the row, Ridgeley?"

"Row?" answered Gerard, in a disgusted tone. "Row? Why, these fellows
asked me to fill their bottle