spirituous liquor. Turning his eyes from right to
left, in his endeavors to understand this unusual odor of luxury,
Inkspot perceived the man Garta standing on the other side of the
forecastle, with a bottle in one hand and a cork in the other, and, as
he looked, Garta raised the bottle to his mouth, threw back his head,
and drank.

Inkspot greatly disliked this man. He had been one of the fellows who had
ill-treated him when the _Arato_ sailed under Cardatas, and he fully
agreed with his fellow-blacks that the scoundrel should have been shot.
But now his feelings began to undergo a change. A man with a bottle of
spirits might prove to be an angel of mercy, a being of beneficence, and
if he would share with a craving fellow-being his rare good fortune, why
should not all feelings of disapprobation be set aside? Inkspot could see
no reason why they should not be, and softly slipping from his hammock,
he approached Garta.

"Give me. Give me, just little," he whispered.

Garta turned with a half-suppressed oath, and seeing who the suppliant
was, he seized the bottle in his left hand, and with his right struck
poor Inkspot a blow in the face. Without a word the negro stepped back,
and then Garta put the bottle into a high, narrow opening in the side of
the forecastle, and closed a little door upon it, which fastened with a
snap. This little locker, just large enough to hold one bottle, had been
made by one of the former crew of the _Arato_ solely for the purpose of
concealing spirits, and was very ingeniously contrived. Its door was a
portion of the side of the forecastle, and a keyhole was concealed behind
a removable knot. Garta had not opened the locker before, for the reason
that he had been unable to find the key. He knew it had been concealed
in the forecastle, but it had taken him a long time to find it. Now his
secret was discovered, and he was enraged. Going over to the hammock,
where Inkspot had again ensconced himself, he leaned over the negro and
whispered:

"If you ever say a word of that bottle to anybody, I'll put a knife into
you! No matter what they do to me, I'll settle with you."

Inkspot did not understand all this, but he knew it was a threat, and he
well understood the language of a blow in the face. After a while he went
to sleep, but, if he smelt again the odor of the contents of the bottle,
he had no more heavenly dreams.

The next day Captain Horn found himself off the convict settlement of