outhcombe, not at first
cordially--for the man yet remains to be discovered who is grateful to
his doctor--but gradually more and more, and with that healthy action
of the human bosom which is called expectoration, whenever grateful
memories were rekindled by the smell of tar. But this is a trifle; many
useful lives were saved, and the Nation should have thanked Captain
Southcombe, but did not.

After these sad incidents, when sorrow for old friends was tempered by
the friendly warmth afforded by their shoes, a muster was held by the
Major in command, and there was only one officer who could neither
assert himself alive, nor be certified as dead. That one was Erle
Twemlow, and the regiment would rather have lost any other two officers.
Urgent as it was, for the safety of the rest, to fly with every feather
from this pestilential coast, sails were handed, boats despatched, and
dealings tried with Hunko Jum, who had reappeared with promptitude, the
moment he was not wanted. From this noble monarch, and his chiefs, and
all his nation, it was hard to get any clear intelligence, because their
own was absorbed in absorbing. They had found upon the sands a cask of
Admiralty rum, as well as a stout residue of unadulterated pitch. Noses,
and tongues, and historical romance--for a cask had been washed ashore
five generations since, and set up for a god, when the last drop was
licked--induced this brave nation to begin upon the rum; and fashion (as
powerful with them as with us) compelled them to drink the tar likewise,
because they had seen the white men doing it. This would have made it
hard to understand them, even if they had been English scholars, which
their ignorance of rum proved them not to be; and our sailors very
nearly went their way, after sadly ascertaining nothing, except that the
cask was empty.

But luckily, just as they were pushing off, a very large, black head
appeared from behind a vegetable-ivory tree, less than a quarter of a
mile away, and they knew that this belonged to Bandeliah, the revered
king of the Crumbos, who had evidently smelled rum far inland. With
him they were enabled to hold discourse, partly by signs, and partly by
means of an old and highly polished negro, who had been the rat-catcher
at the factory now consumed; and the conclusion, or perhaps the
confusion, arrived at from signs, grunts, grins, nods, waggings of
fingers and twistings of toes, translated grandiloquently into broken
Englis