"I would." Quick as flash he clapped hand to pocket, but the pistol caught on the lining, and before he could free it I had covered him with mine, whereat he grew suddenly rigid and still. "Up wi' your fambles!" says I. Obediently he raised his hands and, taking his pistols, I opened the pan of each one and, having blown out the primings, tossed them back.
"Snake sting me!" says he, laughing ruefully as he re-pocketed his weapons. "This comes o' harbouring a lousy rogue as balks good liquor. The man as won't take good rum hath the head of a chicken, the heart of a yellow dog, and the bowels of a w-worm, and bone-rot him, says I. Lord love me, but I've seen many a better throat than yours slit ere now, my buxom lad!"
"And aided too, belike?" says I.
"Why, here's a leading question--but mum! Here's a hand that knoweth not what doth its fellow--mum, boy, mum!" And tilting back his head he brake forth anew into his villainous song: "Two on a knife did end their life And three the bullet took O, But three times three died plaguily A-wriggling on a hook O. Sing cheerly O and cheerly O, They died by gash o' hook O."
"And look'ee, my ben cull, if I was to offer ye all Bartlemy's treasure--which I can't, mark me--still you'd never gather just what manner o' hook that was. Anan, says you--mum, boy, says I. Howbeit, I say, 'tis a good song," quoth he, blinking drowsily at the fire, "here's battle in't, murder and sudden death and wha--what more could ye expect of any song--aye, and there's women in't too!" Here he fell to singing certain lewd ribaldry that I will not here set down, until what with the rum and the drowsy heat of the fire that I had replenished, he yawned, stretched, and laying himself down, very soon fell a-snoring, to my no small comfort. As for me, I sat there waiting for the dayspring; the fire sank lower and lower, filling the little cave with a rosy glow falling athwart the sprawling form of the sleeper and making his red face seem purplish and suffused like the face of one I had once seen dead of strangulation; howbeit, he slept well enough, judging from his lusty snoring. Now presently in the surrounding dark beyond the smouldering fire was a glimmer, a vague blur of sloping, trampled bank backed by misty trees; so came the dawn, very chill and full of eddying mists that crawled phantom-like, filling the little dingle brimful and blotting out the surrounding trees. In a little I arose and, coming without the cave, shivered in the colder air, shaken with raging hunger. And now remembering my utter destitution, I stooped to peer down at the sleeper, half minded to go through his pockets, but in a while I turned away and left him sprawled in his sottish slumber.