The castaway's gaze went to the girl kneeling beside him.
"An' the furrin woman!" he muttered.
Florence came running with the flask, which was full of brandy.
"Quick!" Josephine urged. "He's better, but he's raving crazy. Thinks I'm a foreigner."
But, as Florence could have filled the cup of the flask, Zeke interposed, with more animation than he had hitherto shown.
"If so be that's likker, an' ye 'lows to give hit to me, if hit don't make no p'tic'lar diff'rence to you-all, I'd like to drink hit right smack outen thet-thar new-fangled bottle, jest as we be a-used to doin' in the State o' Wilkes."
"As you wish, of course," Florence replied, soothingly. "It will make a new man of you."
Zeke promptly sat up and put his lips to the mouth of the flask, and held them there while the rhythmic movement of his adam's apple visibly witnessed thirstiness. The girls regarded him with astonishment, which quickly merged in dismay, for they could not guess the boomer's capacity for fiery drink. As a matter of fact, Zeke, while he drank, lamented the insipidity of the draught, and sighed for a swig of moonshine to rout the chill in his veins with its fluid flames. He, in turn, was presently to learn, with astonishment, that a beverage so mild to the taste had all the potency of his mountain dram, and more. Chilled as he had been by the long hours of exposure to the night air of the sea, while drifting the fifteen miles from Ocracoke Inlet, and worn in body and mind by the peril of his situation, Zeke found himself almost at once strengthened and cheered by the generous spirit. He was, in fact, another man than the exhausted castaway, as the girl had promised; he was himself again. He was still weak and shaken; but his splendid vitality was asserting itself.
The gray, drawn face was colored to golden tan; the clear eyes were shining with new appreciation of the joy of life. He had not thought much after the very first, during those long, racking hours of tossing on the sea. His brain had become numb. His fancies had run to tender memories of moments spent with Plutina. Often, he had felt her presence there with him, in the dark spaces of the sea. But the idea that most dominated his mind had sprung from the lusty instinct of self-preservation; he must cling to the raft. It had been the one thing that he could do toward safety. His whole will had centered in the clutch of his hands on the tubes.