"
Mac looked at me, laughing long and loud. "Thou dear innocent Ned!" cried
he at last, "what a diagnostic thou wouldst make! It was indeed the talk of
madness, good chum, and a very pretty madness was it, one that needeth not
any Anticyran purgatives to expel it. So thou must not fash thyself about
the lad, _du liebe dummkopf_, for he will come right very speedily. Didst
remark not what he said about the 'herb Pantagruelion,' which, in the
vulgar, meaneth only _hemp_? And surely you noted the warm flush of his
cheek, the dilatation of his eye, and its phosphorescent glow? Dr. Thorne
would soon enough tell you what these things signify. The boy is not crazy,
Ned, but drunk,--drunk in the decorous delirium of a Damascene Pacha,
propped against a Georgian maid, and fanned by Houris of Bethlehem
Judah. He has been reading Monte Cristo, perhaps, or has somehow heard
about the Indian Hemp, not the '_utilissima funibus cannabis_' of practical
Pliny, but _Cannabis Indica_, wherewith, I believe, Amrou spurred on his
Arabs to their miraculous feats of war, when he conquered Egypt and drove
Alexandria's Prefect into the sea,--the _bhang_ of amok-running Malays, the
_haschish_ of Syria and Cairo. This is what hath made him drunk, and, i'
faith, the intoxication does not ill become him. He will be all right in
the morning, and all the better for this little brush. And anyhow, Ned, you
must not watch the boy too closely, nor interfere with him.
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