Now or never was the time.

Blunt caught her round the waist with one arm, and hiccuping with love and rum, approached to take the kiss he coveted.

She seized the moment, surrendered herself to his embrace, drew from her pocket the laudanum bottle, and passing her hand over his shoulder, poured half its contents into the glass.
"Think I'm--hic--drunk, do yer?
Nun--not I, my wench." "You will be if you drink much more.

Come, finish that and be quiet, or I'll go away." But she threw a provocation into her glance as she spoke, which belied her words, and which penetrated even the sodden intellect of poor Blunt.

He balanced himself on his heels for a moment, and holding by the moulding of the cabin, stared at her with a fatuous smile of drunken admiration, then looked at the glass in his hand, hiccuped with much solemnity thrice, and, as though struck with a sudden sense of duty unfulfilled, swallowed the contents at a gulp.