but himself."

The gentlemen guessed rightly. All the next day Dr Thompson kept his
cot, and was duly reported to the captain as dangerously ill. Now, our
first-lieutenant was a noble, frank, yet sensible and shrewd fellow, and
the captain was as mischief-loving, wicked little devil, as ever grinned
over a spiteful frolic. They held a consultation upon the case, and
soon came to a more decided opinion on it, than the gentlemen of the
faculty generally do on such occasions. Now, whilst the doctor is
plotting to prove himself desperately and almost hopelessly sick, and
the captain and Mr Farmer, to make him suddenly well, in spite of
himself I shall take the opportunity of displaying my own heroic deeds,
when placed in the first independent command ever conferred upon me.
Jason, with his Argonauts, went to bear away the Golden Fleece;
Columbus, and his heroes, to give a world to the sovereign of Spain; and
I, with two little boys, pushed out of the Cove perilously to procure
some sand in the dingy. Nothing elevates a biography like appropriate
comparison. But I doubt whether either Jason or Columbus felt a more
enthusiastic glow pervade their frames when each saw himself fairly
under sail for unknown seas than I did when I seized the tiller of the
dinghy, which was, by the bye, a stick not at all bigger than that which
I had, not many months before, used in trundling my hoop.

CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR.

A LITTLE BOAT WITH A LARGE CARGO--WORSE THAN THE DRIFT OF A DULL
ARGUMENT, RALPH FINDS DRIFTING ACROSS THE ATLANTIC--HE MEETS WITH LAND
AT LENGTH, AND A REAL IRISH WELCOME--POTATOES AND POTEEN, AND MUCH MORE
FUR THAN FURNITURE.

But this little boat, as it so often bore Caesar and his fortunes, and
our surgeon and his fat, deserves and shall have a more than passing
notice. It was perhaps one of the smallest crafts that ever braved the
seas. Such a floating miniature you may have conceived Gulliver to be
placed in, when he was sighed across the tub of water by his Brobdignag
princess. Woefully and timorously, many's the time and oft did the
obese doctor eye it from the gangway; when asking for a boat, the
first-lieutenant, smiling benignantly, would reply, "Doctor, take the
dinghy." It was all that the dinghy could do, to take the doctor. Then
the care with which he gently deposited himself precisely in the centre
of the very small stern-sheets, would have afforded a fine moral lesson
to those who pretend t