or the maniac is so
cunning, and the risk of putting a superior officer under an arrest so
tremendous, that they know not what to do. Besides, their captain is
only mad on one subject at one time. Indeed, insanity seems sometimes
to find a vent in monomania, actually improving all the faculties on all
other points. Well, the monkey midshipmen did not behave very
correctly; so, Captain Reud had them one afternoon all tied up to one of
his guns in the cabin, and one after the other, well flogged with the
cat-o'-nine-tails. It was highly ludicrous to see the poor fellows
waiting each for his turn, well knowing what was to come; they never,
than when under the impression of their fears, looked more human. That
night they stole into the cabin, by two or three, in the dead of the
night, and nearly murdered their persecutor. This looked very like
combination, and an exercise of faculties that may be nearly termed
reasoning.

They were all thrown overboard. The next phantasy was the getting up of
the forecastle carronades into the tops, thereby straining the ship and
nearly carrying away the mast. That folly wore out, and the guns came
down to their proper places. Then a huge bear came on board--a very
gentlemanly, dignified fellow; never in a hurry, and who always moved
about with a gracious deliberation. Captain Reud amused himself by
endeavouring to teach him to dance; and a worthless blackguard who could
play on the pipe and tambour, and who probably had led a bear about the
country, was taken into especial grace, and was loaded with benefits, in
order to assist his captain in his singular avocations.

"Come and see my bear dance, do come and see him dance," was now the
little Creole's continual cry. But the bear did not take his tuition
kindly, and grew daily more ferocious; till, at length, seizing his
opportunity, he caught up the diminutive skipper and nearly hugged the
breath out of his body, and almost rubbed his red nose off his yellow
face in endeavouring to bite him through his muzzle. The star of Ursa
Major was no longer in the ascendant, and he was bartered away, with the
master of the first merchant vessel we met, for a couple of game-cocks;
and the bear-leader was turned back into the waist, and flogged the next
day for impertinence, whilst, two days before, the vagabond was too
proud to say "sir" to a middy.

But it would be ridiculous to enumerate the long succession of these
insane whimsicalit