uddenly to rush
from table without the slightest ostensible reason, and dart up the steps
with incredible swiftness: thereby greatly damaging both himself and the
steward, who happened to be coming down at the same moment.

The cloth was removed; the dessert was laid on the table; and the glasses
were filled. The motion of the boat increased; several members of the
party began to feel rather vague and misty, and looked as if they had
only just got up. The young gentleman with the spectacles, who had been
in a fluctuating state for some time--at one moment bright, and at
another dismal, like a revolving light on the sea-coast--rashly announced
his wish to propose a toast. After several ineffectual attempts to
preserve his perpendicular, the young gentleman, having managed to hook
himself to the centre leg of the table with his left hand, proceeded as
follows:

'Ladies and gentlemen. A gentleman is among us--I may say a
stranger--(here some painful thought seemed to strike the orator; he
paused, and looked extremely odd)--whose talents, whose travels, whose
cheerfulness--'

'I beg your pardon, Edkins,' hastily interrupted Mr. Percy
Noakes,--'Hardy, what's the matter?'

'Nothing,' replied the 'funny gentleman,' who had just life enough left
to utter two consecutive syllables.

'Will you have some brandy?'

'No!' replied Hardy in a tone of great indignation, and looking as
comfortable as Temple-bar in a Scotch mist; 'what should I want brandy
for?'

'Will you go on deck?'

'No, I will _not_.' This was said with a most determined air, and in a
voice which might have been taken for an imitation of anything; it was
quite as much like a guinea-pig as a bassoon.

'I beg your pardon, Edkins,' said the courteous Percy; 'I thought our
friend was ill. Pray go on.'

A pause.

'Pray go on.'

'Mr. Edkins _is_ gone,' cried somebody.

'I beg your pardon, sir,' said the steward, running up to Mr. Percy
Noakes, 'I beg your pardon, sir, but the gentleman as just went on
deck--him with the green spectacles--is uncommon bad, to be sure; and the
young man as played the wiolin says, that unless he has some brandy he
can't answer for the consequences. He says he has a wife and two
children, whose werry subsistence depends on his breaking a wessel, and
he expects to do so every moment. The flageolet's been werry ill, but
he's better, only he's in a dreadful prusperation.'

All disguise was now useless; the company stag