st probably had been cooked in a copper vessel not properly
tinned. We were all very anxious that he should recover; but, on the
contrary, he appeared to grow worse and worse every day, wasting away,
and dying, as they say, by inches. At last he was put in his cot, and
never rose from it again. This melancholy circumstance, added to the
knowledge that we were proceeding to an unhealthy climate, caused a
gloom throughout the ship; and although the trade wind carried us along
bounding over the bright blue sea--although the weather was now warm,
yet not too warm--although the sun rose in splendour, and all was
beautiful and cheering, the state of the captain's health was a check to
all mirth. Every one trod the deck softly, and spoke in a low voice,
that he might not be disturbed; all were anxious to have the morning
report of the surgeon, and our conversation was generally upon the
sickly climate, the yellow fever, of death and the palisades where they
buried us. Swinburne, the quarter-master, was in my watch, and as he
had been long in the West Indies, I used to obtain all the information
from him that I could.

The old fellow had a secret pleasure in frightening me as much as he
could. "Really, Mr Simple, you ax so many questions," he would say, as
I accosted him while he was at his station at the _conn_, "I wish you
wouldn't ax so many questions, and make yourself uncomfortable--`steady
so'--`steady it is;'--with regard to Yellow Jack, as we calls the yellow
fever; it's a devil incarnate, that's sartain--you're well and able to
take your allowance in the morning, and dead as a herring 'fore night.
First comes a bit of a headache--you goes to the doctor, who bleeds you
like a pig--then you go out of your senses--then up comes the black
vomit, and then it's all over with you, and you go to the land crabs,
who pick your bones as clean and as white as a sea elephant's tooth.
But there be one thing to be said in favour of Yellow Jack, a'ter all.
You dies _straight_, like a gentleman--not cribbled up like a snow-fish,
chucked out on the ice of the river St. Lawrence, with your knees up to
your nose, or your toes stuck into your arm-pits, as does take place in
some of your foreign complaints; but straight, quite straight, and
limber, like a _gentleman_. Still Jack is a little mischievous, that's
sartain. In the _Euridiscy_ we had as fine a ship's company as was ever
piped aloft--`Steady, starboard, my man, you're half