me, and you may be sure that I
did not omit to ask him if he would try the brimstone and treacle. I
behaved worse to him, I believe, for I tortured him by taking him cold
fat pork and hard biscuits, and paid him various other little attentions
of a kindred sort, making him groan with pain, till one day--it was
while the sea was very rough, and I thought him too ill to move--he
suddenly got up.

"Tell you what, Mas'r Harry," he said, "I'm not going to stand your
games no longer. I shall get up and be better;" and better he seemed to
grow at once, so that by the next day he was almost himself again, and
we stood by the high bulwarks watching the great Atlantic rollers as
they came slowly on, as if to swallow up our ship.

CHAPTER FIVE.

A SAILOR ON SEA-SERPENTS.

"It do puzzle me, Mas'r Harry," said Tom, as we sat in the chains one
bright, sunny day, when the storm was over, but a fine stiff breeze was
helping the toiling engines to send the steamer along at a splendid
rate.

"What puzzles you, Tom?" I asked.

"Why, where all the water comes from. Just look at it now. Here have
we been coming along for more'n a week, and it's been nothing but water,
water, water."

"And we could go on for months, Tom, sailing, sailing away into the
distant ocean, and still it would be nothing but water, water, water."

"Well, but what's the good of it all, Mas'r Harry? Why, if I was to get
up a company to do it, and drain it all off, the bottom of the sea here
would be all land, and people could walk or have railways instead of
being cooped up in a great long tossing box like this, and made so--Oh,
dear me, it nearly makes me ill again to think of it."

"Ah! that would be a capital arrangement, Tom," I said smiling. "What a
lot more room there would be on the earth then!"

"Wouldn't there, Mas'r Harry?" he cried eagerly.

"A tremendous deal more, Tom. Every poor fellow might have an estate of
his own; but where would you drain the water to?"

"Where would I drain the water to, Mas'r Harry?"

"To be sure," I said, enjoying his puzzled look. "If you take it away
from here you must send it somewhere else."

"Of course, Mas'r Harry, of course," he replied eagerly. "Oh, I'd
employ thousands of navvies to dig a big drain and let the water right
off."

"Yes, I understand that," I replied; "but where is the drain to lead?"

"Where's the drain to lead?"

"Yes; where is the water to run?"

"Where's the water t