arried the canoe with exquisite
management through the shallows and over the breakers, and poor
Popanilla in a few minutes found himself out at sea. Tremendously
frightened, he offered to recant all his opinions, and denounce as
traitors any individuals whom the Court might select. But his former
companions did not exactly detect the utility of his return. His offers,
his supplications, were equally fruitless; and the only answer which
floated to him on the wind was, 'Farewell, Captain Popanilla!'

CHAPTER 6

Night fell upon the waters, dark and drear, and thick and misty. How
unlike those brilliant hours that once summoned him to revelry and love!
Unhappy Popanilla! Thy delicious Fantaisie has vanished! Ah, pitiable
youth! What could possibly have induced you to be so very rash? And all
from that unlucky lock of hair!

After a few natural paroxysms of rage, terror, anguish, and remorse,
the Captain as naturally subsided into despair, and awaited with sullen
apathy that fate which could not be far distant. The only thing which
puzzled the philosophical navigator was his inability to detect what
useful end could be attained by his death. At length, remembering that
fish must be fed, his theory and his desperation were at the same time
confirmed.

A clear, dry morning succeeded the wet, gloomy night, and Popanilla had
not yet gone down. This extraordinary suspension of his fate roused him
from his stupor, and between the consequent excitement and the morning
air he acquired an appetite. Philosophical physicians appear to
have agreed that sorrow, to a certain extent, is not unfavourable to
digestion; and as Popanilla began to entertain some indefinite and
unreasonable hopes, the alligator-pears quickly disappeared. In
the meantime the little canoe cut her way, as if she were chasing a
smuggler; and had it not been for a shark or two who, in anticipation
of their services being required, never left her side for a second,
Popanilla really might have made some ingenious observations on the
nature of tides. He was rather surprised, certainly, as he watched his
frail bark cresting the waves; but he soon supposed that this was all in
the natural course of things; and he now ascribed his previous fright,
not to the peril of his situation, but to his inexperience of it.

Although his apprehension of being drowned was now removed, yet when he
gazed on the boundless vacancy before him, and also observed that his
provisio