noured. But yesterday the
darling of the public; and now, in the words of our national bard:"

"'--Now lies he here,
And none so poor to do him reverence.'

"You are familiar with the works of Shakespeare, sir? Your speech, if
you will allow me to say so, suggests a respectable education."

"I have dipped into them," answered the Major inattentively, absorbed
in his own woes.

"My consolation is, this will get into the newspapers; and then let
these ignorant ruffians beware!"

"The newspapers! God forbid!" The Major shuddered.

"Ha?" Mr. Sturge drew back in dark surprise. "'Tis the language of
delirium. He raves. What ho, without there!" he called aloud.

"What the devil's up?" responded a voice from the darkness behind the
Major's head. It belonged to a marine standing sentry outside a
spare sail which shut off the _Vesuvius's_ sick bay from the rest of
the lower deck.

"A surgeon, quick! Here's a man awake and delirious."

"All right. You needn't kick up such a row, need you?" growled the
marine.

"Like Nero, I am an angler in a lake of darkness. You have
handcuffed me, moreover, so that even if this accursed sty contains a
bell-rope--which is improbable--I am debarred from using it.
A light, there, and a surgeon, I say!"

The marine let fall the sail flap and withdrew, grumbling.
But apparently Mr. Sturge's mode of giving an order, being unlike
anything in his experience, had impressed him; for by and by a faint
ray illumined the dirty whitewashed beams over the Major's hammock,
and four persons squeezed themselves into the sick bay--the marine
holding a lantern and guiding the ship's surgeon, who was followed in
turn by our friends Mr. Jope and Mr. Bill Adams.

The _Vesuvius_ bomb, measuring but a little more than ninety feet
over all, with a beam of some twenty-seven feet, and carrying seventy
odd men and boys, with six long six-pounder guns and a couple of
heavy mortars, could spare but scanty room for hospital
accommodation. At a pinch, a dozen hammocks could be slung in the
den which the marine's lantern revealed; but how a dozen sick men
could recover there, and how the surgeon could move between the
hammocks to perform his ministrations, were mysteries happily left
unsolved. As it was, the two invalids and their visitors crowded the
place to suffocation.

"Delirious, you say?" hemmed the surgeon, a bald little man with a
twinkling eye, an unshaven chin and a