West Indies, and fitted out a vessel--a brig she was, as I
remember--called the _Perseverance_. Whereby this here friend o'
mine, Zekiel Philips by name, shipped aboard of her. Whereby they
made a good passage and anchored off one of the islands--Otaheety or
not, I won't say--and took aboard a cargo, being, as they supposed,
ord'nary breadfruit; and stood away east-by-south for the Horn,
meaning to work up to Kingston, Jamaica. But this particular
breadfruit was of a fattening natur', whether eaten or, as you may
say, ab-sorbed into the system through a part of it getting down to
the bilge and fermenting, and the gas of it working up through the
vessel. Whereby, the breeze holding steady and no sail to trim for
some days, the crew took it easy below, with naught to warn 'em,
unless, maybe, 'twas a tight'ning o' the buttons. Whereby on the
fifth day they ran a-foul of a cyclone; and the cry being for all
hands on deck, half a dozen stuck in the hatchway and had to be sawed
loose. Whereby, in the meantime, she carried away her mainm'st, and
the wreckage knocked a hole in her starboard quarter. Likewise, her
stern-post being rotten, she lost a pintle, and the helm began to
look fifty ways for Sunday. All o' which caused the skipper to lay
to, fix up a jury rudder and run up for the nearest island to caulk
and repair. But meantime, and before he sighted land, this
unfortunate crew kept puttin' on flesh--and the cause of it hid from
them all the time--till there wasn't on the ship a pair of
smallclothes but had refused duty. Whereby, coming to the island in
question, they went ashore, every man Jack in loin-cloths cut out o'
the stun-s'le, and the rest of 'em as bare as the back of my hand.
Whereby their appearance excited the natives to such a degree, being
superstitious, they was set upon and eaten to a man. The moral
bein'," concluded Mr. Adams, "that a man lay be brought low by bein'
puffed up."

"Ay," said Mr. Jope after a pause. "I never had no great
acquaintance with poetry, but I bought a pocket-handkercher once for
tuppence with a verse on it:"

"'Ri fal de ral diddle, ri fal de ral dee,
What ups and downs in the world there be!'

"And I don't believe you could use a truer text for the purpose, no
matter what you paid."

The Major sighed. He was a high-spirited man, as the reader knows,
and I believe that, but for one cruel memory, he might have learnt
even to taste some humour in his s