ot awake, and after making a careful
examination of his patient, remarking that it was a lovely case of
_stopupagus oesophagi_, took a tool and set to work, producing with no
difficulty a cold sausage of the size, figure, and general bearing of a
somewhat self-important banana. The operation had been performed amid
breathless silence, but the moment it was concluded the patient, whose
neck and head had visibly collapsed, sprang to his feet and shouted:

"Man overboard!"

That is what he had been trying to say.

There was a confused rush to the upper deck, and everybody flung
something over the ship's side--a life-belt, a chicken-coop, a coil of
rope, a spar, an old sail, a pocket handkerchief, an iron crowbar--any
movable article which it was thought might be useful to a drowning man
who had followed the vessel during the hour that had elapsed since the
initial alarm at the mast-head. In a few moments the ship was pretty
nearly dismantled of everything that could be easily renounced, and some
excitable passenger having cut away the boats there was nothing more
that we could do, though the chaplain explained that if the ill-fated
gentleman in the wet did not turn up after a while it was his intention
to stand at the stern and read the burial service of the Church of
England.

Presently it occurred to some ingenious person to inquire who had gone
overboard, and all hands being mustered and the roll called, to our
great chagrin every man answered to his name, passengers and all!
Captain Troutbeck, however, held that in a matter of so great importance
a simple roll-call was insufficient, and with an assertion of authority
that was encouraging insisted that every person on board be separately
sworn. The result was the same; nobody was missing and the captain,
begging pardon for having doubted our veracity, retired to his cabin to
avoid further responsibility, but expressed a hope that for the purpose
of having everything properly recorded in the log-book we would apprise
him of any further action that we might think it advisable to take. I
smiled as I remembered that in the interest of the unknown gentleman
whose peril we had overestimated I had flung the log-book over the
ship's side.

Soon afterward I felt suddenly inspired with one of those great ideas
that come to most men only once or twice in a lifetime, and to the
ordinary story teller never. Hastily reconvening the ship's company I
mounted the capstan and thus