and try to get out of his pouch a
whole mess of my stuff he has run off with!"

The men only laughed, as they fancied the doctor must be cracked.

"For any sake," cried the good-natured physician, "don't make a joke
of this matter. The monkey has now in his jaws more than a hundred
grains of calomel, and unless you get it from him, he will die to a
certainty!"

Literally, the quantity Jacko had purloined, had it been prescribed,
would have been ordered in these terms:--

Rx Hydrargyri submuriatis, 3ij. (Take of calomel 120 grains!)

This appeal, which was quite intelligible, caused an immediate rush of
the men aloft; but the monkey, after gulping down one of the lumps, or
twenty-four grains, shot upwards to the top, over the rail of which he
displayed his shaven countenance, and, as if in scorn of their
impotent efforts to catch him, plucked another lump from his cheek,
and swallowed it likewise, making four dozen grains to begin with. The
news spread over the ship; and all hands, marines inclusive, most of
whom had never been farther in the rigging than was necessary to hang
up a wet shirt to dry, were seen struggling aloft to rescue the poor
monkey from his sad fate. All their exertions were fruitless; for just
as the captain of the maintop seized him by the tail, at the starboard
royal yard-arm, he was cramming the last batch of calomel down his
throat!

It would give needless pain to describe the effects of swallowing the
whole of this enormous prescription. Every art was resorted to within
our reach in the shape of antidotes, but all in vain. The stomach-pump
was then, unfortunately, not invented. Poor Jacko's sufferings, of
course, were great: first, he lost the use of his limbs, then he
became blind, next paralytic; and, in short, he presented, at the end
of the week, such a dreadful spectacle of pain, distortion, and
rigidity of limb, that I felt absolutely obliged to desire that he
might be released from his misery, by being thrown into the sea. This
was accordingly done when the ship was going along, for the British
Channel, at the rate of seven or eight knots, with a fine fair wind.
Very shortly afterwards it fell calm, and next day the wind drew round
to the eastward. It continued at that point till we were blown fifty
leagues back, and kept at sea so much longer than we had reckoned
upon, that we were obliged to reduce our daily allowance of provisions
and water to a most painfully small quantity. Th