d furious squalls with which
we had been obliged to contend; and this brought the dangerous Marshall
group right athwart our track. Therefore, the poor old skipper being
still unwell, and quite unfit for duty, I decided to make a good stretch
to the northward--say as far as latitude 10 degrees North--before
bearing up for Canton; by doing which I should have a clear sea before
me for the remainder of the trip.

I have spoken of the skipper as being unwell and quite unfit for duty;
but that scarcely conveys a correct impression of his condition. The
fact was that he was well enough to be up and about on deck, but he was
constantly worried with headache of the most distracting kind, and, what
was still worse, his intellect seemed to be failing him: he suffered
from frequent total lapses of memory, stopping short in the midst of a
conversation simply because he forgot in a moment what he was talking
about; and he was subject, from time to time, to hallucinations, when he
would assure us, with the utmost gravity, that he was the King of
England taking a holiday "incognito", the re-incarnation of Morgan the
pirate, or something else equally ridiculous, while at other times he
would be perfectly rational. For the first two or three weeks, while
these symptoms were in process of development, he caused Cunningham and
me a very considerable amount of anxiety, for we were constantly
dreading some new departure which would render him dangerous either to
himself or to others; but at length, as we were unable to detect any
such tendency, we grew easier in our minds, just allowing him to wander
about the ship at his own sweet will, and amuse himself by giving the
most extraordinary orders, which nobody ever even pretended to carry
out. We came to the conclusion that he was suffering from some obscure
form of concussion of the brain, from which we hoped he might be
relieved upon our arrival at Hong-Kong, where we expected to obtain
efficient surgical assistance; but that, meanwhile, he was in no very
serious danger. As the event proved, however, we were all woefully
mistaken. We had made as much northing as I deemed necessary, and were
bowling along upon a west-nor'-west course, reeling off our ten knots
per hour, with all our flying kites abroad and a fine north-east breeze
over our starboard quarter, when, about four bells in the first; watch,
the skipper came up on deck complaining that he found it impossible to
sleep in cons