at which I had taken passage. Passengers and crew, fatigued by their
somewhat awkward attempts to manifest their gratitude for our miraculous
deliverance from the cloud-bank, were snoring peacefully in unconsidered
attitudes about the deck, when the lookout man, perched on the supreme
extremity of the mainmast, consuming a cold sausage, began an apparently
preconcerted series of extraordinary and unimaginable noises. He
coughed, sneezed, and barked simultaneously--bleated in one breath, and
cackled in the next--sputteringly shrieked, and chatteringly squealed,
with a bass of suffocated roars. There were desolutory vocal explosions,
tapering off in long wails, half smothered in unintelligible small-talk.
He whistled, wheezed, and trumpeted; began to sharp, thought better of
it and flatted; neighed like a horse, and then thundered like a drum!
Through it all he continued making incomprehensible signals with one
hand while clutching his throat with the other. Presently he gave it up,
and silently descended to the deck.

By this time we were all attention; and no sooner had he set foot
amongst us, than he was assailed with a tempest of questions which, had
they been visible, would have resembled a flight of pigeons. He made no
reply--not even by a look, but passed through our enclosing mass with a
grim, defiant step, a face deathly white, and a set of the jaw as of one
repressing an ambitious dinner, or ignoring a venomous toothache. For
the poor man was choking!

Passing down the companion-way, the patient sought the surgeon's cabin,
with the ship's company at his heels. The surgeon was fast asleep, the
lark-like performance at the masthead having been inaudible in that
lower region. While some of us were holding a whisky-bottle to the
medical nose, in order to apprise the medical intelligence of the demand
upon it, the patient seated himself in statuesque silence. By this time