his pallor, which was but the mark of a determined mind, had given place
to a fervent crimson, which visibly deepened into a pronounced purple,
and was ultimately superseded by a clouded blue, shot through with
opalescent gleams, and smitten with variable streaks of black. The face
was swollen and shapeless, the neck puffy. The eyes protruded like pegs
of a hat-stand.

Pretty soon the doctor was got 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