the white caps heaved harder, I would make you behold it wrestling
with the tempest, and standing on end upon the hero's cranium,
with its mighty mane of blue wool bristling out in the spray and
breeze. Position Fourth: at six in the afternoon, with the Corsican
coast in view; the unfortunate chechia hangs over the ship's side,
and lamentably stares down as though to plumb the depths of
ocean. Finally and lastly, the Fifth Position: at the back of a
narrow state-room, in a box-bed so small it seemed one drawer in a
nest of them, something shapeless rolled on the pillow with moans
of desolation. This was the fez -- the fez so defiant at the sailing,
now reduced to the vulgar condition of a nightcap, and pulled down
over the very ears of the head of a pallid and convulsed sufferer.

How the people of Tarascon would have kicked themselves for
having constrained the great Tartarin to leave home, if they had but
seen him stretched in the bunk in the dull, wan gleam through the
dead-light, amid the sickly odour of cooking and wet wood -- the
heart-heaving perfume of mail-boats; if they had but heard him
gurgle at every turn of the screw, wail for tea every five minutes,
and swear at the steward in a childish treble!

On my word of honour as a story-teller, the poor Turk would have
made a paste-board dummy pity him. Suddenly, overcome by the
nausea, the hapless victim had not even the power to undo the
Algerian girdle-cloth, or lay aside his armoury; the lumpy-handled
hunting-sword pounded his ribs, and the leather revolver-case
made his thigh raw. To finish him arose the taunts of Sancho-
Tartarin, who never ceased to groan and inveigh:

"Well, for the biggest kind of imbecile, you are the finest specimen!