There was one awful lurch, a grinding crash, a sinking sensation, a vice-like grip about my throat—and outer darkness.
I was aroused in broad daylight by Sawmy, who had brought my tea and shaving-water. I was lying on the floor of the saloon, and he was stooping over me, with a frightened expression on his broad, brown countenance.
“At first I thinking master dead!” was his candid announcement. “Me plenty fraiding. Why master lying here and no in bed?” Why indeed!
A plunge of my head into cool water, and a cup of tea, brought me to myself, and then I flung on my dressing-gown, and hurried across the saloon to see what had become of the miserable Mellish.
He was stretched in his berth, with a life-belt beside him, rigid and cold, and in a sort of fit.
With brandy, burnt brown paper, and great difficulty, Sawmy and I brought him round. As soon as he had come to his senses, and realized that he was still in the land of the living, he sat up and turned on me quite ferociously, and said—
“And that’s what you call lobster!”
The weather had moderated considerably, and though I had no great appetite, I was able to appear at breakfast. Mellish was too shattered to join us, and lay in a long chair in the deck-house, sipping beef-tea, and hysterically assuring all inquirers that “he would never again set foot in the saloon—no, he would much rather die!”