Epistemon was conjuring, with his astrolabe, to know what latitude we were in.
Friar John was got into the cook-room, examining, by the ascendant of the spits and the horoscope of ragouts and fricassees, what time of day it might then be.
Panurge (sweet baby!) held a stalk of Pantagruelions, alias hemp, next his tongue, and with it made pretty bubbles and bladders.
Gymnast was making tooth-pickers with lentisk.
Ponocrates, dozing, dozed, and dreaming, dreamed; tickled himself to make himself laugh, and with one finger scratched his noddle where it did not itch.
Carpalin, with a nutshell and a trencher of verne (that's a card in Gascony), was making a pretty little merry windmill, cutting the card longways into four slips, and fastening them with a pin to the convex of the nut, and its concave to the tarred side of the gunnel of the ship.
Eusthenes, bestriding one of the guns, was playing on it with his fingers as if it had been a trump-marine.
Rhizotome, with the soft coat of a field tortoise, alias ycleped a mole, was making himself a velvet purse.
Xenomanes was patching up an old weather-beaten lantern with a hawk's jesses.
Our pilot (good man!) was pulling maggots out of the seamen's noses.