“All with missy, sar; Mammy Crissobella die.”
“Run down then to the beach, and desire the surgeon of the brig to come up immediately.”
“Yes, sar,” replied the negro, leaving the room.
“Oh, I feel it now—here,” exclaimed I, putting my hand to my chest; “I’m suffocating.”
“And so do I,” replied one of the midshipmen, weeping.
The girl Leila now entered the room in tears. “Mammy dead,” said she. “Oh Captain Keene, I very sorry for you: you come with me, I give you something. I know how stop pison.”
“Do you, Leila? then give it me; quick, quick.”
“Yes, yes; give it us quick.”
“I not stuff enough but I make more when I gib what I ab to Captain Keene. You all stay still, not move; pose you move about, make pison work. I come back soon as I can.”
Leila then took my arm and led me tottering out of the room, when I went to Mammy Crissobella, and laughed till I cried; but the punishment was not over. After remaining about ten minutes looking at each other, but neither speaking nor moving, in pursuance of Leila’s direction, with the utmost despair in their countenances, they were gladdened by the return of Leila with a large jug, out of which she administered a glass of some compound or another to each of them. I watched at the door, and the eagerness with which they jostled and pushed each other to obtain the dose before the rest was very amusing, and never did they swallow any liquor with so much avidity, little imagining that, instead of taking what was to cure them, they were now taking what was to make them very sick; but so it was; and in a few minutes afterwards the scene of groaning, crying, screaming, writhing with pain, was quite awful.