The shouts of fire alarmed the whole hospital, and here, pell-mell, came the patients to see where it was. Forms emaciated by consumption rustled against others distended by dropsy. Four forms lay mixed up in the hall, and all of them could only muster up two pairs of legs, a pair and a half of eyes, and four arms. It was as though a false alarm had been given by Gabriel, and only a partial resurrection had taken place.
In one of the upper apartments was a private patient, labouring under the disease indifferently known as the blue-devils, red-monkeys, seeing injuns, or man-with-the-poker, or rather that mysterious individual had succeeded in overtaking his victim, and awful licks, to be sure, he was giving. His delirium was, that he was an alligator, and that there was a blood-thirsty minnow determined on taking his life at all hazards. Great were his struggles to preserve himself, requiring the constant presence of two keepers to restrain him from self-immolation.
Hearing the shouts of fire from below, they, acting on the conservative principle, left their patient, and sought safety in flight, not long unfollowed by the drunkard, who proceeded down stairs, until he came to the ward from whence the shouts of laughter had not ceased to issue.
The door being open, in he marched, presenting a fearful aspect—nearly naked, his eyes blood-shotten, and glaring with the light of delirium, his teeth clenched, with the lips drawn apart, a slight foam resting on them, blood dripping from a wound in his forehead, and brandishing a huge medical appurtenance, acting on the principle of the force-pump, and familiar to children on a small scale.
Seeing Pat in the tub, the cynosure of all eyes, the man with the red-monkeys took an idea that he was the identical minnow aiming at the vitality of his alligatorship, and this would be a good opportunity of killing him off.
With a loud yell, he sprung towards poor Pat, who, perfectly bewildered, let him get nearly on him, before he thought of getting out of the way.
“Hould him!” he yelled, “the crathur's gone clane out of his head! Holy jabers! hould him! He'll be afther the killin' me!”
But no one having time, or showing a disposition to interfere, he found he would have to bestir himself in his own behalf, and the biggest tracks, and the fastest, and the more of them, were made by the man who, previous to the time, had not moved a step for months. Through the long hall, down the double steps, out of the yard, and over the commons he went, yelling at every jump, whilst the “man with the poker's” friend, perfectly satisfied at the result, fish-like squatted down in the tub, and then quietly suffered himself to be led back to his room.