“Potz-tausend!” said Mr. Doppeldick, as he crawled backwards out of the bed like a crab.
“Ten thousand devils!” bellowed Captain Schenk—a suppressed exclamation that the first shock had driven from his mouth into his throat, from his throat into his lungs, and from thence into his stomach; but which the second shock had now driven out again in full force.
THE BEARER OF THE GREAT SEAL.
******
“Why, I thought, Mister Jean Paul Nemand (says the reader), that we left the Captain safe and sound, in his own bed, next the window, with the patch-work coverlet?”
“And so we did, Mister Carl Wilhelm Jemand (says the author,) but it was so short, that in five minutes he caught the cramp. Wherefore, as there was a second spare bed in the room, and as honest Dietrich had said nothing of other lodgers, and as of all blessings we ought to choose the biggest, the Captain determined to give it a trial—and between you and me he liked the bed well enough, till he felt a sort of smashing pain all over his body, his eyes squeezing out of his face, his nose squeezing into it, and his precious front teeth, at a gulp, going uninvited down his gullet!”
