together at the top, and a sailor who had gone up the foremast got bewildered, came down the mizzenmast, looked out over the stern at the receding shores of Malta and shouted:  “Land, ho!” The ship’s fastenings were all giving way; the water on each side was lashed into foam by the tempest of flying bolts that she shed at every pulsation of the cargo.  She was quietly wrecking herself without assistance from wind or wave, by the sheer internal energy of feline expansion.

I went to the skipper about it.  He was in his favorite position, sitting on the deck, supporting his back against the binnacle, making a V of his legs, and smoking.

“Captain Doble,” I said, respectfully touching my hat, which was really not worthy of respect, “this floating palace is afflicted with curvature of the spine and is likewise greatly swollen.”

Without raising his eyes he courteously acknowledged my presence by knocking the ashes from his pipe.

“Permit me, Captain,” I said, with simple dignity, “to repeat that this ship is much swollen.”

“If that is true,” said the gallant mariner, reaching for his tobacco pouch, “I think it would be as well to swab her down with liniment.  There’s a bottle of it in my cabin.  Better suggest it to the mate.”

“But, Captain, there is no time for empirical treatment; some of the planks at the water line have started.”

The skipper rose and looked out over the stern, toward the land; he fixed his eyes on the foaming wake; he gazed into the water to starboard and to port.  Then he said: 

“My friend, the whole darned thing has started.”

Sadly and silently I turned from that obdurate man and walked forward.  Suddenly “there was a burst of thunder sound!” The hatch that had held down the cargo was flung whirling into space and sailed in the air like a blown leaf.  Pushing upward through the hatchway was a smooth, square column of cat.  Grandly and impressively it grew—­slowly, serenely, majestically it rose toward the welkin, the relaxing keel parting the mastheads to give it a fair chance.  I have stood at Naples and seen Vesuvius painting the town red—­from Catania have marked afar, upon the flanks of AEtna, the lava’s awful pursuit of the astonished rooster and the despairing pig.  The fiery flow from Kilauea’s crater, thrusting itself into the forests and licking the entire country clean, is as familiar to me as my mother-tongue.  I have seen glaciers, a thousand years old and quite bald, heading for a valley full of tourists at the rate of an inch a month.  I have seen a saturated solution of mining camp going down a mountain river, to make a sociable call on the valley farmers.  I have stood behind a tree on the battle-field and seen a compact square mile of armed men moving with irresistible momentum to the rear.  Whenever anything grand in magnitude or motion is billed to appear I commonly manage to beat my way into the show, and in reporting it I am a man of unscrupulous veracity; but I have seldom observed anything like that solid gray column of Maltese cat!