“For any sake,” cried the good-natured physician, “don’t make a joke of this matter.  The monkey has now in his jaws more than a hundred grains of calomel, and unless you get it from him, he will die to a certainty!”

Literally, the quantity Jacko had purloined, had it been prescribed, would have been ordered in these terms:—­

Rx Hydrargyri submuriatis, 3ij. (Take of calomel 120 grains!)

This appeal, which was quite intelligible, caused an immediate rush of the men aloft; but the monkey, after gulping down one of the lumps, or twenty-four grains, shot upwards to the top, over the rail of which he displayed his shaven countenance, and, as if in scorn of their impotent efforts to catch him, plucked another lump from his cheek, and swallowed it likewise, making four dozen grains to begin with.  The news spread over the ship; and all hands, marines inclusive, most of whom had never been farther in the rigging than was necessary to hang up a wet shirt to dry, were seen struggling aloft to rescue the poor monkey from his sad fate.  All their exertions were fruitless; for just as the captain of the maintop seized him by the tail, at the starboard royal yard-arm, he was cramming the last batch of calomel down his throat!

It would give needless pain to describe the effects of swallowing the whole of this enormous prescription.  Every art was resorted to within our reach in the shape of antidotes, but all in vain.  The stomach-pump was then, unfortunately, not invented.  Poor Jacko’s sufferings, of course, were great:  first, he lost the use of his limbs, then he became blind, next paralytic; and, in short, he presented, at the end of the week, such a dreadful spectacle of pain, distortion, and rigidity of limb, that I felt absolutely obliged to desire that he might be released from his misery, by being thrown into the sea.  This was accordingly done when the ship was going along, for the British Channel, at the rate of seven or eight knots, with a fine fair wind.  Very shortly afterwards it fell calm, and next day the wind drew round to the eastward.  It continued at that point till we were blown fifty leagues back, and kept at sea so much longer than we had reckoned upon, that we were obliged to reduce our daily allowance of provisions and water to a most painfully small quantity.  The sailors unanimously ascribed the whole of our bad luck to the circumstance of the monkey being thrown overboard.

I had all my nautical life been well aware that a cat ought never to be so treated; but never knew, till the fate of this poor animal acquainted me with the fact, that a monkey is included in Jack’s superstition.