There’s a fish at Bermuda that is known as the toad-fish (so Alfonso told me), and when you tickle it it blows itself out after the manner of the frog who tried to be as big as an ox.  It becomes as round as a football, and if you throw it on the water it floats.  If you touch it it sounds (according to Alfonso) “all same as a banjo.”  It will live some time out of water; and if it shows any signs of subsiding, another tickle will blow it out again.  “Too muchee tickle him burst,” said Alfonso.  I had heard this decidedly nasty story just before the pilot’s departure, and it was now the culmination of all the foolish thoughts that gibbered in my head.  I couldn’t help thinking of it as I held my breath to suppress my laughter, and quaked for the yet more volatile Dennis.  Oh, dear!  Why wouldn’t that mass of absurdity walk quicker?  His feet were big enough.  Meanwhile we stood like mutes—­eyes front!  To have looked at each other would have been fatal.  “Too muchee tickle him burst.”  I hope we looked grave (I have little doubt now that we looked as if we were having our photographs taken).  The sob had mounted from my waist to my throat.  My teeth were set, my eyes watered, but the pilot was here now.  In a moment he would be down the side.  With an excess of zeal I found strength to raise my hand for a salute.

I fear it was this that pleased him, and made him stop; and we couldn’t help looking at him.  His hat was a little set back for the heat, his black triangular feet were in the third position of dancing.  He smiled.

There was an explosive sound to my right.  I knew what it meant.  Dennis had “burst.”

And then I never felt less like laughing in my life.  Visions of insubordination, disrespect, mutiny, flogging, and black-hole, rushed through my head, and I had serious thoughts of falling on my knees before the insulted pilot.  With unfeigned gratitude I record that he was as magnanimous as he was magnificent.  He took no revenge, except in words.  What he said was,

“Me one coloured gentleman.  You one dam mean white trash ob common sailor.  YAH!”

And with unimpaired dignity he descended the ladder and was rowed away over the prismatic waters.  And Alister and I turned round to look for Dennis, and found him sitting in the scuppers, wiping the laughter-tears out of his thick eyelashes.

There was something fateful about that evening, which was perhaps what made the air so heavy.  If I had been keeping the log, I should have made the following entry:  “Captain got drunk.  A ring round the moon.  Alister and Dennis quarrelsome.”

I saw the ring round the moon when I was rowing the captain and the mate back from one of the islands, where they had been ashore.  Alfonso afterwards pointed it out to me and said, “Tell you, Jack, I’m glad dis ole tub in harbour now!” from which I concluded that it was an omen of bad weather.

Alister and Dennis were still sparring.  I began to think we’d better stretch a rope and let them have it out with their fists, but I could not make out that there was anything to fight about except that Alister had accused Dennis of playing the fool, and Dennis had said that Alister was about as good company as a grave-digger.  I felt very feverish and said so, on which they both began to apologize, and we all turned in for some sleep.