After a brief consultation, it was agreed that, to prevent all chance of taking cold in so damp a dormitory, they should retire to rest in their clothes; and Mrs. Sandboys having disengaged herself of her hood and cloak, prepared to make the perilous ascent. By the aid of her Cursty’s hand she mounted the little trestle of the beer-barrel, which she previously placed immediately under the hammock, and then, turning her back towards the suspended bed she managed, with a slight jump, to seat herself on the extreme edge of the sacking. Her figure, however, being rather corpulent, the weight of her whole body no sooner rested on one side of the oscillating couch, than the whole apparatus slid from under her, and she was suddenly plunged down on to the corner of the temporary toilet-table. Fortunately for the good lady, the top of the artificial wash-hand-stand consisted of a board merely laid across the head of a barrel; so that immediately she touched the ricketty arrangement, the board, basin, and pitcher were all tilted forward, and the entire contents of the water-jug emptied full into her face, as she fell to the ground. What with the crash of the crockery, the splashing of the water, and the bumping of poor dear Mrs. Sandboys on the carpet, Cursty was almost paralyzed with fright. He was afraid even to raise his darling Aggy from the ground, for he felt that something serious must have happened to her. But Mrs. Sandboys luckily was sound in her bones, though severely bruised in her flesh; and as Cursty helped her up from the floor, she shook the water from her hair, and vowed that she would rather sleep on the carpet all night than make another attempt to enter that nasty, deceitful, swinging, unsteady thing of a bed. Mr. Sandboys used all the endearing arts of which he was master to induce the partner of his bosom to make a second attempt, but his entreaties were in vain; for Mrs. Sandboys, whose body still tingled with the failure of her previous essay, was in no way inclined to listen to his solicitations. But the persevering Cursty pleaded so hard that at last he got her to consent, that provided he would first get into the hammock himself, and would lift her into it after him, she wouldn’t mind obliging him in that way—for she could see no other plan by which she was ever to be safely deposited within it. Accordingly, Mr. Sandboys, when, after a few unsuccessful but harmless endeavours, he had managed to get his entire body fairly into the sailor’s bed, leant over the side in order to assist his better half to join him within it. But on his putting out his arms to lift the lady up to the required height, the delusive, bendable bedstead turned inside out, and shot him, mattrass, blankets, and counterpane, together with his Aggy, plump on to the ground.