For my part, I could see nothing to laugh at. Indeed, the thing shocked and astonished me as a painful, degrading, mysterious expression of the human mind acting under conditions of which I could not be expected of course to make head or tail. Riley continued to move his arms with the motions of a swimmer for some minutes, meanwhile breathing hard, as though the water’s edge rose to his lip, whilst his face continued drawn out into an indescribable expression of distress. His gesticulations then grew feeble, his respiration lost its fierceness and swiftness and became once more long drawn and regular, and presently he lay back, still in a deep sleep, in the posture in which I had observed him when I entered. ‘What d’ye think of _that_?’ exclaimed Greenhew with a face of triumphant enjoyment. ‘A pitiful trick for a sleeper to fall into,’ said I. ‘I like your show so little, Greenhew, that I wish to see no more of it.’ ‘Oh, nonsense!’ he exclaimed; ‘let’s keep him caper-cutting a while longer. I’ll have a regular performance here every night. It shall be the talk of the ship, by George!’ As he spoke these words, Riley uttered a low cry, opened his eyes full upon us, stared a moment with the bewilderment of a man who has not all his senses, then sat upright, running his gaze over his bedclothes. ‘What is the matter?’ he exclaimed, looking around at us. ‘Who has been’---- The light and expression of a full mind entered his eyes. He threw his feet over on to the deck and stood up. ‘Have I been making a fool of myself in my sleep, Dugdale?’ said he.--I was at a loss for an answer.--He proceeded: ‘I know my weakness. I have heard of it often enough--at school--from my mother--again and again since, Dugdale. Greenhew has brought you here to watch me. And that means,’ cried he, turning fiercely upon Greenhew, ‘that you have been exercising your humour upon me in my sleep, and instead of compassionating a painful and humiliating infirmity, you have’----