One of my companions, who had been growing silent and pale for several hours, now gave signs of an approaching crisis of some sort. Pedro pronounced him laboring under an “empacho,” and recommended brandy—that was his universal specific for everything, from a sprained ankle to the toothache. But the patient protested against the medicine, as an abomination which made him only the worse to think of. I thought it a capital opportunity to bring out the medicine-chest, which had been packed with an extensive regard to all sorts of contingencies at “Rushton and Clark’s,” and Ben began a grand rummage for it, to the utter distraction of everything in the boat. Meantime, as became a learned practitioner, I propounded the question usually asked by anxious mammas of complaining children, “what have you eaten?” It turned out that, besides half a calabash of fresh milk, fried fish, three eggs, a slice of ham, and bread and coffee _ad libitum_, the patient had “put in” the afternoon with raw plantains, and “_dulce_”—sugar! I comprehended that “empacho” meant something like surfeit, and to disguise the dose, mixed a little tartar emetic with magnesia, which wrought a wonderful cure—much to my elevation in the eyes of the crew, who set me down at once as a great _medico_. I had immediate applications on behalf of ailing wives, scalded babies, and feverish boys, for all of which I prescribed, after deliberate consultation of the “Pocket Physician.” While this was going on night fell, and I lost the sunset,—a circumstance for which, as he is thereby spared the description, the reader is no doubt properly thankful. As the evening progressed, the breeze continued to freshen, and about midnight, Pedro, calculating that we were sufficiently to the windward, laid the course of the boat direct for Granada. I went to bed early, and owing to the disturbance of the previous night, slept soundly. When I woke, we were in mid lake, and might have been in mid sea, for all the difference discoverable in the appearance of the waves and water. The wind was strong, cool, and damp, and the men had their handkerchiefs bound round their heads, and their blankets wrapped over their shoulders. My ailing companion looked sentimental, and professed not to have wholly recovered from the “empacho,” but as I felt qualmish myself, I pronounced it sea-sickness, which, as every traveller knows, never entitles the sufferer to sympathy.