Maurice Woodville had arranged the places, and bid Dicky sit down. But that young gentleman would persist in showing them how well he kept his feet in spite of the rolling of the ship, which was now running through the strong eddies of St Catherine’s. However pride, as ever, goeth before a fall. He was bending down, with legs astride, to adjust the game pasty before he opened it, when the ship gave a heavier roll to port, and Master Dicky sat down abruptly in a pail which Maurice Woodville had thoughtfully put to catch him if he should fall. Dicky’s collapse caused the pail to capsize, and the luckless youth, together with the pail, went rolling over into the lee-scuppers, bumping against the main hatchway in his fall. "Blessed Thomas!" ejaculated Dicky, "what in the name of all sticky things is this?" He had caught hold of the fore halyards, and so recovered his feet again, but he found he could not relax his fingers: they were all glued together. "Ralph! Maurice! come hither! I am bewitched! There’s some vile trick been played upon me. I am all stuck together: my coat’s sticking to my arms. I can’t move my sleeves, and my hands are stuck to this rope. Mercy on me! come quick!" But Maurice and Ralph were choking with laughter, and could not, or would not, go to his help. At this moment, to make Dicky’s discomfort still greater, the ship gave a heavy yaw, and sank down in the trough of a wave, while the man at the wheel brought her head up again to the next sea somewhat too rapidly, with the effect of sending a deluge of water over the head of the unfortunate Dicky, whose hat had come off, and was lying under the lee gunwale. Dicky, gasping, shivering, and spluttering, was violently thrown off his legs, and waved in the air for a moment; then he banged his shins against the sharp end of a heavy iron cleat, uttering a howl of anguish; and finally, with a violent wrench, he got his hands free from the rope, and scrambled over the slippery deck to his friends and guests. "Well, Dicky, what’s the matter with thee?" said Ralph, scarcely recovered from his fit of laughter. "Body o’ me knows," said Dicky ruefully; "but methinks I am bewitched. I can’t lift up my arms; and oh! mercy! I’m stuck together every way; and and how the water does trickle down my neck. Ugh! it’s got down my back now: I feel it running down my backbone. Ugh! oh! hold on, one of you, or I shall be off again," and Dicky grasped at the coil of rope nearest to him, to save himself going backwards once more as the ship rolled over again.