"Why," continued the cook, "just when it began to simmer about the edges of the boiler----Ah--ah--oh--there it is again--there it is again," and once more he began to tumble about on the deck, giving friend Quacco several miscellaneous kicks and punches during his make-believe involuntary convulsions. This fit seemed also to pass over. "Why," said he, "just when the soup began to simmer about the edges of the copper, and thin streaks of white froth began to shoot inwards towards the middle, where the hot soup was whirling round in a bubbling eddy, and poppling up for all the world like the sea on the bar there, I saw--I saw"----Here he looked unutterable things with his one eye, turning it up like a duck in thunder. "What did you see?" said old Clinker, staring in his face with sham earnestness. "I saw--so sure as I see Mr Weevil the purser's d--d ugly mug aft on the quarterdeck there--a small devil rise out of the boiling peas-soup in the very middle of the copper, and fly up and away over the truck like a shot--whipping the vane at the mast-head off its spindle with the bight of his tail. "No! did you though?" said several voices. "To be sure I did," rejoined Drainings, "as distinctly as I now see my thumb--none of the cleanest, by the way." "The devil?" said Lennox, starting up; "what was it like, Mr Drainings?" "Why, as like the little heathen god brought on board by Quacco there, as you can fancy any thing." "Oh--oh--oh," again resounded from all hands. "But it could not be he," at length struck in the black serjeant. "It could not be he, seeing he is safe stow below de heel of de bowsprit dere." "Heaven grant it may be so," whined Dogvane. "If it really be as Quacco says," said Wadding, in a sympathizing tone, "why, _then_, I will believe it is all fancy--all a barn." Here the black serjeant, in great tribulation, rose to go forward, evidently with a desire to reconnoitre whether the graven image was really there in the body or no. After a long search, he came back and sat down, blank and stupified, on the spot where he had risen from. "And pray, Mr Drainings, when did you see this curious appearance?" persisted Lennox. "At the wery instant of time," drawled Cookey, with his arms crossed, and his hands stuck into the open bosom of his greasy shirt, that had once been red flannel, and with a short black stump of a pipe in his mouth, from which he puffed out a cloud between every word, "at the wery instant of time, by the glass, that Serjeant Quacco there mended the fire." "Oh--oh--oh!"--Here all hands of the rogues who were in the secret, began again to roll about and grimace, as if a travelling _menagerie_ of baboons had suddenly burst, and capsized its inmates all about. Quacco all this while was twisting and turning himself, and, although evidently in a deuced quandary, trying to laugh the affair off as a joke.