"Well," at length said he, "I don't believe in fetish--now dat I is among whiteman Christian. So I will tank you, Massa Draining, to hand me over my chocolate." But I noticed that the devil a drop would he take into his mouth, although he made believe to drink it. The jest went on--at length there was a calm, when who should again break ground but Serjeant Quacco--who made a last attempt to laugh off the whole affair. "But where de debil _can_ he be?" said he, almost involuntarily--"gone, sure enough." "Oh--oh--oh--" sung out all hands once more, with their fists stuck into their midriffs. "Oh, that vile fetish," screamed Lennox; "we must all be bewitched--Quacco, we are all bewitched.'" "Bewitch!" responded the black Serjeant, jumping off the deck, and now at his wit's end; "and I believe it is so. I hab pain in my tomak too--just dis moment--oh, wery sharp!" "Confound your fetish," groaned the old cook; "it was just as you stuck those chips of cedarwood into the fire--precisely at the wery moment I snuffed the delicious smell of them, that I saw the devil himself first put his ugly fiz up in the middle of the peas-soup, and gibber, and twinkle his eyes, and say"---- "Say!" shouted Lennox--"why did he really and truly speak, Mr Drainings?" "Speak!" responded he of the slush bucket--"speak! ay, as plain as I do now." "And what said he?" quoth Dogvane. "Why, just as he shook off the spray from the barb at the end of his tail, says he,--'Damme, I'm off,' says he." "Oh, oh, oh! I am pinned through my ground tier with a harpoon," groaned Drainings. "Where, in the devil's name, since we have seen him, got you those cedar chips, Quacco?" yelled old Clinker. A light seemed to break in on the poor Serjeant's bewildered mind. "Chip, chip!--where I get dem chip?" Here the poor fellow gave an idiotic laugh, as if he had been all abroad. "I get dem from Corporal Lennox, to be sure,"--and he turned his eyes with the most intense earnestness towards the marine, who was rolling about the deck over and over. "Where got I the chips, did you ask, Quacco? Oh, oh, oh!--Why, Heaven forgive me--but I am punished for it now--they are the very splinters of your fetish, that you brought on board!" Up started the black resetter as if bit by a rattlesnake, dancing and jumping, "Oh, my tomack, oh, my tomack!--de fetish have get into my tomack--de leetle debil in a my tomack. Oh, doctor, doctor!--one evil spirit in me--oh, doctor, someting to make him fly--someting to get him out! Doctor, de debil in a my belly--physic--physic, doctor; de strongerer de more betterer. Oh Lord!" And away he tumbled down the fore-hatchway, roaring for Esculapius like a perfect bull of Bashan.