Hereupon, Mr. Snap, the attorney retained by the creditors, harangues the company at some length, and intimates that Mr. Snook is either mad, or acting the madman for the purpose of evading punishment. A practitioner from Bedlam is sent for, and some artifices resorted to—but to no purpose. It is found impossible to decide upon the question of sanity. The medical gentleman in his report to the creditors confesses himself utterly perplexed, and, without giving a decision, details the particulars of a singular story told him by Mr. Snook himself concerning the mode of his escape from drowning after he fell overboard from the “Rose in June.” “It is a strange unlikely tale to be sure,” says the physician, “and if his general conversation was of that wild imaginative flighty kind which I have so often witnessed, I should say it was purely ideal; but he appears such a plain-spoken, simple sort of a person, that it is difficult to conceive how he could invent such a fiction.” Mr. Snook's narration is then told, not in his very words, but in the author's own way, with all the particulars obtained from Peter's various recitations. This narration is singular enough but we shall give it only _in petto_. Upon tumbling overboard, Mr. Snook (at least according to his own story) swam courageously as long as he could. He was upon the point of sinking, however, when an oar was thrust under his arm, and he found himself lifted in a boat by a “dozen dark looking men.” He is taken on board a large ship, and the captain, who is a droll genius, and talks in rhyme somewhat after the fashion of Frazer's Magazine, entertains him with great cordiality, dresses him in a suit of his own clothes, makes him drink in the first place a brimmer of “something hot,” and afterwards plies him with wines and liqueurs of all kinds, at a supper of the most magnificent description. Warmed in body and mind by this excellent cheer, Peter reveals his inmost secrets to his host and talks freely and minutely of a thousand things; of his man Ephraim and his oddities; of his bank account; of his great credit; of his adventures with Miss Bodkin, his prospects in trade, and especially the names, residences, et cetera, et cetera, of the wholesale houses with which he is in the habit of dealing. Presently, being somewhat overcome with wine, he goes to bed at the suggestion of the captain, who promises to call him in season for a boat in the morning which will convey him to Billingsgate in full time for Pester and Co.'s note. How long he slept is uncertain—but when he awoke a great change was observable in the captain's manner, who was somewhat brusque, and handed him over the ship's side into the barge where he was discovered by the creditors in pursuit, and which he was assured would convey him to Billingsgate.