"Wot!" cried Gribbs, "not so rummy? Well, if it ain't so rummy, I'm jiggered. I'll think of it." "Do, and tell your mate Tidewell." "If I tell Ned, 'e'll do it for sure. 'E's the biggest joker 'ere!" "Then tell him," said Silas. That evening Ned Tidewell and Billy Gribbs acted in a very strange way on board the _Battle-Axe_. Without any obvious reason they kept on bursting into violent fits of laughter. "The pore blokes is gone dotty from the 'eat," said the pitying crowd. "We've 'eard of such before." "Why shouldn't I laugh?" asked Gribbs. "I'm laughin' because I'm a pore silly sailor-man and my life ain't worth livin'. If I'd died early I'd ha' been saved a pile o' trouble. I was thinkin' of my father's green fields as I looked over the side this afternoon." "Was you really?" asked the oldest man on board. "Then you take my advice quick and go and ask the skipper for a real good workin' pill of the largest size." "Wot for?" asked Gribbs. "Because you've hobvious got a calentoor," said the old fo'c's'le man. "And chaps as gets a calentoor jumps overboard. Oh, but that's well known at sea by those as knows anythin'." But Gribbs laughed. "The worst is as it's catchin'," said his adviser, anxiously; "it's fatally catchin'. I've 'eard of crews doin' it one hafter the hother, till there wasn't no one left. In 'eat it was and in calm." "Gammon," said Gribbs. But he was observed to sigh. "Are you 'ot in your 'ead?" asked the anxious and ancient one. "I feels a little 'ot and rummy," said Gribbs; "but what I chiefly feels is a desire to eat grass." The old man groaned. "Then it's got you. Mates, we ought to tie Gribbs up, or lock 'im in the sail-locker, or 'is clothes will be auctioned off before long." But Gribbs kicked at that, and just then eight bells struck. "I'm turnin' in," said Gribbs, "and I'm all right." But at six bells in the first watch he was missing, as was discovered by old Brooks, the authority on calentures. He waked up Ned Tidewell, who was extraordinarily fast asleep. "Where's Gribbs?" "Not in my bunk," returned Ned, who with Gribbs was one of the few who still dossed in the fo'c's'le. "Then 'e's gone overboard for sartain," said Brooks, in great alarm; "there was the look of it in his eye, and in yours too, youngster. These long calms is fataller than scurvy. I shall go aft and report it." He reported it to Mr. Seleucus Thoms, the second mate, who came for'ard, and roused the watch below from the deck-house and t'gallant fo'c's'le. When all hands were mustered it was certain that Gribbs was missing. "This is a terrible catastrophe," said Seleucus Thoms, who had a weakness for fine language, derived from his rare Christian name, of which he was extremely proud. "My name is not Seleucus Thoms if he hasn't gone overboard." "'E was rampagious with laughter in the second dog-watch, sir," put in old Brooks. "And 'e talked of green fields, the which I've 'eard is a werry fatal symptom of calentoor."