That, I thought, I could undertake to answer for; but who, alas! could say whether I should ever leave that studio alive? For all I knew, he might spend the whole day in photographing me, and then, with a madman's caprice, shoot me as soon as it became too dark to go on any longer! The proper course to take, I knew, was to humour him, to keep him in a good temper, fool him to the top of his bent--it was my only chance. 'Well,' I said, 'perhaps you're right. I--I'm in no great hurry. Were you thinking of taking me in some different style? I am quite at your disposition.' He brought out a small but stout property-mast, and arranged it against a canvas background of coast scenery. 'I generally use it for children in sailor costume,' he said, 'but I _think_ it will bear your weight long enough for the purpose.' I wiped my brow. 'You are not going to ask me to climb that thing?' I faltered. 'Well,' he suggested, 'if you will just arrange yourself upon the cross-trees in a negligent attitude, upside down, with your tongue protruded as if for medical inspection, I shall be perfectly satisfied.' I tried argument. 'I should have no objection in the world,' I said; 'it's an excellent idea--only, _do_ sailors ever climb masts in that way? Wouldn't it be better to have the thing correct while we're about it?' 'I was not aware that you were a sailor,' he said; '_are_ you?' I was afraid to say I was, because I apprehended that, if I did, it might occur to him to put me through some still more frightful performance. 'Come,' he said, 'you won't compel me to shed blood so early in the afternoon, will you? Up with you.' I got up, but, as I hung there, I tried to obtain a modification of some of the details. 'I don't think,' I said artfully, 'that I'll put out my tongue--it's rather overdone, eh? _Everybody_ is taken with his tongue out nowadays.' 'It is true,' he said, 'but I am not well enough known in the profession yet to depart entirely from the conventional. Your tongue out as far as it will go, please.' 'I shall have a rush of blood to the head, I know I shall,' I protested. 'Look here,' he said; 'am I taking this photograph, or are you?' There was no possible doubt, unfortunately, as to who was taking the photograph. I made one last remonstrance. 'I put it to you as a sensible man,' I began; but it is a waste of time to put anything to a raving lunatic as a sensible man. It is enough to say that he carried his point. 'I wish you could see the negative!' he said as he came back from his laboratory. 'You were a little red in the face, but it will come out black, so it's all right. That carte will be quite a novelty, I flatter myself.'