This startled me as much as the question I had almost unconsciously--and, I may say, involuntarily--put to the marine had surprised him, and I made a full stop, and leant back against the door-post. The Captain, who was walking up and down the cabin, had heard me speak, but without comprehending the nature of my question, and now recalled me in some measure to myself, by enquiring if I wanted any thing. I replied, hurriedly, that I did not. “Well, Mr Cringle, dinner is ready--so take that chair at the foot of the table, will you?” I sat down, mechanically, as it appeared to me--for a strange swimming dizzy sort of sensation had suddenly overtaken me, accompanied by a whoreson tingling, as Shakespeare hath it, in my ears. I was unable to eat a morsel; but I could have drunk the ocean, had it been claret or vin-de-grave-to both of which I helped myself as largely as good manners would allow, or a little beyond, mayhap. All this while the Captain was stowing his cargo with great zeal, and tifting away at the fluids as became an honest sailor after so long a fast, interlarding his operations with a civil word to me now and then, without any especial regard as to the answer I made him, or, indeed, caring greatly whether I answered him or not. “Sharp work you must have had, Mr Cringle--should have liked to have been with you myself. Help yourself, before passing that bottle--zounds, man, never take a bottle by the bilge--grasp the neck, man, at least in this fervent climate--thank you. Pity you had not caught the captain though. What you told me of that man very much interested me, coupled with the prevailing reports regarding him in the ship--daring dog he must have been--can’t forget how gallantly he weathered us when we chased him.” I broke silence for the first time. Indeed, I could scarcely have done so sooner, even had I chosen it, for the gallant officer was rather continuous in his yam-spinning. However, he had nearly dined, and was leaning back, allowing the champaigne to trickle leisurely from a glass half a yard long, which he had applied to his lips, when I said, “Well, the imagination does sometimes play one strange tricks--I verily believe in second sight now, Captain, for at this very instant I am regularly the fool of my senses,----but pray don’t laugh at me;” and I lay back on my chair, and pressed my hands over my shut eyes and hot burning temples, which were now throbbing as if the arteries would have burst.