Dr. Frank Carson had been dreaming tantalizing dreams
of cooling, effervescent beverages. Over and
over again in his dreams he had risen from his bed,
and tripping lightly down to the surgery in his pajamas,
mixed himself something long and cool and fizzy, without
being able to bring the dream to a satisfactory termination.
With a sudden start he awoke. The thirst was
still upon him; the materials for quenching it, just
down one flight of stairs. He would have smacked
his lips at the prospect if they had been moist enough
to smack; as it was, he pushed down the bedclothes,
and throwing one leg out of bed-became firmly convinced
that he was still dreaming.
For the atmosphere was stifling and odorous, and the
ceiling descended in an odd bulging curve to within
a couple of feet of his head. Still half asleep,
he raised his fist and prodded at it in astonishment—a
feeling which gave way to one of stupefaction as the
ceiling took another shape and swore distinctly.
“I must be dreaming,” mused the doctor;
“even the ceiling seems alive.”
He prodded it again-regarding it closely this time.
The ceiling at once rose to greater altitudes, and
at the same moment an old face with bushy whiskers
crawled under the edge of it, and asked him profanely
what he meant by it. It also asked him whether
he wanted something for himself, because, if so, he
was going the right way to work.
“Where am I?” demanded the bewildered
doctor. “Mary! Mary!”
He started up in bed, and brought his head in sudden
violent contact with the ceiling. Then, before
the indignant ceiling could carry out its threat of
a moment before, he slipped out of bed and stood on
a floor which was in its place one moment and somewhere
else the next.
In the smell of bilge-water, tar, and the foetid atmosphere
generally his clouded brain awoke to the fact that
he was on board ship, but resolutely declined to inform
him how he got there. He looked down in disgust
at the ragged clothes which he had on in lieu of the
usual pajamas; and then, as events slowly pieced themselves
together in his mind, remembered, as the last thing
that he could remember, that he had warned his friend
Harry Thomson, solicitor, that if he had any more to
drink it would not be good for him.
He wondered dimly as he stood whether Thomson was
there too, and walking unsteadily round the forecastle,
roused the sleepers, one by one, and asked them whether
they were Harry Thomson, all answering with much fluency
in the negative, until he came to one man who for some
time made no answer at all.
The doctor shook him first and then punched him.
Then he shook him again and gave him little scientific
slaps, until at length Harry Thomson, in a far-away
voice, said that he was all right.
“Well, I’m glad I’m not alone,”
said the doctor, selfishly. “Harry!
Harry! Wake up!”
