“And why would you not have us circumcis’d too,” interrupted Gito, “that we may appear like Jews; and have our ears bor’d, to persuade them we came from Arabia? and why did not you advise our faces to be chalk’d as well as ink’d, that we might pass for Frenchmen, as if our colour would make such a mighty alteration?  Has a foreigner but one mark of distinction?  Can you think anybody so ignorant to mistake you for one, by that sign only?  Grant our dawb’d faces wou’d keep their colour:  Suppose it wou’d not wash off, nor our cloaths stick to the ink, how can we imitate their black swollen lips? the short curl of their hair? the seams on their foreheads? their circular way of treading? their splay feet? or the mode of their beards? an artificial colour rather stains than alters the body; but, if you’ll be rul’d by a madman, let’s cover our heads, and jump into the sea?”

“Nor Heaven nor man,” cry’d Eumolpus, “cou’d suffer ye make so ill an end; rather pursue this advice:  My slave, as you may imagine by his rasor, is a piece of a barber; let him shave not only your heads, but, as a mark of greater punishment, your eye-brows too, and Ill finish your disguise with an inscription on your foreheads, that you may appear as slaves branded for some extraordinary villany:  Thus the same letters will at once divert their suspicion, and conceal your countenance under the mask of punishment.”

We lik’d the advice, and hasten’d the execution, when stealing to the side of the vessel, we committed our heads and eye-brows to the barber:  Eumolpus in the meantime fill’d our foreheads with great letters, and very liberally dispenc’d the known marks of fugitives through the other parts of our faces; one of the passengers, easing his o’re-charg’d stomach o’re the side of the ship, by the moon perceiving the reflection of a barber busie at so unseasonable a time, and, cursing the omen that he thought presag’d a shipwreck, ran to his hammock, upon which we dissembled the same, but indeed had an equal though different concern; and the noise over, we spent the rest of the night without resting much.

The next day Eumolpus, when he found Tryphoena was stirring, went to visit Lycas; and after he had talk’d with him about the happy voyage he hop’d from the clearness of the heavens, Lycas, turning to Tryphoena, “Methoughts,” said he, “about midnight the vision of Priapus appear’d to me, and told me, he had lately brought into my ship Encolpius that I sought for”:  Tryphoena was startl’d, “And you’d swear we slept together,” reply’d she, “for methoughts the image of Neptune having struck his trident thrice against the Bajoe, told me that in Lycas’ ship I shou’d meet my Gito.”

“Hence, proceeds,” said Eumolpus, interrupting ’em, “that veneration I pay the divine Epicurus, who so wittily has discovered such illusions.