That would soon bring him to reason.

Why, as for his cauda, if you will believe me, Sir John, I once saw a man, on the coast of Patagonia--a savage, to be sure, and not a philosopher, as this fellow pretends to be--who had an outrigger of this sort, as long as a ship's ringtail-boom.

And what was he, after all, but a poor devil who did not know a sea-lion from a grampus!" This assertion of Captain Poke relieved my mind considerably; and laying aside the bison-skin, I asked him to have the goodness to examine the localities, with some particularity, about the termination of the dorsal bone, in order to ascertain if there were any encouraging signs to be discovered.

Captain Poke put on his spectacles, for time had brought the worthy mariner to their use, as he said, "whenever he had occasion to read fine print"; and, after some time, I had the satisfaction to hear him declare, that if it was a cauda I wanted, there was as good a place to step one, as could be found about any monkey in the universe; "and you have only to say the word, Sir John, and I will just step into the next room, and by the help of my knife and a little judgment in choosing, I'll fit you out with a jury-article, which, if there be any ra'al vartue in this sort of thing, will qualify you at once to be a judge, or, for that matter, a bishop." We were now summoned again to the lecture-room, and I had barely time to thank Captain Poke for his obliging offer, which circumstances just then, however, forbade my accepting..