In the afternoon I had seen his lean knees totter under the captain's fire.

Now, at midnight--the exact time by my watch--it was as if his shrunken limbs had expanded in his clothes; he seemed hardly to know his own flushed face, as he caught sight of it in my mirror.
"By Jove!" said he, "this has put me in a fine old fever; but I don't know when I felt in better fettle.

If only they get it under! I've not looked like this all the voyage." And he admired himself while I dressed in hot haste: a fine young fellow; not at all the natural egotist, but cast for death by the doctors, and keenly incredulous in his bag of skin.

It revived one's confidence to hear him talk.

But he forgot himself in an instant, and gave me a lead through the saloon with a boyish eagerness that made me actually suspicious as I ran.