"Run, doctor, run--there's a dear soul-- or he'll be doin' murder!" "Seen what ?" "Run, I tell you! Come!" Suiting the action to the word, Mr.Jope, still gripping his comrade's arm, rushed him out of the sick bay, the doctor and the marine at their heels.

In the excitement, the Major tumbled out of his hammock, tore aside the sail-flap, and staggered after them along the dim and empty lower-deck to a ladder which led up to daylight.
How to describe the spectacle which met his dazzled eyes as he thrust his head above the hatchway?
Aloft the _Vesuvius_ spread her full sails in cloud upon cloud of dove-coloured grey (for, in fact, she carried very dingy canvas) against the blue of heaven, and reached along with the northerly breeze on her larboard quarter, heeling gently, yet just low enough for the Major to blink as his gaze, travelling beyond the lee bulwarks, caught the dazzle of foam knocked up and spreading off her blunt bows.

But not long did he gaze on this; for in the scuppers under the bulwarks, in every attitude of complete woe, some prostrate, some supine, all depicted with the liveliest yellows and greens of seasickness beneath their theatrical paint, lay the crew of H.M.S.

_Poseidon_.

Yes, even the wicked Lieutenant reclined there with the rest, with one hand upraised and grasping a ring-bolt, while the soft sway of the ship now lifted his garish tinselled epaulettes into the sunlight, now sank and drew across them, as upon a dial, the edge of the bulwarks' shadow.
Right above this disconsolate group, and almost right above the Major's head as he thrust it through the hatchway--or, to be more precise, at the head of the ladder leading to the _Vesuvius's_ poop-- clung a little wry-necked, red-eyed, white-faced man in dishevelled uniform, and capered in impotent fury.