332 



INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL. 



man, making his first voyage as master ; his wife, whom 

 he had married a week before sailing, accompanied 

 him. He had had a disastrous voyage of eight months 

 from London ; in doubling Cape Horn his crew were 

 all frostbitten and his spars carried away. With only 

 one man on deck he had worked up to Guayaquil, where 

 he incurred great loss of time and money in making re- 

 pairs, and shipped an entirely new crew. At Acajutla 

 he found that his boats were not sufficient to land the 

 doctor's machinery, and was obliged to wait until a 

 raft could be constructed. In the mean time his crew 

 mutinied, and part of them refused to work. His wife 

 was then at the doctor's hacienda ; and I noticed that, 

 while writing her a note with pencil, his sunburned face 

 was pale, and large drops of perspiration stood on his 

 forehead. Soon after he threw himself into the ham- 

 mock, and, as I thought, fell asleep ; but in a few min- 

 utes I saw the hammock shake, and, remembering my 

 own shaking there, thought it was at its old tricks of 

 giving people the fever and ague ; but very soon I saw 

 that the poor captain was in convulsions. Excepting 

 Captain D' Yriarte, who was lying against the wall per- 

 fectly helpless, I was the only man in the hut ; and as 

 there was danger of his throwing himself out of the 

 hammock, I endeavoured to hold him in ; but with one 

 convulsive effort he threw me to the other side of the 

 hut, and hung over the side of the hammock, with one 

 hand entangled in the cords, and his head almost touch- 

 ing the ground. The old woman said that the devil had 

 taken possession of him, and ran out of doors screaming. 

 Fortunately, this brought in a man whom I had not seen 

 before, Mr. Warburton, an engineer Avho had come out 

 to set up the machinery, and who was himself a machine 

 of many horse-power, having a pair of shoulders that 



