Chapter 51 - Page 2

Look, there's an inn under
the trees! Quick, quick! brandy, gin, water! a guinea a drop!
I'll pay for it! I've lots of money! lots! lots!"

Poor deluded wretch! I thought again; the wealth of a nation
could not buy a drop of water here. There was silence for a
minute, when all of a sudden I heard the shout of "Land! land!"

The words acted upon me like an electric shock, and, with a
frantic effort, I started to my feet. No land, indeed, was
visible, but Flaypole, laughing, singing, and gesticulating, was
raging up and down the raft. Sight, taste and hearing--all were
gone; but the cerebral derangement supplied their place, and in
imagination the maniac was conversing with absent friends,
inviting them into the George Inn at Cardiff, offering them gin,
whisky, and, above all water! Stumbling at every step, and
singing in a cracked, discordant voice, he staggered about
amongst us like an intoxicated man. With the loss of his senses
all his sufferings had vanished, and his thirst was appeased. It
was hard not to wish to be a partaker of his hallucination.

Dowlas, Falsten, and the boatswain, seemed to think that the
unfortunate wretch would, like Jynxtrop, put an end to himself by
leaping into the sea; but, determined this time to preserve the
body, that it might serve a better purpose than merely feeding
the sharks, they rose and followed the madman everywhere he went,
keeping a strict eye upon his every movement.

But the matter did not end as they expected. As though he were
really intoxicated by the stimulants of which he had been raving,
Flaypole at last sank down in a heap in a corner of the raft,
where he lay lost in a heavy slumber.