A continuation of the storm, with a short discourse on the subject of making testaments at sea.

To make one’s last will, said Epistemon, at this time that we ought to bestir ourselves and help our seamen, on the penalty of being drowned, seems to me as idle and ridiculous a maggot as that of some of Caesar’s men, who, at their coming into the Gauls, were mightily busied in making wills and codicils; bemoaned their fortune and the absence of their spouses and friends at Rome, when it was absolutely necessary for them to run to their arms and use their utmost strength against Ariovistus their enemy.

This also is to be as silly as that jolt-headed loblolly of a carter, who, having laid this waggon fast in a slough, down on his marrow-bones was calling on the strong-backed deity, Hercules, might and main, to help him at a dead lift, but all the while forgot to goad on his oxen and lay his shoulder to the wheels, as it behoved him; as if a Lord have mercy upon us alone would have got his cart out of the mire.

What will it signify to make your will now? for either we shall come off or drown for it. If we ‘scape, it will not signify a straw to us; for testaments are of no value or authority but by the death of the testators. If we are drowned, will it not be drowned too? Prithee, who will transmit it to the executors? Some kind wave will throw it ashore, like Ulysses, replied Panurge; and some king’s daughter, going to fetch a walk in the fresco, on the evening will find it, and take care to have it proved and fulfilled; nay, and have some stately cenotaph erected to my memory, as Dido had to that of her goodman Sichaeus; Aeneas to Deiphobus, upon the Trojan shore, near Rhoete; Andromache to Hector, in the city of Buthrot; Aristotle to Hermias and Eubulus; the Athenians to the poet Euripides; the Romans to Drusus in Germany, and to Alexander Severus, their emperor, in the Gauls; Argentier to Callaischre; Xenocrates to Lysidices; Timares to his son Teleutagoras; Eupolis and Aristodice to their son Theotimus; Onestus to Timocles; Callimachus to Sopolis, the son of Dioclides; Catullus to his brother; Statius to his father; Germain of Brie to Her............