"Give me the cup, then, and make speed, make speed!"
Other revellers were interested by this time. They cried out—
"The loving-cup, the loving-cup! Make the sour knave drink the loving-cup, else will we feed him to the fishes.
So a huge loving-cup was brought; the waterman,grasping it by one of its handles, and with the other hand bearing up the end of an imaginary napkin,presented it in due and ancient form to Canty, who had to grasp the opposite handle with one of his hands and take off the lid with the other, according to ancient custom. This left the Prince hand-free for a second, of course. He wasted no time, but dived among the forest of legs about him and disappeared. In another moment he could not have been harder to find, under that tossing sea of life, if its billows had been the Atlantic's and he a lost sixpence.