Chapter 17

THE COOK AND STEWARD

It was on a Sunday we made the Banks of Newfoundland; a drizzling,
foggy, clammy Sunday. You could hardly see the water, owing to the mist
and vapor upon it; and every thing was so flat and calm, I almost
thought we must have somehow got back to New York, and were lying at the
foot of Wall-street again in a rainy twilight. The decks were dripping
with wet, so that in the dense fog, it seemed as if we were standing on
the roof of a house in a shower.

It was a most miserable Sunday; and several of the sailors had twinges
of the rheumatism, and pulled on their monkey-jackets. As for Jackson,
he was all the time rubbing his back and snarling like a dog.

I tried to recall all my pleasant, sunny Sundays ashore; and tried to
imagine what they were doing at home; and whether our old family friend,
Mr. Bridenstoke, would drop in, with his silver-mounted tasseled cane,
between churches, as he used to; and whether he would inquire about
myself.

But it would not do. I could hardly realize that it was Sunday at all.
Every thing went on pretty much the same as before. There was no church
to go to; no place to take a walk in; no friend to call upon. I began to
think it must be a sort of second Saturday; a foggy Saturday, when
school-boys stay at home reading Robinson Crusoe.

The only man who seemed to be taking his ease that day, was our black
cook; who according to the invariable custom at sea, always went by the
name of the doctor.

And doctors, cooks certainly are, the very best medicos in the world;
for what pestilent pills and potions of the Faculty are half so
serviceable to man, and health-and-strength-giving, as roasted lamb and
green peas, say, in spring; and roast beef and cranberry sauce in
winter? Will a dose of calomel and jakp do you as much good? Will a
bolus build up a fainting man? Is there any satisfaction in dining off a
powder? But these doctors of the frying-pan sometimes loll men off by a
surfeit; or give them the headache, at least. Well, what then? No
matter. For if with their most goodly and ten times jolly I medicines,
they now and then fill our nights with tribulations, and abridge our
days, what of the social homicides perpetrated by the Faculty? And
when you die by a pill-doctor's hands, it is never with a sweet relish
in your mouth, as though you died by a frying-pan-doctor; but your last
breath villainously savors of ipecac and rhubarb. Then, what charges
they make for the abominable lunches they serve out so stingily! One of
their bills for boluses would keep you in good dinners a twelve-month.

Now, our doctor was a serious old fellow, much given to metaphysics, and
used to talk about original sin. All that Sunday morning, he sat