Chapter 77 - Page 2

the surgeon's steward, assisted by subordinates,
presided over the place. He was the same individual alluded to as
officiating at the amputation of the top-man. He was always to be
found at his post, by night and by day.

This surgeon's steward deserves a description. He was a small,
pale, hollow-eyed young man, with that peculiar Lazarus-like
expression so often noticed in hospital attendants. Seldom or
never did you see him on deck, and when he _did_ emerge into the
light of the sun, it was with an abashed look, and an uneasy,
winking eye. The sun was not made for _him_. His nervous
organization was confounded by the sight of the robust old sea-
dogs on the forecastle and the general tumult of the spar-deck,
and he mostly buried himself below in an atmosphere which long
habit had made congenial.

This young man never indulged in frivolous conversation; he only
talked of the surgeon's prescriptions; his every word was a
bolus. He never was known to smile; nor did he even look sober in
the ordinary way; but his countenance ever wore an aspect of
cadaverous resignation to his fate. Strange! that so many of
those who would fain minister to our own health should look so
much like invalids themselves.

Connected with the sick-bay, over which the surgeon's steward
presided--but removed from it in place, being next door to the
counting-room of the purser's steward--was a regular apothecary's
shop, of which he kept the key. It was fitted up precisely like
an apothecary's on shore, dis-playing tiers of shelves on all
four sides filled with green bottles and gallipots; beneath were
multitudinous drawers bearing incomprehensible gilded inscriptions
in abbreviated Latin.

He generally opened his shop for an hour or two every morning and
evening. There was a Venetian blind in the upper part of the
door, which he threw up when inside so as to admit a little air.
And there you would see him, with a green shade over his eyes,
seated on a stool, and pounding his pestle in a great iron mortar
that looked like a howitzer, mixing some jallapy compound. A
smoky lamp shed a flickering, yellow-fever tinge upon his pallid
face and the closely-packed regiments of gallipots.

Several times when I felt in need of a little medicine, but was
not ill enough to report myself to the surgeon at his levees, I
would call of a morning upon his steward at the Sign of the
Mortar, and beg him to give me what I wanted; when, without
speaking a word, this cadaverous young man would mix me my potion
in a tin cup, and hand it out through the little opening in his
door, like the boxed-up treasurer giving you your change at the
ticket-office of a theatre.

But there was a little shelf against the