involved the dilating of the wound by the knife; an
operation which, at that juncture, would have been almost certainly
attended with fatal results. A day or two, therefore, was permitted to
pass, while simple dressings were applied.

The Surgeon of the other American ships of war in harbour occasionally
visited the Neversink, to examine the patient, and incidentally to
listen to the expositions of our own Surgeon, their senior in rank. But
Cadwallader Cuticle, who, as yet, has been but incidentally alluded to,
now deserves a chapter by himself.

CHAPTER LXI.

THE SURGEON OF THE FLEET.

Cadwallader Cuticle, M. D., and Honorary Member of the most
distinguished Colleges of Surgeons both in Europe and America, was our
Surgeon of the Fleet. Nor was he at all blind to the dignity of his
position; to which, indeed, he was rendered peculiarly competent, if
the reputation he enjoyed was deserved. He had the name of being the
foremost Surgeon in the Navy, a gentleman of remarkable science, and a
veteran practitioner.

He was a small, withered man, nearly, perhaps quite, sixty years of
age. His chest was shallow, his shoulders bent, his pantaloons hung
round skeleton legs, and his face was singularly attenuated. In truth,
the corporeal vitality of this man seemed, in a good degree, to have
died out of him. He walked abroad, a curious patch-work of life and
death, with a wig, one glass eye, and a set of false teeth, while his
voice was husky and thick; but his mind seemed undebilitated as in
youth; it shone out of his remaining eye with basilisk brilliancy.

Like most old physicians and surgeons who have seen much service, and
have been promoted to high professional place for their scientific
attainments, this Cuticle was an enthusiast in his calling. In private,
he had once been heard to say, confidentially, that he would rather cut
off a man's arm than dismember the wing of the most delicate pheasant.
In particular, the department of Morbid Anatomy was his peculiar love;
and in his state-room below he had a most unsightly collection of
Parisian casts, in plaster and wax, representing all imaginable
malformations of the human members, both organic and induced by
disease. Chief among these was a cast, often to be met with in the
Anatomical Museums of Europe, and no doubt an unexaggerated copy of a
genuine original; it was the head of an elderly woman, with an aspect
singularly gentle and meek, but at the same time wo