his, lying
uneaten on your hands, as a mere scientific curiosity."

Cuticle's whole countenance changed; and, slowly walking up to the
table, he put his nose close to the tin case, then touched its contents
with his finger and tasted it. Enough. Buttoning up his coat, in all
the tremblings of an old man's rage he burst from the ward-room, and,
calling for a boat, was not seen again for twenty-four hours.

But though, like all other mortals, Cuticle was subject at times to
these fits of passion--at least under outrageous provocation--nothing
could exceed his coolness when actually employed in his imminent
vocation. Surrounded by moans and shrieks, by features distorted with
anguish inflicted by himself, he yet maintained a countenance almost
supernaturally calm; and unless the intense interest of the operation
flushed his wan face with a momentary tinge of professional enthusiasm,
he toiled away, untouched by the keenest misery coming under a
fleet-surgeon's eye. Indeed, long habituation to the dissecting-room
and the amputation-table had made him seemingly impervious to the
ordinary emotions of humanity. Yet you could not say that Cuticle was
essentially a cruel-hearted man. His apparent heartlessness must have
been of a purely scientific origin. It is not to be imagined even that
Cuticle would have harmed a fly, unless he could procure a microscope
powerful enough to assist him in experimenting on the minute vitals of
the creature.

But notwithstanding his marvellous indifference to the sufferings of
his patients, and spite even of his enthusiasm in his vocation--not
cooled by frosting old age itself--Cuticle, on some occasions, would
effect a certain disrelish of his profession, and declaim against the
necessity that forced a man of his humanity to perform a surgical
operation. Especially was it apt to be thus with him, when the case was
one of more than ordinary interest. In discussing it previous to
setting about it, he would veil his eagerness under an aspect of great
circumspection, curiously marred, however, by continual sallies of
unsuppressible impatience. But the knife once in his hand, the
compassionless surgeon himself, undisguised, stood before you. Such was
Cadwallader Cuticle, our Surgeon of the Fleet.

CHAPTER LXII.

A CONSULTATION OF MAN-OF-WAR SURGEONS.

It seems customary for the Surgeon of the Fleet, when any important
operation in his department is on the anvil, and there is nothing t