touchingly dropped to his sides,
and he stood for a moment fixed in a tender reverie but a commotion
being heard beyond the curtain, he started, and, briskly crossing and
recrossing the knife and carver, exclaimed, "Ali, here comes our
patient; surgeons, this side of the table, if you please; young
gentlemen, a little further off, I beg. Steward, take off my coat--so;
my neckerchief now; I must be perfectly unencumbered, Surgeon Patella,
or I can do nothing whatever."

These articles being removed, he snatched off his wig, placing it on
the gun-deck capstan; then took out his set of false teeth, and placed
it by the side of the wig; and, lastly, putting his forefinger to the
inner angle of his blind eye, spirited out the glass optic with
professional dexterity, and deposited that, also, next to the wig and
false teeth.

Thus divested of nearly all inorganic appurtenances, what was left of
the Surgeon slightly shook itself, to see whether anything more could
be spared to advantage.

"Carpenter's mates," he now cried, "will you never get through with
that job?"

"Almost through, sir--just through," they replied, staring round in
search of the strange, unearthly voice that addressed them; for the
absence of his teeth had not at all improved the conversational tones
of the Surgeon of the Fleet.

With natural curiosity, these men had purposely been lingering, to see
all they could; but now, having no further excuse, they snatched up
their hammers and chisels, and--like the stage-builders decamping from
a public meeting at the eleventh hour, after just completing the
rostrum in time for the first speaker--the Carpenter's gang withdrew.

The broad ensign now lifted, revealing a glimpse of the crowd of
man-of-war's-men outside, and the patient, borne in the arms of two of
his mess-mates, entered the place. He was much emaciated, weak as an
infant, and every limb visibly trembled, or rather jarred, like the
head of a man with the palsy. As if an organic and involuntary
apprehension of death had seized the wounded leg, its nervous motions
were so violent that one of the mess-mates was obliged to keep his hand
upon it.

The top-man was immediately stretched upon the table, the attendants
steadying his limbs, when, slowly opening his eyes, he glanced about at
the glittering knives and saws, the towels and sponges, the armed
sentry at the Commodore's cabin-door, the row of eager-eyed students,
the meagre death's-head of a