t to interfere
and demand its cessation for the time.

But though the Navy regulations nominally vest him with this high
discretionary authority over the very Commodore himself, how seldom
does he exercise it in cases where humanity demands it? Three years is
a long time to spend in one ship, and to be at swords' points with its
Captain and Lieutenants during such a period, must be very unsocial and
every way irksome. No otherwise than thus, at least, can the remissness
of some surgeons in remonstrating against cruelty be accounted for.

Not to speak again of the continual dampness of the decks consequent
upon flooding them with salt water, when we were driving near to Cape
Horn, it needs only to be mentioned that, on board of the Neversink,
men known to be in consumptions gasped under the scourge of the
boatswain's mate, when the Surgeon and his two attendants stood by and
never interposed. But where the unscrupulousness of martial discipline
is maintained, it is in vain to attempt softening its rigour by the
ordaining of humanitarian laws. Sooner might you tame the grizzly bear
of Missouri than humanise a thing so essentially cruel and heartless.

But the Surgeon has yet other duties to perform. Not a seaman enters
the Navy without undergoing a corporal examination, to test his
soundness in wind and limb.

One of the first places into which I was introduced when I first
entered on board the Neversink was the sick-bay, where I found one of
the Assistant Surgeons seated at a green-baize table. It was his turn
for visiting the apartment. Having been commanded by the deck officer
to report my business to the functionary before me, I accordingly
hemmed, to attract his attention, and then catching his eye, politely
intimated that I called upon him for the purpose of being accurately
laid out and surveyed.

"Strip!" was the answer, and, rolling up his gold-laced cuff, he
proceeded to manipulate me. He punched me in the ribs, smote me across
the chest, commanded me to stand on one leg and hold out the other
horizontally. He asked me whether any of my family were consumptive;
whether I ever felt a tendency to a rush of blood to the head; whether
I was gouty; how often I had been bled during my life; how long I had
been ashore; how long I had been afloat; with several other questions
which have altogether slipped my memory. He concluded his
interrogatories with this extraordinary and unwarranted one--"Are you
pious?"

I