ted as a gentleman, so long as he behaves as such, and has nothing
to do but to drug the men and play drafts with the captain. At first
Long-Ghost and Captain Guy hit it off very well; until, in an unlucky
hour, a dispute about politics destroyed their harmonious association.
The captain got a thrashing; the mutinous doctor was put in confinement
and on bread and water, ran away from the ship, was pursued, captured,
and again imprisoned. Released at last, he resigned his office, refused
to do duty, and went forward amongst the men. This was more magnanimous
than wise. Long-Ghost was a sort of medical Tom Coffin, a raw-boned
giant, upwards of two yards high, one of those men to whom the
between-decks of a small craft is a residence little less afflicting
than one of Cardinal Balue's iron cages. And to one who "had certainly,
at some time or other, spent money, drunk Burgundy, and associated with
gentlemen," the Julia's forecastle must have contained a host of
disagreeables, irrespective of rats and cockroaches, of its low roof,
evil odours, damp timbers, and dungeon-like aspect. The captain's table,
if less luxurious than that of a royal yacht or New York liner, surely
offered something better than the biscuits, hard as gun-flints and
thoroughly honeycombed, and the shot-soup, "great round peas polishing
themselves like pebbles by rolling about in tepid water," on which the
restive man of medicine was fain to exercise his grinders during his
abode forward. As regarded society, he lost little by relinquishing that
of Guy the Cockney, since he obtained in exchange the intimacy of
Melville the Yankee, who, to judge from his book, must be exceeding good
company, and to whom he was a great resource. The doctor was a man of
learning and accomplishments, who had made the most of his time whilst
the sun shone on his side the hedge, and had rolled his ungainly carcass
over half the world. "He quoted Virgil, and talked of Hobbes of
Malmsbury, besides repeating poetry by the canto, especially Hudibras.
In the easiest way imaginable, he could refer to an amour he had in
Palermo, his lion-hunting before breakfast among the Caffres, and the
quality of the coffee to be drunk in Muscat." Strangely must such
reminiscences have sounded in a whaler's forecastle, with Dunks the
Dane, Finland Van, and Wymontoo the Savage, for auditors.

The Julia had hitherto had little luck in her cruise, and could scarcely
hope for better in the state in wh