University of Virginia Library

77. CHAPTER LXXVII.

After running with a fine steady breeze up to the Line, it
fell calm, and there we lay, three days enchanted on the sea.
We were a most puissant man-of-war, no doubt, with our five
hundred men, Commodore and Captain, backed by our long
batteries of thirty-two and twenty-four pounders; yet, for all
that, there we lay rocking, helpless as an infant in the cradle.
Had it only been a gale instead of a calm, gladly would we
have charged upon it with our gallant bowsprit, as with a
stout lance in rest; but, as with mankind, this serene, passive
foe—unresisting and irresistible—lived it out, unconquered to
the last.

All these three days the heat was excessive; the sun drew
the tar from the seams of the ship; the awnings were spread
fore and aft; the decks were kept constantly sprinkled with
water. It was during this period that a sad event occurred,
though not an unusual one on shipboard. But in order to
prepare for its narration, some account of a part of the ship
called the “sick-bay” must needs be presented.

The sick-bay is that part of a man-of-war where the invalid
seamen are placed; in many respects it answers to a public
hospital ashore. As with most frigates, the sick-bay of
the Neversink was on the berth-deck—the third deck from
above. It was in the extreme forward part of that deck, embracing
the triangular area in the bows of the ship. It was,
therefore, a subterranean vault, into which scarce a ray of
heaven's glad light ever penetrated, even at noon.

In a sea-going frigate that has all her armament and stores
on board, the floor of the berth-deck is partly below the surface
of the water. But in a smooth harbor, some circulation

of air is maintained by opening large auger-holes in the
upper portion of the sides, called “air-ports,” not much above
the water level. Before going to sea, however, these air-ports
must be closed, caulked, and the seams hermetically
sealed with pitch. These places for ventilation being shut,
the sick-bay is entirely barred against the free, natural admission
of fresh air. In the Neversink, a few lungsful were
forced down by artificial means. But as the ordinary wind-sail
was the only method adopted, the quantity of fresh air
sent down was regulated by the force of the wind. In a
calm there was none to be had, while in a severe gale the
wind-sail had to be hauled up, on account of the violent
draught flowing full upon the cots of the sick. An open-work
partition divided our sick-bay from the rest of the deck,
where the hammocks of the watch were slung; it, therefore,
was exposed to all the uproar that ensued upon the watches
being relieved.

An official, called the surgeon's steward, assisted by subordinates,
presided over the place. He was the same individual
alluded to as officiating at the amputation of the top-man.
He was always to be found at his post, by night and by day.

This surgeon's steward deserves a description. He was a
small, pale, hollow-eyed young man, with that peculiar Lazarus-like
expression so often noticed in hospital attendants.
Seldom or never did you see him on deck, and when he did
emerge into the light of the sun, it was with an abashed look,
and an uneasy, winking eye. The sun was not made for him.
His nervous organization was confounded by the sight of the
robust old sea-dogs on the forecastle and the general tumult
of the spar-deck, and he mostly buried himself below in an atmosphere
which long habit had made congenial.

This young man never indulged in frivolous conversation;
he only talked of the surgeon's prescriptions; his every word
was a bolus. He never was known to smile; nor did he even
look sober in the ordinary way; but his countenance ever wore
an aspect of cadaverous resignation to his fate. Strange! that

so many of those who would fain minister to our own health
should look so much like invalids themselves.

Connected with the sick-bay, over which the surgeon's
steward presided—but removed from it in place, being next
door to the counting-room of the purser's steward—was a regular
apothecary's shop, of which he kept the key. It was
fitted up precisely like an apothecary's on shore, displaying
tiers of shelves on all four sides filled with green bottles and
gallipots; beneath were multitudinous drawers, bearing incomprehensible
gilded inscriptions in abbreviated Latin.

He generally opened his shop for an hour or two every
morning and evening. There was a Venetian blind in the
upper part of the door, which he threw up when inside, so as
to admit a little air. And there you would see him, with a
green shade over his eyes, seated on a stool, and pounding his
pestle in a great iron mortar that looked like a howitzer, mixing
some jallapy compound. A smoky lamp shed a flickering,
yellow-fever tinge upon his pallid face and the closely-packed
regiments of gallipots.

Several times when I felt in need of a little medicine, but
was not ill enough to report myself to the surgeon at his
levees, I would call of a morning upon his steward at the Sign
of the Mortar, and beg him to give me what I wanted; when,
without speaking a word, this cadaverous young man would
mix me my potion in a tin cup, and hand it out through the
little opening in his door, like the boxed-up treasurer giving
you your change at the ticket-office of a theatre.

But there was a little shelf against the wall of the door,
and upon this I would set the tin cup for a while, and survey
it; for I never was a Julius Cæsar at taking medicine; and
to take it in this way, without a single attempt at disguising
it; with no counteracting little morsel to hurry down after it;
in short, to go to the very apothecary's in person, and there,
at the counter, swallow down your dose, as if it were a nice
mint-julep taken at the bar of a hotel—this was a bitter bolus
indeed. But, then, this pallid young apothecary charged nothing

for it, and that was no small satisfaction; for is it not remarkable,
to say the least, that a shore apothecary should
actually charge you money—round dollars and cents—for giving
you a horrible nausea?

My tin cup would wait a long time on that little shelf; yet
“Pills,” as the sailors called him, never heeded my lingering,
but in sober, silent sadness continued pounding his mortar or
folding up his powders; until at last some other customer
would appear, and then, in a sudden frenzy of resolution, I
would gulp down my sherry-cobbler, and carry its unspeakable
flavor with me far up into the frigate's main-top. I do not
know whether it was the wide roll of the ship, as felt in that
giddy perch, that occasioned it, but I always got sea-sick after
taking medicine and going aloft with it. Seldom or never did
it do me any lasting good.

Now the Surgeon's Steward was only a subordinate of Surgeon
Cuticle himself, who lived in the ward-room among the
Lieutenants, Sailing-master, Chaplain, and Purser.

The Surgeon is, by law, charged with the business of overlooking
the general sanitary affairs of the ship. If any thing
is going on in any of its departments which he judges to be
detrimental to the healthfulness of the crew, he has a right to
protest against it formally to the Captain. When a man is
being scourged at the gangway, the Surgeon stands by; and
if he thinks that the punishment is becoming more than the
culprit's constitution can well bear, he has a right 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 rigor
by the ordaining of humanitarian laws. Sooner might you
tame the grizzly bear of Missouri than humanize 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?”

It was a leading question which somewhat staggered
me, but I said not a word; when, feeling of my calves, he

looked up and incomprehensibly said, “I am afraid you are
not.”

At length he declared me a sound animal, and wrote a certificate
to that effect, with which I returned to the deck.

This Assistant Surgeon turned out to be a very singular
character, and when I became more acquainted with him, I
ceased to marvel at the curious question with which he had
concluded his examination of my person.

He was a thin, knock-kneed man, with a sour, saturnine
expression, rendered the more peculiar from his shaving his
beard so remorselessly, that his chin and cheeks always looked
blue, as if pinched with cold. His long familiarity with
nautical invalids seemed to have filled him full of theological
hypoes concerning the state of their souls. He was at
once the physician and priest of the sick, washing down his
boluses with ghostly consolation, and among the sailors went
by the name of The Pelican, a fowl whose hanging pouch imparts
to it a most chop-fallen, lugubrious expression.

The privilege of going off duty and lying by when you are
sick, is one of the few points in which a man-of-war is far
better for the sailor than a merchantman. But, as with
every other matter in the Navy, the whole thing is subject to
the general discipline of the vessel, and is conducted with a
severe, unyielding method and regularity, making no allowances
for exceptions to rules.

During the half hour preceding morning quarters, the Surgeon
of a frigate is to be found in the sick-bay, where, after
going his rounds among the invalids, he holds a levee for the
benefit of all new candidates for the sick-list. If, after looking
at your tongue, and feeling of your pulse, he pronounces
you a proper candidate, his secretary puts you down on his
books, and you are thenceforth relieved from all duty, and
have abundant leisure in which to recover your health. Let
the boatswain blow; let the deck officer bellow; let the captain
of your gun hunt you up; yet, if it can be answered by
your mess-mates that you are “down on the list,” you ride it

all out with impunity. The Commodore himself has then no
authority over you. But you must not be too much elated, for
your immunities are only secure while you are immured in the
dark hospital below. Should you venture to get a mouthful of
fresh air on the spar-deck, and be there discovered by an officer,
you will in vain plead your illness; for it is quite impossible,
it seems, that any true man-of-war invalid can be hearty
enough to crawl up the ladders. Besides, the raw sea air, as
they will tell you, is not good for the sick.

But, notwithstanding all this, notwithstanding the darkness
and closeness of the Sick-bay, in which an alleged invalid must
be content to shut himself up till the Surgeon pronounces him
cured, many instances occur, especially in protracted bad
weather, where pretended invalids will submit to this dismal
hospital durance, in order to escape hard work and wet jackets.

There is a story told somewhere of the Devil taking down
the confessions of a woman on a strip of parchment, and being
obliged to stretch it longer and longer with his teeth, in order
to find room for all the lady had to say. Much thus was it
with our Purser's Steward, who had to lengthen out his manuscript
Sick-list, in order to accommodate all the names which
were presented to him while we were off the pitch of Cape
Horn. What sailors call the “Cape Horn Fever,” alarmingly
prevailed; though it disappeared altogether when we
got into fine weather, which, as with many other invalids,
was solely to be imputed to the wonder-working effects of an
entire change of climate.

It seems very strange, but it is really true, that off Cape
Horn some “sogers” of sailors will stand cupping, and bleeding,
and blistering, before they will budge. On the other hand,
there are cases where a man actually sick and in need of medicine
will refuse to go on the Sick-list, because in that case
his allowance of grog must be stopped.

On board of every American man-of-war, bound for sea,
there is a goodly supply of wines and various delicacies put on
board—according to law—for the benefit of the sick, whether

officers or sailors. And one of the chicken-coops is always reserved
for the Government chickens, destined for a similar
purpose. But, on board of the Neversink, the only delicacies
given to invalid sailors was a little sago or arrow-root, and
they did not get that unless severely ill; but, so far as I could
learn, no wine, in any quantity, was ever prescribed for them,
though the Government bottles often went into the Ward-room,
for the benefit of indisposed officers.

And though the Government chicken-coop was replenished
at every port, yet not four pair of drum-sticks were ever boiled
into broth for sick sailors. Where the chickens went, some
one must have known; but, as I can not vouch for it myself,
I will not here back the hardy assertion of the men, which
was that the pious Pelican—true to his name—was extremely
fond of poultry. I am the still less disposed to believe this
scandal, from the continued leanness of the Pelican, which
could hardly have been the case did he nourish himself by so
nutritious a dish as the drum-sticks of fowls, a diet prescribed
to pugilists in training. But who can avoid being suspicious
of a very suspicious person? Pelican! I rather suspect you
still.