THE AMERICAN WHALEMAN. 



where the nights are so short that four o'clock conies after 

 the rising of the sun. 



Feb. 27. Is it true that conscience makes cowards of us 

 all ? The men are still under a nightmare fashioned since 

 the death of Beers. The " doctor " insists that he has seen 

 a pale lambent light hovering over the chest of one of the 

 men. The man himself is very ill, and takes it into his head 

 that he is dying of Beers's disease ; but as he did not see 

 the- case, he is at a loss to describe the symptoms. I find it 

 good medicine, when he complains to me, to say, " That's not 

 at all the way Beers felt ;" and he will be better until he goes 

 off on another tack. But symptoms don't count in our sim- 

 ple practice. Upon " all the ills that flesh is heir to " we 

 open our attack with a dose of glauber, or horse salts, which 

 takes such a strong hold on the patient that he is bound to 

 confess that we are doing something for him. It may hap- 

 pen that the patient grows worse, and a dose of castor-oil, 

 to work off the salts, is the next resource. He takes hope 

 in the moving evidences of the medicine ; and the more he 

 endures the more he hopes. Should oil fail us, the ulterior 

 of our modern healing art is to administer a rousing dose of 

 calomel, with the intention that this shall work off salts, oil, 

 and itself. In severe cases we repeat the entire course, and 

 either kill or cure. 



Our second mate is also sick, and has not stood his watch 

 for several days. It may be imagined, then, that we are not 

 at present a cheerful crew. I am loath to think that it is a 

 fear of death that demoralizes our men. I rather think it is 

 a shrinking from the unnatural prolongation of suffering, 

 and the gloomy attendants of a death-bed, since we do not 

 shrink from death in the boat. It may be that the terrible 

 depression that has settled upon us arises from scurvy taints. 

 The captain seems to think so, for he called us aft this morn- 

 ing, and made us tuck under our flannel a glass of glauber 



