constitutionally wrong with you, and the sooner you go on board and dose yourself with calomel and jalap the better. Arrived at Cape Town, a few introductions will simply throw the whole city at your command, and all it contains. I do not intend this as a complete sketch of your trip, or I would have mentioned some of the many beautiful spots and places of interest you pass on the road--Rathfeldas for example, a hotel halfway, a house buried in sweetness; and the country round about, with its dark waving forests, its fruitful fields and wide-spreading vineyards, where the grape seems to grow almost without cultivation; its comfortable farm-houses; and above all its people, kind, generous, and hospitable as the country is prolific. So you see, dear reader, a navy surgeon's life hath its pleasures. Ah, indeed, it hath! and sorry I am to add, its sufferings too; for a few pages farther on the picture must change: if we get the lights we must needs take the shadows also. CHAPTER EIGHT. A GOOD DINNER. ENEMY ON THE PORT BOW. MAN THE LIFE-BOAT. We will suppose that the reader still occupies the position of assistant-surgeon in a crack frigate or saucy line-of-battle ship. If you go on shore for a walk in the forenoon you may return to lunch at twelve; or if you have extended your ramble far into the country, or gone to visit a friend or lady-love--though for the latter the gloaming hour is to be preferred--you will in all probability have succeeded in establishing an appetite by half-past five, when the officers' dinner-boat leaves the pier. Now, I believe there are few people in the world to whom a good dinner does not prove an attraction, and this is what in a large ship one is always pretty sure of, more especially on guest-nights, which are evenings set apart--one every week--for the entertainment of the officers' friends, one or more of whom any officer may invite, by previously letting the mess-caterer know of his intention. The mess-caterer is the officer who has been elected to superintend the victualling, as the wine-caterer does the liquor department, and a by-no-means-enviable position it is, and consequently it is for ever changing hands. Sailors are proverbial growlers, and, indeed, a certain amount of growling is, and ought to be, permitted in every mess; but it is scarcely fair for an officer, because his breakfast does not please him, or if he can't get butter to his cheese after dinner, to launch forth his indignation at the poor mess-caterer, who most likely is doing all he can to please. These growlers too never speak right out or directly to the point. It is all under-the-table stabbing. "Such and such a ship that I was in," says growler first, "and such and such a mess--" "Oh, by George!" says growler second, "_I_ knew that ship; that was a mess, and no mistake?" "Why, yes," replies number one, "the lunch we got there was better than the dinner we have in this old clothes-basket."