‘No, my man,’ answered the doctor, looking at the body; ‘we’ll have him out of this in good time. But there’s nothing to hurt in his remaining here a bit.’ ‘What did he doy of?’ asked an old sailor, who had risen from his chest, and stood surveying us as he leaned against a stanchion with the inverted bowl of a sooty pipe betwixt his teeth. ‘Now, what would be the good,’ cried the doctor fretfully, ‘of giving this forecastle a lecture on the causes of death? What did he die of? A plague on’t, Mr. Dugdale! Do you know I’ve a great mind to take a peep inside him, if only in the interests of the medical journals.’ ‘I’m beginning to feel a little faint,’ said I, with a movement towards the forecastle door. ‘Oh well, Mr. Willard,’ exclaimed Hemmeridge, addressing the man who had approached us, and who proved to be the sailmaker, ‘have him stitched up as soon as you please, and then get him on to the fore-hatch with a tarpaulin over him, till other orders come forward.’ ‘Are ye likely to hold an inquest, doctor?’ asked the sailmaker, whose Roman nose and thin frill or streamlet of wool-white whisker running under his chin from one ear to another gave him a queer sort of yearning _raised_ haggard look in that light, as he inclined his head forward to ask the question. ‘Oh, it wouldn’t be an inquest,’ responded the doctor with a short laugh. ‘But it is death from natural causes, anyway,’ added he in a careless voice; ‘and so we’ll go aft again, Mr. Dugdale; unless, indeed, you would like to take another view of your friend?’ I shoved past him, and got out of the forecastle at once; and never before did the sunshine seem more glorious, nor the ocean breeze sweeter, nor the swelling heights of the Indiaman more airily beautiful and majestic. In fact, I had felt half suffocated in that forecastle; and as I made my way to the poop, I respired the gushing wind as it hummed past me over the bulwarks as thirstily as ever shipwrecked sailor lapped water. That same evening, some time after dinner, after a long smoke and a yarn with Colledge and young Fairthorne down on the quarter-deck, where we patrolled the planks in a regular look-out swing from the cuddy front to the gangway and back again, I went on to the poop, leaving my two companions to continue a game of chess in the cuddy, where they had been playing that afternoon. It was a fine clear moonless night, with a pleasant breeze out of the north-east, before which the ship was quietly running under all plain sail, saving the fore and mizzen royals, with a foretopmast studdingsail boom still rigged out and reeling gaunt athwart the stars to the quiet heave and plunge of the ship, as though it were some giant fishing-rod in the hand of a Colossus bobbing for whales.