“Once more, we want none of your goods. You might praise them as much as you liked, if time permitted. Show me to the cabin, and produce your papers. After that we shall see what is in the hold.” “Supercargo very ill in best cabin. Plague, or black fever, the German doctor says. None of our hands will go near him but myself. But you won't be like that, will you?” Less for his own sake than his mother's--who had none but him to help her--Scudamore dreaded especially that class of disease which is now called “zymotic.” His father, an eminent physician, had observed and had written a short work to establish that certain families and types of constitution lie almost at the mercy of such contagion, and find no mercy from it. And among those families was his own. “Fly, my boy, fly,” he had often said to Blyth, “if you ever come near such subjects.” “Captain, I will fetch them,” continued Mr. Polwhele, looking grave at his hesitation. “By good rights they ought to be smoked, I dare say, though I don't hold much with such stuff myself. And the doctor keeps doing a heap of herbs hot. You can see him, if you just come down these few steps. Perhaps you wouldn't mind looking into the hold, to find something to suit your judgment--quality combined with low figures there--while I go into the infected den, as the cleverest of my chaps calls it. Why, it makes me laugh! I've been in and out, with this stand-up coat on, fifty times, and you can't smell a flue of it, though wonderful strong down there.” Scudamore shuddered, and drew back a little, and then stole a glance round the corner. He saw a thick smoke, and a figure prostrate, and another tied up in a long white robe, waving a pan of burning stuff in one hand and a bottle in the other, and plainly conjuring Polwhele to keep off. Then the latter returned, quite complacently. “Can't find all of them,” he said, presenting a pile of papers big enough to taint Sahara. “That doctor goes on as bad as opening a coffin. Says he understands it, and I don't. The old figure-head! What does he know about it?” “Much more than you do, perhaps,” replied Blyth, standing up for the profession, as he was bound to do. “Perhaps we had better look at these on deck, if you will bring up your lantern.” “But, Captain, you will have a look at our hold, and make us a bid--we need not take it, any more than you need to double it--for as prime a lot of cheese, and sides of bacon--” “If your papers are correct, it will not be my duty to meddle with your cargo. But what are you doing the wrong side of our fleet?”