In cargo ships he must be something of a doctor, for on a long passage there will certainly be many ailments among his crew, and probably some fractures. Ignorance of how to deal with these means a terrible amount of misery to the hapless sufferer lying groaning for assistance which is not forthcoming. The present generation of shipmasters are greatly in advance of what smattering of leech-craft was possessed by their predecessors, but even now there is a plentiful lack of this most humane and necessary knowledge. One would hardly now expect to find a shipmaster so ignorant as he of whom the story runs that finding a dose out of No. 7 bottle prescribed for a supposed ailment, he made up the draught out of Nos. 4 and 3, upon finding that No. 7 was empty! Or such a rough customer as the skipper of whom it is told in ships' forecastles that when it was reported to him that a man had broken his leg, replied, "Oh, give him a bucket of salts." But in one vessel where I was a foremast hand, several of us caught severe colds upon coming into a lonely New Zealand port, where no doctor was to be obtained. The skipper diagnosed our complaint as bronchitis, and exhibited tartar emetic with peculiar and painful results. Still, it cannot be denied that among the old school there were some wonderfully skilful, if rough, surgeons--men of iron who, if need arose, could and did practise the art upon their own bodies under circumstances of suffering that might well have reduced the stoutest frame to piteous helplessness. Such a case, for instance, as that of Captain Samuels of the _Dreadnought_ American packet-ship. I have not his book by me, so must quote from memory; but the picture he drew was so vivid that I do not think any one could forget its essential details. He relates how, in one of his passages from New York to England, he was midway across the Atlantic when during a heavy gale a sea was shipped which dashed him against the bulwarks with such force that one of his legs was broken above the knee. It was a compound fracture; and although such attention as was possible under his direction was given him at once, in a few days he recognized the necessity for having the leg cut off. Mortification had set in. His mate was absolutely unable to attempt the job from sheer physical incapacity, although in other respects a most able, strenuous man. So the sufferer, in superhuman fashion, rose to the occasion and performed the operation upon himself. Successfully, too, for when a few days after the vessel arrived at the Azores, there was nothing left for a surgeon to do.