So prolific is the source whence these anecdotes are drawn, that I am embarrassed where to choose. However, I cannot help thinking that for a fitting close to this subject, it would hardly be possible to select a story more thrilling than the following. During a whale hunt the line kinked and dragged a man entangled by one arm and one leg deep under the sea. He was released by the imprisoned members giving way under the frightful strain. Rising to the surface, and floating there unconscious, he was picked up and taken on board the ship. There it was found that a portion of the hand, including four fingers, had been torn away, while a foot was twisted off at the ankle, leaving only the lacerated stump with its tangle of sinews hanging loosely. From the knee downward the muscles had been dragged away by the line, leaving the almost bare bone with just a veil of tendons and leaking blood-vessels; so that it appeared as if the poor wretch had only been saved from drowning to die more cruelly, unless some one should have the nerve to perform so radical an operation. No surgical instruments were on board. But Captain James Huntling was not the man to allow any one to perish without a great effort on his part to save them. He had a carving-knife, a hand-saw, and a fish-hook. The injury was so great, and the poor fellow's cries so heartrending, that several of the crew fainted while attempting to help the skipper, while others became sick. So, unaided, the skipper lashed his patient to the carpenter's bench, cut off what remained of the leg, and dressed the mangled hand; then, making for the Sandwich Islands, he put the man in hospital, where he recovered, and returning to America, passed the rest of his days in comfort as a small shop-keeper. There is one more reason why it is so necessary for the master of a ship to have some medical knowledge, and this has a humorous side in many cases. It is that he may be able to detect that curse of a ship's company, the "malingerer." Often he is by no means easy to "bowl out," being, like most lazy people, of considerable inventive genius. And although a humane man would much rather be imposed upon a dozen times than send a suffering man to work while unfit once, it is intensely galling to find that a scalawag, with absolutely nothing the matter with him but a constitutional aversion to work, has been indulging himself at the expense of his already hard-pressed shipmates for a week or two. A little practical knowledge of medicine will in most cases obviate this and enable the shipmaster to give the loafer a dose that, while it will do him no harm, will make him so uncomfortable that work will be a relief. But I find that the recapitulation of the master's duties demands another chapter. CHAPTER VIII. THE MASTER'S DUTIES--_continued_.