ulled on
board.

We sailed for Chusan the same evening, but this time I unfortunately was
attacked by one of the prevailing diseases of the country, and was
confined to my hammock. We revisited Amoy, and then shaped our course
for Hong Kong. On our arrival, we found no ship there but the Castor,
the admiral and fleet being employed on the coast of Borneo, subduing
the pirates in Maludu Bay. The ship being again about to start for the
northward, I was considered too unwell to remain in her, and was sent on
board the Minden hospital ship, to live or to die, as it might please
God.

The Minden hospital ship is a fine 74; and as all the guns, masts, and
stores, had been landed at the time that she was selected for the duty,
there was great accommodation on board of her; but great as it was,
unfortunately there was not sufficient to meet the demands upon it in
this unhealthy climate. A description of her internal arrangement may
not be uninteresting. The quarter-deck and poop was set apart for the
convalescents; but the heat of the sun was so overpowering, that it was
not until late in the afternoon that they could breathe the purer
atmosphere. Long confinement below had left them pale and wan, and their
unsteady gait proved how much they had suffered in their constitution,
and how narrowly they had escaped the grave. To some this escape had
been beneficial, as their constant perusal of the Bible established;
others, if they even had during their illness alarms about their future
state, had already dismissed them from their thoughts, and were
impatiently awaiting their return to health to return to past folly and
vice. The main deck was allotted to the medical and other officers
belonging to the ship, the seamen who composed the ship's company, and
also on this deck were located the seamen who had been discharged cured,
and who then waited for the arrival of their ships, which were absent
from Hong Kong. On this deck, abaft all, was the inspector's cabin, and
adjoining it the mess-room of the assistant-surgeons, who, like all
their class, rendered callous by time and habit to their dangerous and
painful duty, thought only of driving away the memory of the daily
mortality to which they were witnesses by jovial living and mirth.
Indeed nothing could be a more harassing scene than that of the lower
deck, where the patients were located. Under any circumstances an
hospital is a depressing and afflicting sight, even with all th