summons, and he joined the first lieutenant, O'Brien, and me, as we
walked in. We sat down to table; the covers were removed, and, as the
midshipmen prophesied, there was plenty of pork--mock-turtle soup, made
out of a pig's head--a boiled leg of pork and peas-pudding--a roast
spare-rib with the crackling on--sausages and potatoes, and pig's
pettitoes. I cannot say that I disliked my dinner, and I ate very
heartily; but a roast sucking-pig came on as a second course, which
rather surprised me: but what surprised me more, was the quantity
devoured by Mrs To. She handed her plate from the boiled pork to the
roast, asked for some pettitoes, tried the sausages, and finished with a
whole plateful of sucking-pig and stuffing. We had an apple-pie at the
end, but as we had already eaten apple sauce with the roast pork, we did
not care for it. The doctor, who abominated pork, ate pretty well, and
was excessively attentive to Mrs To.

"Will you not take a piece of the roast pig, doctor?" said the captain.

"Why really, Captain To, as we are bound, by all reports, to a station
where we must not venture upon pork, I think I will not refuse to take a
piece, for I am very fond of it."

"How do you mean?" inquired the captain and his lady, both in a breath.

"Perhaps I may be wrongly informed," replied the doctor; "but I have
heard that we were ordered to the West Indies; now, if so, every one
knows, that although you may eat salt pork there occasionally without
danger, in all tropical climates, and especially the West Indies, two or
three days' living upon this meat will immediately produce dysentery,
which is always fatal in that climate."

"Indeed!" exclaimed the captain.

"You don't say so?" rejoined the lady.

"I do indeed: and have always avoided the West Indies for that very,
reason--I am so fond of pork."

The doctor then proceeded to give nearly one hundred instances of
messmates and shipmen who had been attacked with dysentery, from the
eating of fresh pork in the West Indies; and O'Brien, perceiving the
doctor's drift, joined him, telling some most astonishing accounts of
the dreadful effects of pork in a hot country. I think he said, that
when the French were blockaded, previous to the surrender of Martinique,
that having nothing but pigs to eat, thirteen hundred out of seventeen
hundred soldiers and officers died in the course of three weeks, and the
others were so reduced by disease, that they were obliged