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, everyone
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 to capitulate.
The doctor then changed the subject, and talked about the yellow fever,
and other diseases of the climate, so that, by his account, the West
India islands were but hospitals to die in. Those most likely to be
attacked, were men in full strong health. The spare men stood a better
chance. This conversation was carried on until it was time to leave--Mrs
To at last quite silent, and the captain gulping down his wine with a
sigh. When we rose from the table, Mrs To did not ask us, as usual, to
stay and hear a little music; she was, like her piano, not a little out
of tune.

"By the powers, doctor, you did that nately," said O'Brien, as we left
the cabin.

"O'Brien," said the doctor, "oblige me, and you, Mr Simple, oblige me
also, by not saying a word in the ship about what I have sai