The young men, however, when they sat down to dinner in the captain's cabin, and beheld a long table flanked with cushioned seats, commanded at each end by arm-chairs, the side-board plentifully garnished with plate and crystal of various kinds, fastened with copper nails to prevent damage from the ship's pitching, they did not reflect that they were in the crater of a volcano, and that two paces from where they sat there was powder enough to blow the ship and all its crew up into the air.
They were likewise highly amused by the perpetual "guessing," "calculating," "reckoning," and inexhaustible curiosity of the crew; but their admiration of the ship, her guns, her stores, and her tackle, were boundless; they felt that their pinnace was a mere toy in comparison. The urbanity of the officers also was a source of much gratification to them; Jack even declared that all the civilization of Europe had been shipped on board the Hoboken, and in so far as that was concerned, they had no occasion to go on much further.
The object of this expedition, however, was a surgeon. There was one on board. Would he go to New Switzerland? Jack determined to try, and accordingly he walked straight off to the personage in question.
"Doctor," said he, "would you do myself and my brother a great favor?"
"Certainly; and, if it is in my power, you may consider it done."
"Well, will you embark with us for New Switzerland?"
"For what purpose, my friend?"
"My mother is laboring under a malady, which there is every reason to fear is cancer."
"And suppose a fever was to break out in this ship whilst I am absent, what do you imagine is to become of the officers and crew?"
"There are no symptoms of disease on board; but my mother is dying."