“Very little chance, doctor: I’m such a miserable object, that even disease passes by me with contempt. If I ever am in your list, I presume it will be for a case of plethora,” replied Jerry, spanning his thin waist.
“Young gentlemen, get down directly. What are you all doing there on the taffrail?” bawled out the first-lieutenant, who had just come up the ladder.
“We’ve been looking at a sea-bully,” said Jerry in a tone of voice sufficiently loud to excite the merriment of those about him, without being heard by the first-lieutenant.
“What’s the joke?” observed Mr Bully, coming aft, as the midshipmen were dispersing.
“Some of Mr J—’s nonsense,” replied the surgeon.
This answer not being satisfactory, the first-lieutenant took it for granted, as people usually do, that the laugh was against himself, and his choler was raised against the offending party.
“Mr J—! Ay, that young man thinks of anything but his duty. There he is, playing with the captain’s dog; and his watch, I’ll answer for it, or he would not be on deck. Mr J—,” continued the first-lieutenant to Jerry, who was walking up and down to leeward, followed by a large Newfoundland dog, “is it your watch?”
“Yes, sir,” replied Jerry, touching his hat.
“Then why are you skylarking with that dog?”
“I am not skylarking with the dog, sir. He follows me up and down. I believe he takes me for a bone.”