“A poultice—a poultice—a poultice, good people, or I shall presently be all nose together,”—and a poultice was promptly manufactured from mashed pumpkin, and he was put to bed, with his face covered up with it, as if an Italian artist had been taking a cast of his beauties in plaster of Paris.
In the application of this said poultice, however, we had nearly extinguished poor Aaron amongst us, by suffocating him outright; for the skipper, who was the operating surgeon in the first instance, with me for his mate, clapped a whole ladleful over his mouth and nose, which, besides being scalding hot, sealed those orifices effectually, and indeed about a couple of tablespoonfuls had actually been forced down his gullet, notwithstanding his struggles, and exclamations of “Pumpkin bad—softened with castor oil—d——n it, skipper, you’ll choke me” spurt—sputter—sputter—“choke me, man.”
“Cuidado,” said Don Ricardo; “let me manage”—and he got a small tube of wild cane, which he stuck into Bang’s mouth, through a hole in the poultice-cloth, and set a negro servant to watch that it did not sink into his gullet, as he fell asleep, and with instructions to take the poultice off whenever the pain abated; and there he lay on his back, whistling through this artificial beak, like a sick snipe.
At length, however, all hands of us seemed to have fallen asleep, but towards the dawning I was awakened by repeated bursts of suppressed laughter, and upon looking in the direction from whence the sounds proceeded, I was surprised beyond all measure to observe Transom in a corner of the room in his trowsers and shirt, squatted like a tailor on his hams, with one of the sable damsels on her knees beside him holding a candle, while his Majesty’s Post Captain was plying his needle in a style and with a dexterity that would have charmed our friend Stultze exceedingly, and every now and then bending double over his work, and swinging his body backwards and forwards with the water welling from his eyes, laughing all the while like to choke himself. As for his bronze candlestick, I thought she would have expired on the spot, with her white teeth glancing like ivory, and the tears running down her cheeks, as she every now and then clapped a handkerchief on her mouth to smother the uncontrollable uproariousness of her mirth.
“Why, captain, what spree is this?” said I.
“Never you mind, but come here. I say, Mr Cringle, do you see him piping away there”—and there he was, sure enough, still gurgling through the wild cane—with his black guardian, whose province it was to have removed the poultice, sound asleep, snoring in the huge chair at Bang’s head, wherein he had established himself, while the candle at his patient’s cheek was flickering in the socket.
My superior was evidently bent on wickedness.
“Get up and put on your trowsers, man.”
I did so.
“Now wait a bit till I cooper him—Here, my darling”—to the sable virgin who was now on the qui vive, bustling about—“here,” said the captain, sticking out a leg of Bang’s trowsers, “hold you there, my dear.”