love he bears him to keep, and ship by him when he is on his way home from windward ports, or to let him have forthwith.
Sometimes the Bristolman will signal to a passing steamer for a doctor. The doctors of the African and British African boats are much thought of all down the Coast, and are only second in importance to the doctor on board a telegraph ship, who, being a rare specimen, is regarded as, ipso facto, more gifted, so that people will save up their ailments for the telegraph ship's medical man, which is not a bad practice, as it leads commonly to their getting over those ailments one way or the other by the time the telegraph ship arives. It is reported that one day one of the Bristolmen ran up an urgent signal to a passing mail steamer for a doctor, and the captain thereof ran up a signal of assent, and the doctor went below to get his medicines ready. Meanwhile, instead of displaying a patient gratitude, the Bristolman signalled "Repeat signal." "Give it'em again," said the steamboat captain, "those Bristolmen ain't got no Board schools." Still the Bristolman kept bothering, running up her original signal, and in due course off went the doctor to her in the gig. When he returned his captain asked him, saying, "Pills, are they all mad on board that vessel or merely drunk as usual?" "Well," says the doctor, "that's curious, for it's the very same question Captain N. has asked me about you. He is very anxious about your mental health, and wants to know why you keep on signalling 'Haul to, or I will fire into you,'" and the story goes that an investigation of the code and the steamer's signal supported the Bristolman's reading, and the subject was dropped in steam circles.
Although the Bristolmen do not carry doctors, they are
