He was, on the contrary, a young man of skill, good sense, and right feelings, who cared nothing at all about his dignity when he could be of any use; or rather, who left it to take care of itself, without thinking of anything but his business.

To tell the truth, he was so much a lover of his art that he felt secretly tickled with the idea of a new operation, and experienced on the occasion that peculiar pleasure, known, it is said, only to the faculty, when a complicated and difficult case falls into their hands.
He had just mixed a glass of grog, after the day's work was done, and was eyeing the beverage with that sort of serene anticipation which the sober certainty of waking bliss is sure to produce, when the deputation made their appearance, having first sent in the boy, whose arm was still in a sling from the bite of the monkey.
"Are you in a hurry ?" said the doctor, on hearing the novel petition; for he had nestled himself into the corner of the berth, with one foot on the bench, the other on the table, and his glass of "half-and-half" glowing like amber between his eye and the solitary glim of those profound regions, those diamond mines from which the Hoods and the Hardys of times past and times present have been drawn up to the very tip-top of their profession.
"Yes, sir," replied the spokesman of the party.

"There is no time to be lost, for the captain, who is in a great rage, says, if we don't extricate the monkey's grinders, overboard he goes to a certainty." "Extricate is not the word, you blockhead; extract, I suppose you mean.

Besides, I fancy it is not his grinders which the captain has ordered to be removed, but his eye-teeth, or tusks, as they may fairly be called." "Well, sir," said the impatient seaman, "just as you please, tushes or high teeth, if you'll only be kind enough to come and help us out of this plaguy mess, and save the poor dumb animal's life." The quick clatter of feet up the ladders gave the signal that the successful deputation were returning to the anxious party assembled between the two guns just abaft the gangway-ladder, and nearly abreast the after-hatchway, and immediate preparations were made for the operation.
While these preparations were going on, the learned doctor had leisure to consider the case more attentively; and it occurred to him that it would be needless cruelty to draw the poor beast's tusks, and therefore he exchanged that too well-known instrument, the dentist's key, for a pair of bone-nippers, with which he proposed merely to break off the points.
"I don't know exactly about that," said the perplexed quarter-master, when the assistant surgeon explained his views of the matter.

"The captain said to me, 'Draw those wild bear's tushes out of him;' and I am afraid, if they are only broken, the monkey may still have a chance for going astern." "Nonsense, nonsense!" interrupted the judicious doctor.