Doctor at Sea

I soon found it was necessary to multiply the amount by three for most of the patients and by five for the Bos’n and firemen. There were boils and warts, a few burns from the engine-room, and several vague illnesses whose leading symptom was a disinclination to work. We had a few more cases resulting from careless choice of friends during our last nights in Liverpool. The approach to the medical attendant by sufferers from this embarrassing condition varied from the shifty request - with a sidelong glance at Easter - to’
    ‘Ave a word wiv you a minute, Doctor,‘ to the full-blooded storming of the surgery by the experienced invalid with his’ Say, Doc, can you fix this for us by Friday?’
    At eleven we inspected the ship. Hornbeam, Whimble, McDougall, and myself gathered outside the saloon door and saluted when Captain Hogg’s boots appeared on the companionway from his cabin. This homage he returned with the grace of a publican handing back a counterfeit half-crown.
    We lined up behind him and set off touring the decks, each of us trying to look as disagreeable as possible. We filed in and out of Boswell’s lavatories with dignity, and zealously searched for dust under the coconut matting. The progress was broken only when Captain Hogg’s eye was jarred by something that gave him displeasure, when he would turn his fury not only on the man responsible but on his parents as well. At first I shivered at the onslaught: then I grew to appreciate the range and power of the Captain’s imagination and the felicity with which he turned his sentences, until I listened to him with fascination. As for the victims, they shrugged their shoulders and took no notice. Raving Captains were just like storms at sea: you had to put up with them until they blew themselves out, and not become unreasonably excited.
    After inspection the Captain went on the bridge to supervise the daily ceremony of finding the noon position of the ship. I went up there only once, because Captain Hogg looked on visitors like a sour landowner spotting picnickers on his front lawn. It was a shady, restful place, lined with dark wood and brass, like an old-fashioned saloon bar. The sea was surprisingly far below, and the only sound was the irregular loud clicking of the gyro repeater, like the ticking of an arrhythmic clock. Abaft the bridge was the chartroom, where rulers, set-squares, and neatly sharpened pencils were arranged like a tidy school desk, and the chronometers nestled under thick glass like a pair of premature infants in an incubator. Hornbeam once offered me his sextant and let me work out our position, but I disgusted him by putting the Lotus within a few miles of Cleveland, Ohio.
    I spent most of my time chatting to the officers off watch, leaning on the rail, playing quoits, or nosing
    round the deck. I was beginning to learn what everything was called. Ships have a distinct anatomy of their own, and our daily rounds were as confusing to me as my first demonstration in the dissecting room. I recognized fairly early on the difference between port and starboard, fore and aft, and a binnacle and a barnacle; but I was still uncertain where to find such obscure pieces of marine furnishing as the jumper stays, the monkey island, and the shrouds.

    *

    The tenth morning of the voyage I sat down resolutely in my cabin and took War and Peace from the locker. Somehow I had not yet found time to pass the first page. I opened it, smoothed down the paper, and began again the first paragraph. Hornbeam rattled the jalousie door and came in.
    ‘Morning, Doc! Everything bearing an even strain?‘
    ‘Good morning, Chief,’ I said. ‘I think so, thanks very much.’
    ‘Good.’
    Picking up the first volume of War and Peace he neatly squashed a cockroach that was scuttling across the bulkhead.
    ‘These damn roaches,’ he said. ‘Come out in families once it turns hot. Had any in bed with you?’
    ‘No, not yet.’
    He pulled a tobacco tin from his pocket.
    ‘Would you like the makings?’ he asked, offering it.
    ‘No, thank you. I’m afraid it’s a nautical knack I haven’t picked up.’
    ‘It’s easy enough. Can’t stand tailor-mades.’
    He neatly rolled a cigarette between his fingers and thumbs. Whenever I tried the same manoeuvre I squeezed the tobacco out like the cream from an éclair.
    ‘Wish you’d have a look at the Sparks, Doc,’ Hornbeam continued affably.
    ‘Why, what’s the trouble?’
    ‘I just saw him shake