Doctor at Sea

what there is in the kitty, but you’ve got to be pretty nifty slipping it out before the Purser spots you. Charity begins at home, don’t it, Doctor?’

    *

    My clinical practice continued its easy routine, and was centred round preservation of the health of the Captain’s stomach. I had never known an organ to produce such widespread clinical effects. If it functioned painlessly life was tolerable, even at mealtimes; but the first twinges of dyspepsia immediately communicated themselves to everyone on board. Fortunately I was able to denature my mixture of its explosive properties, and it combated spiritually with the Captain’s diet. My morning visit to him with the sick-list gave me an opportunity to see how the battle was going by judging the state of the old gentleman’s temper - a matter of importance on the ship beyond the belief of any landsman. If he was in a good mood he took the chit without question, and sometimes even demonstrated extreme geniality by offering me a gin (he saw nothing unusual in drinking after breakfast). If my mixture was not up to strength, or if he had eaten too many platefuls of Madras curry the night before, he would seize the paper and scowl at it like a Tudor monarch affirming a list of executions.
    ‘What’s wrong with that man?’ he would demand, stabbing the sheet with his blunt finger.’ McKlusky, J., Ordinary Seaman. Why’s he off duty? What’s this - P.U.O.?’
    ‘Pyrexia of unknown origin, sir,’ I explained timidly.’ He had a temperature.’
    ‘Well, why has he?’
    ‘I’m afraid I don’t know, sir.’
    ‘Why don’t you? You’re the Doctor, aren’t you? What the devil do you think would happen to us all if I didn’t know a lighthouse when I saw one? Eh? What have you got to say to that?’
    He slammed the paper down on his desk. I said nothing to it.
    ‘Now, look here, Doctor,’ he went on.’ I’m not in your line, and I don’t pretend to be. But I can tell you what’s wrong with this man - he’s constipated. I haven’t been to sea for forty years for nothing. Give the bastard a double dose of black draught and kick him back on duty. If he still shirks I’ll put him in the logbook. That’s an order!’
    ‘Yes, sir.’
    This put me in a state of professional agitation. But Captain Hogg would have agitated the whole General Medical Council.
    The Captain was at his most terrifying when conducting the ceremony of placing an offender’s name in the log-book. This was the only disciplinary action left in his hands: flogging at the mainmast, keel-hauling, and hanging from the yardarm at sunset have been abolished by Parliament, and Captain Hogg made it plain that he thought the world all the worse for it.
    One night shortly after we reached the Tropics I was pulled from my bunk by Hornbeam to see a couple of firemen who had been fighting in the foc’s’le. Both of them were drunk. They were in the hospital, blood-spattered and muttering surly threats at each other, separated by Easter with the heavy pestle from the drug locker.
    ‘Now keep quiet for the doctor,’ he said cheerfully, ‘or I’ll bash your ruddy brains in with this. These two have filled each other in something proper,’ he added to me as a clinical explanation.
    During the two hours needed to sew them up I gathered that the pair of them, Kelly and Crosby, came from the opposite sides of a Liverpool street; and a feud had smouldered between them since they first threw stones at each other from the shelter of their mothers’ skirts. Too late they had found themselves both aboard the Lotus, and had been living in grudging amicability since we sailed. But that evening Kelly had been unable to repress any longer his opinion that Crosby’s mother was not only a harlot, but the oldest and most ugly in all Liverpool, and Crosby cracked the end of a bottle and went for him.
    The next morning at ten I was summoned to the Captain’s cabin, which had the ceremonially grim air of a Portsmouth court-martial. Sitting at the desk was Captain Hogg, an expression on his face of uninhibited malevolence. Set before him were his gold-braided cap, Instructions for Masters, the log-book open at the correct page, a sheet of yellow blotting-paper, and a large silver ink-pot with a pen in it, so that everything was at hand for making the damning entry. Hornbeam was in a chair beside the Captain, looking seriously at his own feet. The Bos’n and the Donkeyman were positioned on each side of