Doctor at Sea

he went to his cabin to clean his teeth. He reappeared slightly flushed, and took his place in the inspection procession with confidence. Then he cleaned his teeth again. He found it necessary to clean his teeth before dinner, at teatime, and on several occasions during the evening. By ten at night, when he prepared the Captain’s sandwiches in the pantry, his spectacles were awry and he sang snatches of bawdy songs as he slapped on the mustard with a flourish. The end of his day was marked shortly afterwards by the flash of a bottle sailing out of his porthole, and the light splash as it hit the water and joined the others that marked, at neatly regular intervals, the progress of the Chief Steward round the world.
    To restore this and other profitable discrepancies, Whimble was forced to spend several hours a day sitting in his tiny office with the store-books and a ready-reckoner, biting his pen and working out worried sums on a scrap of paper.
    ‘Father’s very hard, very hard!’ he explained to me one day.’ Always chasing me up over the catering. And the Company looks at every grain of rice they give you. What d’you think they’d do if I was a pound of butter out at the end of the voyage?’ He indicated the sea with his thumb.’ It would be “Out, Walter, me boy,” and no mistake. I don’t know how I make ends meet sometimes, really I don’t.’
    His problem was not so much making ends meet but arranging them to do so with a worthwhile overlap. The drawers under his bunk were filled with tins of ham, peaches, lard, tongue, and pineapple, which were ready to be slipped over the side to a furtive rowing-boat our first night in port. Tins of cigarettes were stacked behind his books in the office, and two or three bottles of whisky were locked in the glass locker with the ostentatious label FOR ENTERTAINMENT OF CUSTOMS.’ If you’re wanting any medical stores on the coast, Doc,’ he confided in me when I dressed a cut on his hand one evening,’ let me have the list and we’ll split the comish fifty-fifty.’
    ‘Very kind of you, I’m sure.’
    ‘Of course, there won’t be much in it. There isn’t much of anything in this hooker. In a big passenger job that’s different. The Purser gets his comish on everything down to the bell-boy’s tips. Why, the barman in one of those makes more than the Old Man.’ He looked gratefully at his fresh bandage.’ If you want a few bottles of Scotch to flog the other end it might be arranged,’ he added generously.’ I can get it ashore for you. Trust Walter. Never touch a drop of it myself, mind you.’
    Whimble had justification enough for secret drinking at our expense in the Captain’s table manners alone. Captain Hogg made a point of complaining at least once a meal about the menu or cooking.’ Beef!’ he would exclaim, contemptuously spitting out a halfchewed morsel as big as a golf ball.’ Flea-ridden cow, more likely! Where the devil did you dig this up from, Mr Whimble?’
    ‘Fresh on board this trip, sir. Saw it loaded with my own eyes, if I may respectfully say so, sir.’
    ‘I don’t believe you, Mr Whimble. You’ve had this in the freezer since last voyage, or I’m a Dutchman. What do you say, eh, Doctor?’
    As there was no point in disagreeing with the Captain about anything I nodded sympathetically.
    When he was especially enraged with a dish Captain Hogg would lift his plate shoulder high, bellow’ Steward!’ and demand,’ Throw that muck over the side and bring us a decent piece of bread and cheese.’ This he would eat glaring at Whimble, in a silence broken only by the rhythmical snapping of his jaws. On other occasions he would suddenly be overcome with longings, like a pregnant woman.’ Mr Whimble,’ he would demand in the middle of a plate of liver and bacon,’ why don’t we ever have any avocado pears? ‘or,’ Steward! Are there any pikelets on board?’
    After the meagre nourishment of my student’s lodgings and the G.P.’s table the portions served in the
    Lotus's saloon looked heavy with the threat of dyspepsia; but the sea air and the prospect of sleeping all afternoon soon led to my eating as much as anyone else, apart from Captain Hogg. The menu was conservative, like a good commercial hotel’s, and ran mostly to joints and puddings. All of them were prepared with care by the First Cook, a large, soft-eyed, likeable man, who sweated among his spitting roasts in the galley whistling and basting the meat