Doctor at Sea

unnerving.
    A man in a pair of khaki trousers and a loose orange shirt was waiting in my cabin. He grinned as I came in.
    ‘Hi ya, Doc,’ he said. ‘I’m off the Omar C. Ingersoll. Pleased to meet ya.’
    We shook hands.
    ‘I guess I shouldn’t have bust in, but your Chief Mate said it was O.K.’
    ‘Perfectly all right,’ I said. ‘What can I do for you?’
    ‘I just want a bottle of aspirin. We’re right out, and we ain’t carrying a medic. I don’t want to put you to no bother, though.’
    ‘No trouble at all, my good man,’ I said. ‘I’ll fetch you some from the hospital.’
    ‘That’s mighty swell of you, Doc,’ he said, grinning at me again.’ Mighty swell.’
    In return for the bottle of aspirins he presented me with two hundred Chesterfields, The Case of the Luckless Legs, three bars of chocolate, Life, and a photograph of the Omar C. Ingersoll. At the gangway he slapped me on the back and said, ’Come aboard and have a cup of coffee sometime, Doc. Just go up the gangway and ask for me.’
    ‘Very kind of you,’ I said. ‘And you are...the Bos’n? Er, Mate, possibly ...?’
    ‘Aw, hell no, Doc! I’m the Captain. So long!’
    I went to my bunk reflecting that the feudal system at least had the advantage of leaving you in no doubt whom you were talking to.

12

    WE spent a week in Santos, all baking in our cabins like a big dish of escargots. Our next port was to be Buenos Aires, to load grain and hides for home.
    ‘Shan’t be sorry to get away,’ said Trail the morning we sailed. ’Stinking place, this. Fancy living here!’
    ‘When are we off?’
    ‘About midday. They’ve finished cargo in all hatches except No. 5. It’s hot, isn’t it? I’ll be like a fried egg when I come off the bridge.’
    We left the city of tolerance behind us and turned south towards the River Plate.
    Our voyage down the coast was enlivened by Christmas, which fell upon us half-way between Santos and Montevideo. The festival is celebrated most warmly by Englishmen when away from their own country, just as London Scots afford the fiercest welcome to the New Year. As I had now a fair insight into the behaviour of the Lotus and her crew I expected the day would pass with a flourish.
    On Christmas morning Easter awoke me with my tea at seven.
    ‘Good morning, Doctor. And a Merry Christmas to you Doctor, with my best respects.’
    ‘Thank you, Easter. And the same to you.’
    ‘Bloody ’ot again, ain’t it?’
    ‘What’s on the thermometer?’
    He looked at it closely.
    ‘Hundred and two. Won’t be nearly so chilly by midday, neither.’
    ‘It seems very strange to me to have Christmas in this climate.’
    ‘Cor,’ Easter continued, ’I remember one Christmas we had in the Timor Sea. I was in a Yankee ship then - one of them all-metal jobs inside. She was hot enough to melt a bos’n’s heart. Early on Christmas morning the Chief Engineer goes and dies, see…’
    ‘Really, Easter ...’
    ‘... so I reckons we got to chuck the poor bastard over the wall pronto, because in that heat you wouldn’t be able to get near him after dinner-time, let alone dress him up in a canvas suit. I tells the Mate - nasty bit of work he was - but he won’t have none of it. You know what these Yanks are. Crazy for embalming. “He’s got to be embalmed,” he says, “then we’ll pop him in the galley freezer and he can have a decent burial in the soil of God’s Own Country. Besides,” he says, “we ain’t going to have no funerals on Christmas Day.” “Yes,” I says, “but who’s going to do the embalming?” “You are,” he says, “there’s instructions in the Pharmacist’s Mate’s Handbook, and you can get on with it. If you do him nice I’ll give you a bottle of Scotch, and if you makes a pig’s bottom of him I’ll kick you round the deck.”
    ‘What could I do? I tells the Skipper, but he gets a cob on and says it’s orders. So I reckon instead of arguing it’s best to get on with it while he’s still pretty fresh. The Butcher and me goes in there and gets to work, me promising the Butch half of the Scotch - used to be in the meat works at Chicago, the Butch, and reckoned something like that was right up his alley.
    ‘Oh, we made a lovely job of him,’ Easter continued with pride.’ It would have brought tears to his mother’s eyes. When we’d finished the Butch and I gets the hospital stretcher to carry him down to the freezer, while the Skipper and all hands gathers