Hornblower and the Atropos. C. S. Forester

Atropos was shouldering her way valiantly through the short but steep seas that came hurrying forward to assail her port bow. Her motion was easy; she was carrying exactly the right amount of sail for that wind. Turner put a telescope in his pocket and walked forward to ascend the main shrouds, while Hornblower stood on the weather side with the wind blowing against his sunburned cheeks. Turner came aft again, his smile denoting self‑satisfaction.

“That’s the Seven Capes, sir,” he said. “Two points on the starboard bow.”

“There’s a northerly set here, you say?” asked Hornblower.

“Yes, sir.”

Hornblower walked over and looked at the compass, and up at the trim of the sails. The northerly set would help, and the wind was coming from the southward of west, but there was no sense in going unnecessarily far to leeward.

“Mr. Still! You can come closer to the wind than this. Brace her up.”

He did not want to have to beat his way in at the last, and he was making allowance for the danger of the current setting in on Cape Kum.

Now here was the doctor, touching his hat to demand attention.

“What is it, doctor?” asked Hornblower.

The hands were hauling on the maintack.

“May I speak to you, sir?”

That was exactly what he was doing, and at a moment by no means opportune. But of course what he wanted was a chance to speak to him in privacy, and not on this bustling deck.

“It’s about the patient, sir,” supplemented Eisenbeiss. “I think it is very important.”

“Oh, very well,” said Hornblower, restraining himself from using bad language. He led the way down into the cabin, and seated himself to face the doctor. “Well? What do you have to say?”

Eisenbeiss was nervous, that was plain.

“I have formed a theory, sir.”

He failed, as ever, with the “th” sound, and the word was so unusual and his pronunciation of it was so odd chat Hornblower had to think for a moment before he could guess what it was Eisenbeiss had said.

“And what is this theory?”

“It is about the position of the bullet, sir,” answered Eisenbeiss; he, too, took a moment to digest what was the English pronunciation of the word.

“The garrison surgeon at Malta told me it was in the chest cavity. Do you know any more than that?”

That expression “chest cavity” was an odd one, but the garrison surgeon had used it. It implied an empty space, and was an obvious misnomer. Lungs and heart and the great blood‑vessels must fill that cavity full.

“I believe it may not be in there at all, sir,” said Eisenbeiss, clearly taking a plunge.

“Indeed?” This might be exceedingly important news if it were true. “Then why is he so ill?”

Now that Eisenbeiss had committed himself he became voluble again. Explanations poured out of him, accompanied by jerky gestures. But the explanations were hard to follow. In this highly technical matter Eisenbeiss had been thinking in his native language even more than usual, and now he was having to translate into technical terms unfamiliar to him and still more unfamiliar to Hornblower, who grasped despairingly at one contorted sentence.

“You think that the bullet, after breaking those ribs, may have bounced off again?” he asked. At the last moment he substituted the word “bounce” for “ricochet” in the hope of retaining clarity.

“Yes, sir. Bullets often do that.”

“And where do you say you think it went then?”

Eisenbeiss tried to stretch his left hand far under his right armpit; his body was too bulky to permit it to go far enough to make his demonstration quite complete.

“Under the scapula, sir — the — the shoulder‑blade.”

“Land ho! Land on the port bow?”

Hornblower heard the cry come down through the skylight from above. That must be Rhodes they had sighted. Here they were heading into Rhodes Channel, and he was down below talking about ribs and scapulas. And yet the one was as important as the other.

“I can’t stay down here much longer, doctor. Tell me why you think this is the case?”

Eisenbeiss fell into explanation again. He talked about the patient’s fever, and about his comparative wellbeing the morning after he had been wounded, and about the small amount of blood he had spat up. He was in the full flood of his talk when a knock at the door interrupted him.

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