‘I believe they were all removed to Haslar, sir, when the late surgeon died. An alcoholic coma, I am told.’ ‘Infamous,’ said Stephen, not so much at the alcoholic coma as at the monstrous surroundings. ‘Let us look at the dispensary, and then I can make my report. Mr Wetherby, pray show the way.’
The child led them forward to a ladderway, from which the sty was even clearer, the smell much stronger – the pigs looked up at them, their little intelligent eyes full of curiosity
– down into the darkness of the orlop, beneath the water-line, where by the faint gleam of reflected light that filtered down through grating after grating and by an occasional lantern they groped aft to the cockpit, the midshipmen’s berth, a noisy, noisome place. There
were only four young gentlemen, one ape and a bulldog in it at present, but they could be heard a great way off, and the youngster said ‘I should not dare go in, sir, if you was not with me. Mind your step, I beg.’
‘What would happen, were you to go in?’ asked Stephen.
‘The oldsters and the master’s mates would scrag me, sir, and feed me to the bulldog.’ He opened the door and stood aside.
‘Gentlemen, good day,’ said Stephen into the abrupt silence. They were disparate creatures: one a dark, fierce-looking man sitting on the deck trying to read by a purser’s dip; two gangling youths with their wrists and ankles starting from their clothes; and a devilish little fourteen-year-old trying to show the ape how to stand on its head. But they instantly saw that it would not do to play off their humours on this visitor and they returned his greetings, standing up with what grace they could summon, while the devilish boy quite unnecessarily strangled the bulldog, advancing to pay its respects. Stephen looked round the cockpit, which was his action-station and which would be his operating-theatre in the event of a battle:
a fine spacious theatre, since it ordinarily housed a score of young men – and walked on aft.
‘Oh sir,’ cried Mr Wetherby again, ‘pray mind your step.’ And well might he cry: the hatch to the after powder-room was open, and the gunner’s face framed in it, a foot above the deck. The face, ordinarily grave, spread in a smile and his right hand reached up.
‘Why, Doctor,’ he cried, ‘we heard you was coming, and right glad we were. Rowley, gunner’s mate in the old Worcester.’
‘Of course,’ said Stephen, shaking his hand. ‘A nasty splinter-wound in the gluteus maximus. How does it come along?’
‘You would never know it, sir. I showed it to my old woman when I came home. I showed her the scar, what there was of it, and I said “Kate, if you could sew as good as the Doctor, I should put you out to work, and live at my ease, ha, ha, ha!’ With this he vanished like an inverted Jack-in-a-box, and the hatch clapped down over him.
Smith opened the dispensary door, and a strong light came out, coming from the operating lantern that hung within. ‘I hope you will not think me over-busy, sir,’ said he.
‘But last night the purser told me that some stores had come down from the Sick and Hurt Board, and rather than leave them lying in his steward’s care I have been putting them in the medicine-chest. I was still at it when your boat came alongside, so I left things as they were. I am afraid they will not all go in.’ The hatch opened abruptly: the gunner’s beaming face reappeared. ‘I said, “Kate, if you could sew as well as the Doctor, I should put you out to work and live at my ease,” and clapped to again over his laughter.
‘You did perfectly well, Mr Smith,’ said Stephen, looking into the miniature apothecary’s shop with its drawers, bottle racks and recesses. ‘But I am afraid you are in the right of it. These’ – nodding at the powders, dried roots, drugs, ointments, bandages, dressings, tourniquets and the like that covered the floor – ‘will never go in. We shall be obliged to put – to stow – them in the starboard dispensary.’
‘By your leave, sir,’ said Smith after a hesitation, ‘there is no starboard dispensary.’
‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph,’ cried Stephen. ‘Five hundred and ninety souls to be dosed out of one miserable cupboard, four foot by three at the most! All, all of a piece throughout. Very well, gentlemen: be so good as to put them into my cabin here’ – opening the door of a room measuring six foot by four
– ‘while I go and make my report to the Captain. Oh such a report, by God.’
‘Why, Doctor, what’s amiss?’ cried Tom Pullings as he burst in upon them.
‘Stephen, have you had a fall?’ asked Jack, starting up and taking him by the arm, for he was unnaturally pale, and his eyes glared extremely.
He looked coldly at each in turn, and then in a carefully controlled voice he said ‘I have just discovered that this – this vessel, for I will not call it a vile hulk, has a sick-berth that would disgrace a Turk, a sick-berth that a parcel of Hottentots would blush for, so they would. It is a sick-berth so horrible that I cannot consent to be associated with it, and’ – his voice now rising with passion – ‘if it cannot be converted into something less like Golgotha, more designed to kill rather than to save, I wash my hands of it entirely.’ He washed his hands, glaring at their shocked faces. ‘I wash my hands, I say: the shame of the world.’
‘Pray, Stephen, sit down,’ said Jack gently, leading him to a chair. ‘Pray sit down and drink a glass of wine. Do not be cross with us, I beg.’
Pullings was too upset to say anything, but he poured the madeira; and they both looked at Stephen with infinite concern. He was still pale, still furious. ‘Have either of you ever been in this odious travcsty of a sick-berth?’ he asked, his glare piercing first the one and then the other. Oh, the moral force of that wholly unfeigned wholly disinterested and righteous anger!
Jack slowly shook his head, his conscience clear on at least that point. Tom Pullings said ‘I suppose I must have walked through, on my way to see the pig-sties; but since all the invalids were discharged to the hospital before ever I came aboard there was nobody there: so I did not notice it was so very wrong.’
Stephen told them that a sick-berth with no peace, no light, no air, could not possibly be right in any particular whatsoever: he told them in vehement detail; and, his energy subsided a little, he told them that the only ship-of-the-line sick-berth he would consent to be associated with must of necessity banish the swine in favour of the Christian sick, must lie right forward under the forecastle, and must have light, air and access to the head according to the plan of the eminently ingenious and truly benevolent Admiral Markham.
‘Doctor,’ cried Tom, ‘say but the word and I shall send for Chips and all his crew this moment. If you will direct them, you shall have your Markham sick-berth before the evening gun.’
The tension fell; Stephen took a little wine; his colour, though still disagreeably sallow, returned to a natural pallor rather than one blanched by fury; he smiled at• them; and Captain Pullings sent for the carpenter.
‘Stephen,’ said Jack diffidently, ‘I had thought of carrying you round the other ships, so that you might meet their captains and officers; but I dare say making a proper sickberth would take up most of your time.’
‘So it would too,’ said Stephen, ‘and all my energy. Tom, you have joiners of your own, have you not? I could wish to install a full dispensary there where the swine gambolled and wantoned at their ease, rather than send down to the after cockpit every time I need a black draught. Jack, I beg you will excuse me if I put off the meeting until your dinner for all these gentlemen.’
Chapter Four
When Captain Aubrey, his steward and coxswain were at sea, Ashgrove Cottage retained much of its naval quality because of their former shipmates who lived in and around the place, carrying out their usual duties of swabbing, scrubbing and painting everything in sight in as seamanlike a manner as their age and missing limbs would allow, to the admiration of all housewives within calling or gossiping distance; but the family house, Woolcombe, which Jack had recently inherited, always relapsed into a mere landsman’s dwelling. Mrs Aubrey spent most of her time at Ashgrove, Woolcombe being left in the care of Manson, the hereditary butler, and a few servants on board wages.