DOCTOR AT SEA

I climbed up on the bunk next to Archer without enthusiasm. It seemed as comfortable as trying to drink on a bus in the rush hour.

'You just passed out of medical school?' Archer asked.

'Certainly not! I've been in practice for…some years.'

'Oh, sorry. Been to sea before?'

'I'm afraid not.'

'You'll soon pick up the routine. I hope you're hot stuff on the diseases sailors get.'

This brought a roar of laughter from the other two.

'We doctors have to be "hot stuff" on very many things,' I said.

I gave a superior smile. Since I qualified I had fed on professional respect and I found the conversation irritating.

'By George, we find some queer doctors at sea,' Trail said, handing me a glass of beer. 'Don't we, Mr. Hornbeam? Usually they're getting away from their wives or the police, or both sometimes. Or else it's drink. That's the commonest. Sometimes it's drugs, though.'

'I drink very little.'

Trail took no notice. 'I remember old Doc Parsons I sailed with when I was doing my time,' he went on cheerfully. 'He was a real scream. As tight as a tick from morning to night. We reckoned he got through a couple of bottles of gin a day, easy. Started before breakfast, every morning. Said the world was so bloody awful he couldn't face it at the best of times, but especially with his last night's hangover. Then one day in the Red Sea the Mate ripped his arm open, and old Parsons said he'd operate. Laugh! The lot of us went down to the hospital to watch. I was doubled up. He'd been at the bottle extra strong and he was as blind as a bat. Kept dropping the knife on the deck and falling over the table. In the end the Mate clocked him one and got the Chief Steward to do it.'

Archer leant forward.

'Do you remember old Doc Hamilton in the Mariesta?' he asked.

The other two began to laugh again.

'He was a real queer 'un,' he explained to me. 'Started on the grog before we sailed-had to be carried up the gangway. By the time we reached Gib. the Old Man stopped his tap-no more booze, you understand. So he went down to the dispensary and drank all the surgical spirit. When he finished that he scrounged meths from the engineers. They tumbled to it, of course, and wouldn't let him have any more. In the end he drank the acid from the wireless batteries.'

'The police came for him when we got home,' Hornbeam added. 'I don't know what it was for. Something about abortions, I think.'

'I remember we buried an old doctor off Teneriffe,' Archer said thoughtfully. 'He hanged himself. He did it with his belt,' he continued in my direction.

I began to understand that the medical professional was not held in the highest esteem at sea.

'I assure you I shall not commit any of those things,' I said.

'The voyage hasn't started yet,' Archer observed. 'Why, look what happened to old Doc Flowerday.'

'Yes, that was a shame,' Trail said, nodding his head sadly. 'He was as mad as you make 'em. But I was sorry about it, for one.'

Hornbeam agreed.

'He was a nice old boy. You heard all about it, I suppose, Doc?'

'No, I haven't. Why? Should I?'

He suddenly looked uncomfortable.

'I thought they might have told you something about it in the office,' he said vaguely. 'He was the last doctor before you.'

He sighed gently into his beer.

'It was a pity,' he continued. 'In a way.'

I shifted myself nervously on the bunk.

'What was a pity?'

Hornbeam drained his glass.

'His…well, his end, as you might say.'

They sat in silence for a while. The reference to Dr. Flowerday had saddened them, and no one seemed to wish to reopen the conversation. I sat and anxiously speculated on his possible fate, for which I had now a good number of workable theories.

Chapter Two

I went to bed that night feeling like my first day at school when someone pinched my tuck-box. But in the morning the rain had stopped and the sun threw a bloodshot early glance on Merseyside. The ship had come to life overnight. She rattled with the noise of steam winches loading cargo, and the ghosts of the evening were replaced by persons who shouted, coughed, and used bad language on each other with comforting humanity.

I had breakfast in the saloon with Hornbeam and the Mates. Their conversation was as mysterious to me as the chat at the hospital lunch-table would have been to them: it was about 'tween decks and stowage, dunnage and ullage, tank tops and cofferdams. The only fact I could grasp was that the Lotus's sailing date was as unpredictable as Judgment Day.

After breakfast I went to my cabin, sat on the narrow strip of settee, and opened the first page of _War and Peace._ This I had bought in three volumes from a bookseller's near Euston Station before catching the train for Liverpool. I thought the voyage would allow me to achieve a ten-years' ambition of finishing the thing; besides, I was determined to make use of the time I was obliged to spend inactively at sea improving my mind. And its long, restful paragraphs might begin to soothe my headaches.