Richard Gordon - DOCTOR AT SEA

'Had to put him over the wall off Pernam. Dead, y'know.'

'Go on! What of?'

"Strordinary thing altogether. Meant to ask your Doctor. Had a turn of the shakes and died before sunset.'

'Very likely smallpox,' I said firmly. 'Your ship will have to be fumigated for three weeks and all hands isolated in the fever hospital. The one in Santos is extremely unpleasant, but they will probably take you up to Sаo Paulo as you're certain to get it, anyway.'

I sat and sulked over the cheese-dish.

'Bad about the Bos'n,' Captain Beamish said. 'Don't get his type any more. Respectful. Knew my ways. I may not be in command of a big ship, but I'll have her run decently. Eh, Captain?'

Captain Hogg had his mouth full of cheese, but he nodded violently enough to spill pieces on to the tablecloth.

'Don't know what things are coming to. The Third wore the same uniform three days running last week. D'y'know what happened yesterday? Steward brought me a glass of water without a tray. Communism, that's what it is.'

Captain Beamish then said nothing else for the rest of the meal.

The Violet's officers came aboard before supper and noisily packed themselves into Hornbeam's cabin. I found it startling to see the familiar Fathom Line uniforms and badges with different faces over them. They sat and drank gin, enjoying the fragmentary friendship of the sea that had been established by a few hours or a day or two in a dozen years at ports all over the world.

'Here's our Doc,' Hornbeam said, as I squeezed through the door. 'Meet Mr. Molony, Chief Officer from that old barge down aft.'

'Hello, Doc,' he said, shaking hands. 'Enjoying the sea?'

'I am rather, thank you.'

'How did you get on with our Old Man at dinner?'

'I must say he was pretty rude.'

Molony laughed loudly, while Hornbeam filled up his glass.

'He takes some getting used to. Do you know what?' he asked Hornbeam. 'He chased me up for eating peas off a knife the other day. Can you imagine it? Now there's bugling, too. We signed on a Yankee galley-boy in New York who brought a trumpet with him, so we get bugle calls to meals. Anyone would think we were a ruddy battleship.'

'All skippers are the same,' Hornbeam said wearily. 'Do you remember old Jack Andrews in the Buttercup? What happened to him?'

'Didn't you hear? He got put ashore in Cape Town last year.'

They began to talk earnestly of men and ships I had never heard of, and their conversation took on an odd parochialism extending across the face of the earth.

As the Violet was due to sail again at midnight our guests left early. I leant on the rail and watched her float slowly into the river, her portholes drawing yellow streaks across the greasy water. She blew three hoots of farewell to us and followed her tug towards the sea. Captain Hogg stood outside his cabin staring after her, and no doubt Captain Beamish was on the bridge glaring astern at us. I wondered if I should meet any more Fathom Line captains, and if they would be any less 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.

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 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 round the cabin door to have a dekko. I goes in first holding one end of the stretcher, the Butch holding the other, and the Mate comes in after us to see what sort of a job we've made of him. Well, I dunno. Either we'd made the poor bloke so lifelike, or it was that hot, or he was starting to pong a bit, but the Mate gets inside and passes out like a light. So what could we do? The Butch and I puts him on the stretcher and carries him on deck for some air. When the Skipper sees us coming out with the Mate lying there instead of the corpse he takes one look and bloody well faints as well. Cor, what a lash-up! Stiffs all over the deck. Wasn't 'arf a funny Christmas, that wasn't.'