"Now say 'Ah!' ... Again! ... Raise your arms ... H'm." The Surgeon disentangled himself from his stethoscope and looked Ivor in the eyes.
"My lad," he said bluntly, "it's Hospital for you—and too late at that."
In the Wardroom later on he met the Engineer Lieutenant. "I'd make a better Prisoner's Friend than ever you will," he remarked. Pressed for an explanation, he tapped the stethoscope-case in his pocket.
"Consumption—galloping," he said.
Perhaps Ivor had held the Ace of Trumps after all.
XXII.
CONCERNING THE SAILOR-MAN.
"Able Seaman, Seaman Gunner, one Good Conduct Badge." Thus, with a click of unaccustomed boot-heels, he might describe himself at the monthly "Muster by open-list." In less formal surroundings, however, he is wont to refer to himself as a "matlow," a designation not infrequently accompanied by fervid embellishments.
Occasionally he serves to adorn the moral of a temperance tract: a reporter, hard pressed for police court news, may record one of his momentary lapses from the paths of convention ashore. Otherwise Literature knows him not.
Generally speaking, his appearance is familiar enough, though it is to be feared that the world—the unfamiliar world of streets and a shod people, of garish "pubs" and pitfalls innumerable—does not invariably see him at his best. The influence of the Naval Discipline Act relaxes ashore, and not unnatural reaction inspires him with a desire to tilt his cap on the back of his head and a fine indiscrimination in the matter of liquid refreshment.