“I say, sir,” said the little surgeon, who was the eldest, “it is not infectious. But here comes Dr Thompson.”
Now the erudite doctor, from the first, had no great chance. Captain Reud had determined he should not be invalided. The two other captains cared nothing at all about the matter, but, of course, would not be so impolitic as to differ from their superior officer—an officer, too, of large interest, and the Amphytrion of the day; for when they had performed those duties for which they were so well fitted, their medical ones, they were to dine on the scene of their arduous labours. The eldest surgeon had rather a bias against the doctor, as he could not legally put M.D. against his own name. The next in seniority was entirely adverse to the invaliding, as, without he could invalide too, he would have to go to the West Indies in the place of our surgeon. The youngest was indifferent just then to anything but to confute the other two, and prove the plague infectious.
“But here comes Dr Thompson—I’ll appeal to him,” said non-infection; but the appeal was unfortunate, both for the appealer and the doctor. The latter was an infectionist; so there was no longer any odds, but two against two, and away they went. Our friend in the wide coat forgot he was sick, and his adversaries that they had to verify it; they sought to verify nothing but their dogmas. They waxed loud, then cuttingly polite, then slaughteringly sarcastic and, at last, exceeding wroth.
“I tell you, sir, that I have written a volume on the subject.”
“Had you no friend near you,” said Dr Thompson, “at that most unfortunate time?”
“I tell you, sir, I will never argue with anyone on the subject, unless he have read my Latin treatise ‘De Natura Pestium et Pestilentiarum.’”
“Then you’ll never argue but with yourself,” said the stout young surgeon.
Then arose the voices of the men militant over those of the men curative.
“The finest eye,” vociferated our skipper, “Captain Templar, that ever beamed from mortal. Its lovely blue, contrasted with her white skin, is just like—”
“A washerwoman’s stone-blue bag among her soapsuds—stony enough.”