Chapter Twelve.
Pros and Cons.
Of the “gentlemen of England who live at home at ease,” very few can know how entirely dependent for happiness one is on his neighbours. Man is out-and-out, or out-and-in, a gregarious animal, else ‘Robinson Crusoe’ had never been written. Now, I am sure that it is only correct to state that the majority of combatant (Note 1) officers are, in simple language, jolly nice fellows, and as a class gentlemen, having, in fact, that fine sense of honour, that good-heartedness, which loves to do as it would be done by, which hurteth not the feelings of the humble, which turneth aside from the worm in its path, and delighteth not in plucking the wings from the helpless fly. To believe, however, that there are no exceptions to this rule would be to have faith in the speedy advent of the millennium, that happy period of lamb-and-lion-ism which we would all rather see than hear tell of; for human nature is by no means altered by bathing every morning in salt water, it is the same afloat as on shore. And there are many officers in the navy, who—“dressed in a little brief authority,” and wearing an additional stripe—love to lord it over their fellow worms. Nor is this fault altogether absent from the medical profession itself!
It is in small gunboats, commanded perhaps by a lieutenant, and carrying only an assistant-surgeon, where a young medical officer feels all the hardships and despotism of the service; for if the lieutenant in command happens to be at all frog-hearted, he has then a splendid opportunity of puffing himself up.
In a large ship with from twenty to thirty officers in the mess, if you do not happen to meet with a kindred spirit at one end of the table, you can shift your chair to the other. But in a gunboat on foreign service, with merely a clerk, a blatant middy, and a second-master who would fain be your senior, as your messmates, then, I say, God help you! unless you have the rare gift of doing anything for a quiet life. It is all nonsense to say, “Write a letter on service about any grievance;” you can’t write about ten out of a thousand of the petty annoyances which go to make your life miserable; and if you do, you will be but little better, if, indeed, your last state be not worse than your first.
I have in my mind’s eye even now a lieutenant who commanded a gunboat in which I served as medical officer in charge. This little man was what is called a sea-lawyer—my naval readers well know what I mean; he knew all the Admiralty Instructions, was an amateur engineer, only needed the title of M.D. to make him a doctor, could quibble and quirk, and in fact could prove by the Queen’s Regulations that your soul, to say nothing of your body, wasn’t your own; that you were a slave, and he lord—god of all he surveyed. Peace be with him! he has gone to his account; he will not require an advocate, he can speak for himself. Not many such hath the service, I am happy to say. He was continually changing his poor hard-worked sub-lieutenants, and driving his engineers to drink, previously to trying them by court-martial. At first he and I got on very well; apparently he “loved me like a vera brither;” but we did not continue long “on the same platform,” and, from the day we had the first difference of opinion, he was my foe, and a bitter one too. I assure you, reader, it gave me a poor idea of the service, for it was my first year. He was always on the outlook for faults, and his kindest words to me were “chaffing” me on my accent, or about my country. To be able to meet him on his own ground I studied the Instructions day and night, and tried to stick by them.
Malingering was common on board; one or two whom I caught I turned to duty: the men, knowing how matters stood between the commander and me, refused to work, and so I was had up and bullied on the quarter-deck for “neglect of duty” in not putting these fellows on the sick-list. After this I had to put every one that asked on the sick-list.
“Doctor,” he would say to me on reporting the number sick, “this is wondrous strange—thirteen on the list, out of only ninety men. Why, sir, I’ve been in line-of-battle ships,—line-of-battle ships, sir,—where they had not ten sick—ten sick, sir.” This of course implied an insult to me, but I was like a sheep before the shearers, dumb.