I Become an “Unclothed Boy!”
“Look sharp, my lads!” sang out after us the master-at-arms, or “Jaunty” as he is always called on board ship. “The sick-bay’s away there forrud on the starboard side; and if you’re spry and pass the doctor soon, before the bugle sounds for ‘cooks to their messes,’ why, you’ll be able to eat your first meal at Her Majesty’s expense, my lads, afore you’re a day older.”
“Faith an’ sure,” rejoined our ragged comrade Mick Donovan innocently enough, as we hurried along the middle deck towards the fore part of the ship, under the tutelage of the corporal, “I’ll pass the gintleman aisy an’ civilly if he ounly comes foreninst me an’ gives me a chance, begorrah, to go by him!”
The corporal sniggered at this audibly, not being any longer in the presence of his superior officer the master-at-arms, and therefore not now bound in the interests of discipline to repress his emotions; and, in another minute, pushing aside a red curtain that hung in front of the open door of a cabin on the starboard side, forward of the galley, where there was an appetising smell of cookery going on that made my friend Mick sniff approvingly and wink at me, our conductor led the three of us into the doctor’s quarters, or hospital of the ship, nautically styled the sick-bay.
Here, the sick-berth steward, distinguished by a red-cross badge within a circlet of gold on his arm, took us in tow, the corporal handing him our papers, which he in turn handed to the doctor, who was in the usual undress uniform of an officer, a thin line of red braid interlarded between the rows of gold lace on the cuff of his tunic sleeve betokening his special medical rank.
This gentleman was seated at a writing-table in a larger cabin amidships, opening out of the first apartment; and here I noticed there were a couple of hospital cots rigged up at the farther end, for the treatment, no doubt, of any urgent cases, such as a fall from aloft or other mishap which might happen on board the ship, prior to the removal of the patients to Haslar, which lay within convenient reach up the creek opposite.
The doctor looked up on our entrance from what seemed suspiciously like a copy of one of the daily journals, which he had been apparently studying with great interest; but, of course, I might have been mistaken.
He was a pleasant, easy-going gentleman, I thought; and when I spoke about him subsequently to father, he said he was probably like most of the ‘sawbones’ he had met with in his time in the Navy—“chaps as wouldn’t let their sense of duty ever fret their minds too much!”
I could not help seeing now, that, though the steward held out our papers to him, he did not take the trouble to stretch out his hand for them; allowing the man to lay them on the table before him when he was tired of holding them out.
“Oh, that you, Trimmens?” he said languidly, as if he were too tired almost to get out the sentence, though he had a nice, agreeable voice. “What! You don’t mean to say you’ve brought in another batch of boys to be examined?”