“Oh, all right, Reeks; but it looks uncommonly like Leeks on your paper here; and I thought you were a Welshman,” said the doctor, smiling at his queer Hampshire pronunciation; for some of the chaps down our way speak just as badly as the cockneys in the east end of London, especially those coming from the country part beyond Cosham and Fareham. “Now, strip off your clothes to the waist, Reeks, and you, Trimmens, just take his chest measurement, please. You need not take off your trousers, boy!”
He added this caution in the nick of time, for ‘Ugly’ appeared about to peel off everything, to his naked pelt!
The sick-berth steward then proceeded to put a tape-measure round his body, just under the armpits, compassing his chest.
“He’s just the regulation, sir,” he said, after inspecting the measure. “Thirty-one inches, sir, exactly.”
The doctor looked at Reeks’s papers again.
“Ah, yes, all right, his age is under sixteen, I see,” said he. “Just test his height, Trimmens.”
The sick-bay steward took Reeks to the bulkhead opposite, where was a standard for measurement, the same as they keep in barrack-rooms.
“He’s five feet two, sir,” he called out—“to a h’inch, sir.”
“All right, that’ll do,” said the doctor. “I don’t think Mr Reeks will grow much more, though; he’s too thickset. Get me my stethoscope, Trimmens, and I’ll sound his lungs and heart.”
The doctor’s examination appeared satisfactory, for he made a note on ‘Ugly’s’ papers; and he was then made to hop across the cabin on each foot alternately and swing from a hook suspended to the deck above with either hand; after which his sight was tested, to see whether he could distinguish colours at a distance, besides being made pick out variously formed letters placed six feet or so away from him. The ordeal was completed with an inquiry as to the state of his bowels!