On board ship, when he acted as medical adviser to the skipper, his officers, the crew, and the passengers—the last-named lot he considered of little account—he had been in the habit of dosing them with the same compound for all manner of complaints.
'It saves a heap of trouble, and it's always handy,' said Dr Tom, as he filled a bottle from his regular tap. 'If it does no good, there is the blessed and everlasting consolation that it can do no harm.'
Passengers annoyed Dr Tom, as they have continued to annoy ships' doctors ever since, for the doctor had a soul above medicine. He considered himself a poet, a truly dramatic poet, and he was sore with the world because his efforts had not been appreciated. He had cast his poems upon the mess-room table, in the hopes of them bearing fruit, and they had been neglected in the most aggravating fashion.
The skipper put the finishing touch to one of Dr Tom's efforts. The worthy medico had, after much toil and brain work, composed a poem which he believed would appeal to the skipper's heart.
It was a wild, weird thing, a concoction of fiery skies, blistering sun, howling winds, dashing waves, heaving billows, snow-flecked seahorses, and what not, and in the midst of this poetic chaos was a good ship, commanded by a worthy skipper with a fiery beard. That was where Dr Tom blundered. He had no tact, even if his poetic ship had, and the skipper's hair being of a bright, flaming colour, he resented this personal allusion.
When the poem was solemnly presented to him by his 'boy,' he read the first few stanzas with pride, but arriving at the fiery beard period, he flew into a rage, hurled himself into Dr Tom's cabin, and said,—
'Did you write this ... d——d insulting thing?'
The doctor was mortally offended, nay, he was more than that, he was hurt. He had expended many hours on the composition of that poem, and had neglected the groans of many patients in order to finish it off.
'That, sir, is an effort that has cost me dear,' he said.
'By the Lord, if there are any more such efforts, it will cost you untold wealth!' yelled the frantic skipper with the fiery beard, and he flung the offending poem into a mass of half-empty drug bottles.