'Sir!'
The Chief Steward jumped, and choked over a chop bone.
'I have, I suppose, tasted worse chops than these. In a fifth-rate cafй on the Mexican coast possibly. Why don't you throw the cook over the side? If he'd served filth like this to the Captain when I was an apprentice the fellow would have had his bottom kicked round the deck.'
'I'm sorry, Captain,' Whimble mumbled. 'I'll see to it.'
'I should think so. You never get cooking like you used to. All they think about these days are vitamins and calories, and such stuff. What good's that to a man? Fad, that's all it is. You don't need vitamins or calories,' he said with disgust. 'Eh, Doctor?'
'Well, they are really two quite different factors. And vitamins are terribly important.'
'Bosh! I'm not a doctor-I don't pretend to be. But if you get a good bellyful of meat and spuds every day you'll be all right.'
'You must have vitamins,' I insisted, but feebly.
'Vitamins are bosh, Doctor. Bosh!'
I began to see that opinions were forbidden, even professional ones. Our mealtimes were going to be rollicking.
Chapter Four
The next morning after breakfast I went to my cabin, wedged myself on the settee, and again opened _War and Peace_ at page one. I had not felt well enough to start the book since we sailed, but now I looked forward to a leisurely stroll through its pages during the rest of the voyage. I had almost reached the end of the first paragraph when a conversation started in the alleyway outside my cabin door.
The door was on a hook for ventilation, so I was able to overhear it clearly. There were two speakers, who used the adenoidal grunts with which the citizens of Liverpool communicate with each other.
'Ullo,' said one. Whatcher doin', la'?'
'Come to see-ing quack.'
'Ar. What's-ing trouble, la'?'
'Dunno. Reckon I must've picked up a-ing dose, or something.'
'Where, in Liverpeule?'
'Sright. Nice bit of skirt she was too.'
'You can never tell, la'.'
'-ing right there.'
A short silence.
'What's quack like?'
'Oh, he's a young-er.'
'Reckon he's much good?'
'-ing medical student, most likely.'
'If we was homeward bound reckon I'd wait and see a proper doctor,' the sufferer said. I opened the door. 'Good morning, Doc,' he added brightly. 'Can you see us a second, in private like?'
'Go down to the hospital,' I said coldly. 'I'll be along in a few minutes.'
'Very good, Doctor.'
When I arrived at the hospital I found that Easter had diagnosed and prescribed for the condition with an efficiency founded on wide experience of it.
'Take these, chum,' he said, handing over a bottle of sulphathiazole tablets, 'and in a couple of days you'll be feeling like a box of birds, as they say in New Zealand.'
The patient stuffed the bottle in his waistband and jauntily walked out.
'Don't you think I ought to give him a short lecture?' I suggested.
Easter seemed to find this amusing.
'We all has our thoughtless moments, Doctor, don't we? Take a card,' he said, abruptly drawing a pack from his pocket. 'Any one. Don't let me see it.'
I took one automatically.
'Right,' he said. 'I will now shuffle them, see? No deception. You could have taken any card in the pack. Let me concentrate.' He screwed up his fat face in a spasm of thought. 'Four of diamonds,' he said.
'That is perfectly correct. Though I hardly think we should be doing this sort of thing when we are supposed to be treating patients.'
Easter slipped the cards back into the top pocket of his jacket with a subdued air of triumph.
'Dr. Flowerday always liked me to show him a few tricks. Used to have him in fits, sometimes. Didn't half get narked when he couldn't find how they was done.'
'And how was that one done, if I may ask?'
'Them's all four of diamonds, actual,' Easter said carelessly, tapping his pocket.
'You seem to be quite a specialist in this sort of thing.'
'For three years ashore I was Pin Hung, the Famous Chinese Magician. Round the halls. Mostly the North- Barrow, Carlisle, Sunderland. Grimsby was my favourite. Always hit the jackpot in Grimsby. I've a book of cuttings down below…'
'All right. Later on in the voyage, possibly.'
He flicked three cards from his sleeve and manipulated them on the top of a tin of bandages.
'Now then, Doctor. Try your luck. Bet you a dollar that you can't spot the lady.'
'Easter,' I said with interest, 'how is it that you have come to land up in your present position? A man of your peculiar talents would be far more at home on the racecourse than in a ship's hospital.'
'That's the trouble, Doctor. I worked the race trains for years. But I got fed up with it. You can get put inside too many times.'
I stared at him.
'Do you mean-are you trying to say that you have been in prison?'
I was alarmed. In shore practice this was not a condition usually found in one's colleagues.
'Ho, yes,' he replied, with the air of a man admitting he knew Brighton or Scarborough fairly well. 'Didn't like it much, though. Too bloody cold in winter.'
'So you came to sea instead?'
'That's right, Doctor. Used to be on the Western Ocean run for donkeys' years in the big passenger boats. When I was a lad that is, and could run about a bit more. So I came back to it. Signed on as a steward. It's a good life, and you gets your grub regular. I took this job on when a mate of mine jumped ship in Sydney and I helped out in the surgery homeward bound. I like it better than waiting in the saloon. More dignified. And Dr. Flowerday used to let me dispense of surplus equipment and stores on the coast, if I could. Penicillin and such like, that ain't got long to go before it's U.S. That be all right with you, Doctor? Dr. Flowerday and I used to have an understanding about the proceeds.'
'I think we shall have to consider that later.'
'Very good, Doctor. There's one of the crew sick in his cabin.'
'Then why the devil didn't you tell me before? Instead of fooling around with all these damn card tricks.'
'There ain't no hurry, Doctor. It's only Chippy. The Carpenter.'
'What's the matter with him?'
'He's having one of his turns.'
I was suspicious. A diagnosis of the turns, to which over half of the middle-aged population of the country seems liable, can represent any condition from attacks of flatulence to full-blown epileptic fits.
'We'd better go and see him at once.'
'Very good, Doctor.'
I followed Easter aft, to the crew's accommodation in the poop. We went up an iron ladder to a door with CARPENTER AND LAMPTRIMMER stencilled over it. It was a bleak little cabin, with green-painted steel bulkheads
