The Bomb Vessel

'Hold him!' Lettsom snapped at his two mates as they struggled to hold Mason down on the cabin table. A cluster of lanterns illuminated the scene as Lettsom, stripped to the shirt-sleeves, his apron stained dark with blood, bent again over his task.

Despite a dose of laudanum Mason still twitched as the surgeon probed the wound in his lower belly. The bruised flesh gaped bloodily, the jagged opening in the groin where the splinter had penetrated welled with blood.

Drinkwater stood back, against the bulkhead. Since the action with the luggers that morning he had slept for five hours and fortified himself against his fever with half a bottle of blackstrap. Virago was now safely anchored in Yarmouth Roads in company with a growing assembly of ships, partly the preparing Baltic fleet, partly elements of Admiral Dickson's Texel squadron. Drinkwater was feeling better and the absence of Explosion had further encouraged him.

Mason was the last of the three serious casualties to receive Lettsom's attention. One seaman had lost an arm. Another, like Mason, had received severe splinter wounds. An additional eight men had received superficial wounds and there were four of their own people dead. The seven French corpses left on board had been thrown overboard off Lowestoft without ceremony.

Lettsom had left Mason until Virago reached the relative tranquility of the anchorage. He knew that the long oak sliver that had run into Mason's body could only be extracted successfully under such conditions.

Drinkwater watched anxiously. He knew Lettsom was having difficulties. The nature of the splinter was to throw out tiny fibres of wood that acted like barbs. As these carried fragments of clothing into the wound the likelihood of a clean excision was remote.

The set of Lettsom's jaw and the perspiration on his forehead were evidence of his concern.

Lettsom withdrew the probe, inserted thin forceps and drew out a sliver of wood with a sigh. He held it up to the light and studied it intently. Drinkwater saw him swallow and his eyes closed for a moment. He had been unsuccessful. He rubbed his hand over his mouth in a gesture of near despair, leaving a smear of blood across his face. Then his shoulders sagged in defeat.

'Put him in my cot,' said Drinkwater, realising that to move Mason further than was absolutely necessary would kill him. Lettsom caught his eye and the surgeon shook his head. The two men remained motionless while the surgeon's mates bound absorbent pledgets over the wound and eased Mason into the box-like swinging bed. Lettsom rinsed his hands and dropped his reeking apron on the tablecloth while his mates cleaned the table and cleared Drinkwater's cabin of the gruesome instrument chest. Drinkwater poured two glasses of rum and handed one to the surgeon who slumped in a chair and drained it at a swallow.

'The splinter broke,' Lettsom said at last. 'It had run in between the external iliac vein and artery. They were both intact. That gave me a chance to save him…' He paused, looked at Drinkwater, then lowered his eyes again. 'That was a small miracle, Mr Drinkwater, and I should have succeeded, but I bungled it. No don't contradict me, I beg you. I bungled it. The splinter broke with its end lodged in the obturator vein, the haemorrage was dark and veinous. When he turns in his sleep he will move it and puncture his bladder. Part of his breeches and under garments will have been carried into the body.'

'You did your utmost, Mr Lettsom. None of us can do more.'

Lettsom looked up. His eyes blazed with sudden anger. 'It was not enough, Mr Drinkwater. God damn it, it simply was not enough.'

Drinkwater thought of the flippant quatrain with which Lettsom had introduced himself. The poor man was drinking a cup of bitterness now. He leaned across and refilled Lettsom's glass. Drinkwater was a little drunk himself and felt the need of company.

'You did your duty…'

'Bah, duty! Poppycock, sir! We may all conceal our pathetic inadequacies behind our 'duty'. The fact of the matter is I bungled it. Perhaps I should still be probing in the poor fellow's guts until he dies under my hands.'

'You cannot achieve the impossible, Mr Lettsom.'

'No, perhaps not. But I wished that I might have done more. He will die anyway and might at least have the opportunity to regain his senses long enough to make his peace with the world.'

Drinkwater nodded, looking at the hump lying inert in his own bed. He felt a faint ringing in his ears. The fever did not trouble him tonight but he seemed to float an inch above his chair.

'I don't believe a man must shrive his soul with a canting priest, Mr Drinkwater,' Lettsom went on, helping himself to the bottle. 'I barely know whether there is an Omnipotent Being. A man is only guts sewn up in a hide bag. No anatomist has discovered the soul and the divine spark is barely perceptible in most.' He nodded at the gently swinging cot. 'See how easily it is extinguished. How much of the Almighty d'you think he contains to be snuffed like this?' he added with sudden vehemence.

'You were not responsible for Mason's wound, Mr Lettsom,' Drinkwater said with an effort, 'those luggers…'

'Those luggers, sir, were simply a symptom of the malignity of mankind. What the hell is this bloody war about, eh? The king of Denmark's mad, Gustav of Sweden's mad, Tsar Paul is a dangerous and criminal lunatic and each of these maniacs is setting his people against us. And what in God's name are we doing going off to punish Danes and Swedes and Russians for the crazy ambitions of their kings? Why, Mr Drinkwater, it is even rumoured that our very own beloved George is not all that he should be in the matter of knowing what's what.' Lettsom tapped his head significantly.

'We are swept up like chaff in the wind. Mason is hit by the flail and I bungle his excision like a student. That's all there is to it, Mr Drinkwater. One may philosophise over providence, or what you will, as long as you have a belly empty of splinters, but that is all there is to it…'

He fell silent and Drinkwater said nothing. His own belief in fate was a faith that drew its own strength from such misgivings as Lettsom expressed. But he could not himself accept the cold calculations of the scientific mind, could not agree with Lettsom's assumption of ultimate purposelessness.

They were both drunk, but at that brief and peculiarly lucid state of drunkenness that it is impossible to maintain and is gone as soon as attained. In this moment of clarity Drinkwater thought himself the greater coward.

'Perhaps,' said Lettsom at last, 'the French did themselves a service by executing King Louis, much as we did the first Charles. Pity of the matter is we replaced a republic by a monarchy and subjected ourselves voluntarily to the humbug of parliamentary politics…'

'You are an admirer of the American rebels, Mr Lettsom?'

The surgeon focussed a shrewd eye on his younger commander. 'Would you not welcome a world where ability elevated a man quicker than birth or influence, Mr Drinkwater?'

'Now you sound like a leveller. You know, you quacks stand in a unique position in relationship to the rest of us. Wielding the knife confers a huge moral advantage upon you. Like priests you are apt to resort to pontification…'

'Moral superiority is conferred on any man with a glass in his hand…'

'Aye, Mr Lettsom, and when we rise tomorrow morning the world will be as it is tonight. Imperfect in all its aspects, yet oddly beautiful and full of hidden wonders, cruel and harsh with battles to be fought and gales endured. There is more honesty at a cannon's mouth than may be found elsewhere. Kings and their ambition are but a manifestation of the world's turbulence. As a scientist I would have expected you to acknowledge Newton's third law. It governs the entire travail of humanity Mr Lettsom, and is not indicative of tranquil existence.'

Lettsom looked at Drinkwater with surprise. 'I had no idea I was commanded by such a philosopher, Mr Drinkwater.'

'I learnt the art from a surgeon, Mr Lettsom,' replied Drinkwater drily.

'Your journals, Mr Q.' Drinkwater held out his hand for the bound notebooks. He opened the first and turned over the pages. The handwriting was large and blotchy, the pages wrinkled from damp.

'They were rescued from the wreck of the Hellebore, sir,' offered the midshipman.

Drinkwater nodded without looking up, stifling the images that rose in his mind. He took up a later book. The calligraphy had matured, the entries were briefer, less lyrical and more professional.

A drawing appeared here and there: The arrangement of yards upon a vessel going into