racing across the water with a low cloud of spray: it struck the Surprise from astern, a glancing blow that drove her foretop deep, so that she gave a sudden peck like a horse going over a hedge and finding the ground on the far side much lower than it had expected - a movement so violent that it flung Stephen and Jacob the length of the gunroom, together with their backgammon board, the dice and the men.
‘It was the all-dreaded thunder-stroke,’ said Stephen.
‘I am in no position to contradict you, colleague, being your subordinate,’ said Jacob, ‘but in my opinion it is the first blast of a levanter. And I believe Shakespeare said thunder-stone.’
‘I do not set myself up as an authority on Shakespeare,’ said Stephen.
‘Nor I. All I know of the gentleman is that he had a second-best bed.’
‘I was aware that being gammoned twice running had vexed you: but to this degree...I wonder that competitive games have survived so long, such intense resentment do they breed. Even I dislike being beaten at chess.’
Jacob, having picked up the last of the dice, was about to say something very cutting indeed, when Somers walked in. ‘Well, gentlemen,’ he said ‘I would not have you go on deck without tarpaulins and a sou’wester for the world. I am soused as a herring, and must shift my clothes directly.’ He moved towards his cabin, and Jacob called after him, ‘Is it raining?’
‘No, no. It is only a prodigious spindrift worked up by this levanter - coming aboard in buckets.’
‘Beg pardon, sir,’ said Killick to Stephen (he rarely took notice of the assistant surgeon), ‘which Mr Daniel has taken a tumble and Poll thinks it may again be his collar-bone.’
His collar-bone it was, and he was stupid from having pitched from a skid-beam to the deck, hitting his head and shoulder on a gun and its carriage. Stephen strapped him up, eased his pain, and had him carried by two strong men of his division (he was well-liked, though a newcomer) to a cot where he could lie in what peace the ship allowed, which was not inconsiderable. She had settled down to running about two points free, very fast and, apart from the racing of water along her side, very quietly; and since she was both undermanned and healthy, Daniel had an empty corner of the sick-berth. But Stephen was not satisfied with his bone, still less with his confusion and his general appearance. He sat with him until the young man seemed easier, even dozing, and then told Poll to give him as much to drink as he wanted, soup with an egg beaten up in it at the changing of the watch, and no company to trouble him with advice of what he ought to have done.
Stephen returned to the gunroom, where he found Jacob watching Somers and Harding playing chess on a heavyweather board, the men pegging into holes. He drew him aside and said, ‘You knew Laennec much better than I, did you not?’
‘I believe so. We used to talk at great length about auscultation: I read his first treatise and made some suggestions that he was kind enough to adopt in the final version.’
‘Then pray come and look at one of our most recent patients.’
‘The scalded cook?’
‘No. Mr Daniel, a master’s mate. The Commodore brought him aboard at Mahon. I do not like the sound of his chest, and should like a second opinion.’
They tapped and listened, tapped and listened, trying to distinguish between the echoes they produced and the working of the ship. She was running even faster now, in the stronger wind, and the vibration of her taut rigging, transmitted to her hull by its various points of attachment, filled the sick-bay with a body of all-pervading sound, pierced by the squeak or rattle of countless blocks.
The second opinion was not much firmer than the first, but more foreboding. ‘That amiable young man of yours is in a bad way, as you know very well: undernourished, meagre. I cannot directly point to an inchoate phthisis; but if a pneumonia were to declare itself tomorrow or the next day, I should not be surprised. And that contusion may well turn very ugly. We have no leeches, I collect?’
‘The midshipmen stole them for bait.’
Four bells in the first watch, and Stephen remembered his traditional appointment with the Commodore and toasted cheese: he hurried up the various ladders, holding on with both hands and reflecting as he climbed that it came naturally to him now. And what was young Daniel going to do, in foul weather, with only one hand to cling by? The answer came at once: he would sit in the master’s day cabin, making all the calculations necessary for fine navigation. Mr Woodbine had already said that it was like pure dew from Heaven, having a mate as clever with numbers as Newton or Ahasuerus.
For once he was early, though no earlier than the scent of cheese toasting in its elegant silver dishes: Killick peered at him through a crack in the door. Stephen had had plenty of time to reflect upon the
