Medical Life in the Navy by Gordon Stables (the dot read aloud .txt) π
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- Author: Gordon Stables
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I chose the navy. I am not at all certain what it was that determined
my choice; probably this--I have a mole on my left arm, which my
gossiping old nurse (rest the old lady's soul!) used to assert was a
sure sign that I was born to be a rover. Then I had been several
voyages to the Arctic regions, and therefore knew what a sea-life meant,
and what it didn't mean; that, no doubt, combined with an extensive
acquaintance with the novels of Captain Marryat, had much to do with it.
Be this as it may, I did choose that service, and have never yet
repented doing so.
Well, after a six weeks' preparatory read-up I packed my traps, taking
care not to forget my class-tickets--to prove the number of lectures
attended each course--a certificate of age and another of virtue, my
degree in surgery (M.Ch.), and my M.D. or medical degree; and with a
stick in my hand, and a porter at my side, I set out for the nearest
railway station. Previously, of course, I had bidden double adieus to
all my friends, had a great many blessings hurled after me, and not a
few old shoes; had kissed a whole family of pretty cousins, ingeniously
commencing with the grandmother, although she happened to be as yellow
as a withered dock-leaf, and wrinkled as a Malaga raisin; had composed
innumerable verses, and burned them as soon as written.
"Ticket for London, please," said I, after giving a final wipe to my
eyes with the cuff of my coat.
"Four, two, six," was the laconic reply from the Jack-in-the-box; and
this I understood to mean 4 pounds 2 shillings 6 pence of the sterling
money of the realm--for the young gentleman, like most of his class,
talked as if he were merely a column in a ledger and had pound shilling
penny written on his classic brow with indelible marking ink, an idea
which railway directors ought to see carried out to prevent mistakes.
I got on board the train, a porter banged-to the door so quickly that my
coat-tails were embraced between the hinges; the guard said "all right,"
though it wasn't all right; the whistle shrieked, the engine puffed, the
wheels went round with a groan and a grunt, and presently we were
rattling over the bridge that spans the romantic Dee, with the white
walls of the Granite City glimmering in the moonlight far behind us.
After extricating my imprisoned garment, I leant over the window, and
began to feel very dull and sentimental. I positively think I would
have wept a little, had not the wind just then blown the smoke in my
face, causing me to put up the window in disgust. I had a whole
first-class compartment to myself, so I determined to make the best of
Impressed with this idea, I exchanged my hat for a Glengarry, madea pillow of my rug, a blanket of my plaid, and laid me down to
sleep--"perchance to dream." Being rather melancholy, I endeavoured to
lull myself to slumber by humming such cheering airs as `Kathleen:
Mavourneen,' `Home, sweet home,' etc--"a vera judeecious arrangement,"
had it continued. Unfortunately for my peace of mind it did not; for,
although the night train to London does not stop more than half-a-dozen
times all the way, at the next station, and before my eyes had closed in
sleep, the door of the compartment was opened, a lady was bundled in,
the guard said "all right" again, though I could have sworn it wasn't,
and the train, like the leg of the wonderful merchant of Rotterdam, "got
up and went on as before."
Now, I'm not in the habit of being alarmed at the presence of ladies--no
British sailor is--still, on the present occasion, as I peered round the
corner of my plaid, and beheld a creature of youth and beauty, I _did_
feel a little squeamish; "for," I reasoned, "if she happens to be good,
`all right,' as the guard said, but if not then all decidedly wrong; for
why? she might take it into her head, between here and London, to swear
that I had been guilty of manslaughter, or suicide, or goodness knows
what, and then I feared my certificate of virtue, which I got from the
best of aged Scottish divines, might not save me." I looked again and
again from below my Highland plaid. "Well," thought I, "she seems mild
enough, any how;" so I pretended to sleep, but then, gallantry forbade.
"I may sleep in earnest," said I to myself, "and by George I don't like
the idea of sleeping in the company of any strange lady."
Presently, however, she relieved my mind entirely, for she showed a
marriage-ring by drawing off a glove, and hauling out a baby--not out of
the glove mind you, but out of her dress somewhere. I gave a sigh of
relief, for there was cause and effect at once--a marriage-ring and a
baby. I had in my own mind grievously wronged the virtuous lady, so I
immediately elevated my prostrate form, rubbed my eyes, yawned,
stretched myself, looked at my watch, and in fact behaved entirely like
a gentleman just awakened from a pleasant nap.
After I had benignly eyed her sleeping progeny for the space of half a
minute, I remarked blandly, and with a soft smile, "Pretty baby, ma'am."
(I thought it as ugly as sin.)
"Yes, sir," said she, looking pleasedly at it with one eye (so have I
seen a cock contemplate a bantam chick). "It is so like its papa!"
"Is it indeed, ma'am? Well, now, do you know, I thought it just the
very image of its mamma!"
"So he thinks," replied the lady; "but he has only seen its
carte-de-visite."
"Unfortunate father!" thought I, "to have seen only the shadowy image of
this his darling child--its carte-de-visite, too! wonder, now, if it
makes a great many calls? shouldn't like the little cuss to visit me."
"Going far, ma'am?" said I aloud.
And now this queer specimen of femininity raised her head from the study
of her sleeping babe, and looked me full in the face, as if she were
only aware of my presence for the first time, and hadn't spoken to me at
all. I am proud to say I bore the scrutiny nobly, though it occupied
several very long seconds, during which time I did not disgrace my
certificate of virtue by the ghost of a blush, till, seeming satisfied,
she replied, apparently in deep thought,--"To Lon--don."
"So am I, ma'am."
"I go on to Plymouth," she said. "I expect to go there myself soon,"
said I.
"I am going abroad to join my husband."
"Very strange!" said I, "and _I_ hope to go abroad soon to join my,"
(she looked at me now, with parted lips, and the first rays of a rising
smile lighting up her face, expecting me to add "wife")--"to join my
ship;" and she only said "Oh!" rather disappointedly I thought, and
recommenced the contemplation of the moonfaced babe.
"Bah!" thought I, "there is nothing in you but babies and matrimony;"
and I threw myself on the cushions, and soon slept in earnest, and
dreamt that the Director-General, in a bob-wig and drab shorts, was
dancing Jacky-tar on the quarter-deck of a seventy-four, on the occasion
of my being promoted to the dignity of Honorary-Surgeon to the Queen--a
thing that is sure to happen some of these days.
When I awoke, cold and shivering, the sun had risen and was shining, as
well as he could shine for the white mist that lay, like a veil of
gauze, over all the wooded flats that skirt for many miles the great
world of London. My companion was still there, and baby had woken up,
too, and begun to crow, probably in imitation of the many cocks that
were hallooing to each other over all the country. And now my attention
was directed, in fact riveted, to a very curious pantomime which was
being performed by the young lady; I had seen the like before, and often
have since, but never could solve the mystery. Her eyes were fixed on
baby, whose eyes in turn were fastened on her, and she was bobbing her
head up and down on the perpendicular, like a wax figure or automaton;
every time that she elevated she pronounced the letter "a," and as her
head again fell she remarked "gue," thus completing the word "ague,"
much to the delight of little moonface, and no doubt to her own entire
satisfaction. "A-gue! a-gue!"
Well, it certainly was a morning to give any one ague, so, pulling out
my brandy-flask, I made bold to present it to her. "You seem cold,
ma'am," said I; "will you permit me to offer you a very little brandy?"
"Oh dear, no! thanks," she answered quickly.
"For baby's sake, ma'am," I pleaded; "I am a doctor."
"Well, then," she replied, smiling, "just a tiny little drop. Oh dear!
not so much!"
It seemed my ideas of "a tiny little drop," and hers, did not exactly
coincide; however, she did me the honour to drink with me: after which I
had a tiny little drop to myself, and never felt so much the better of
anything.
Euston Square Terminus at last; and the roar of great London came
surging on my ears, like the noise and conflict of many waters, or the
sound of a storm-tossed ocean breaking on a stony beach. I leapt to the
platform, forgetting at once lady and baby and all, for the following
Tuesday was to be big with my fate, and my heart beat flurriedly as I
thought "what if I were plucked, in spite of my M.D., in spite of my
C.M., in spite even of my certificate of virtue itself?"
CHAPTER TWO. - DOUBTS AND FEARS. MY FIRST NIGHT IN COCKNEYDOM.
What if I were plucked? What should I do? Go to the American war,
embark for the gold-diggings, enlist in a regiment of Sepoys, or throw
myself from the top of Saint Paul's? This, and such like, were my
thoughts, as I bargained with cabby, for a consideration, to drive me
and my traps to a quiet second-rate hotel--for my purse by no means
partook of the ponderosity of my heart. Cabby did so. The hotel at
which I alighted was kept by a gentleman who, with his two daughters,
had but lately migrated from the flowery lands of sunny Devon; so lately
that he himself could still welcome his guests with an honest smile and
hearty shake of hand, while the peach-like bloom had not as yet faded
from the cheeks of his pretty buxom daughters. So well pleased was I
with my entertainment in every way at this hotel, that I really believed
I had arrived in a city where both cabmen and innkeepers were honest and
virtuous; but I have many a time and often since then had reason to
alter my opinion.
Now, there being only four days clear left me ere I should have to
present myself before the august body of examiners at Somerset House, I
thought it behoved me to make the best of my time. Fain--oh, how
fain!--would I have dashed care and my books, the one to the winds and
the other to the wall, and floated away over the great ocean of London,
with all its novelties, all its pleasures and its curiosities; but I was
afraid--I dared not. I felt like a butterfly just newly burst from the
chrysalis, with a world of flowers and sunshine all around it, but with
one leg unfortunately immersed in birdlime. I felt like that gentleman,
in Hades you know, with all sorts of good things at his lips, which he
could neither touch nor taste of. Nor could I of
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