14 
LAND & WATER 
January 31, 
igi8 
' J sliall be all right tu morrow. I only want a day or two's 
rwt." 
" ' Tliat's good, Jim,' said tin- inatu-. 'The old man's 
M-Mit ashore for a doctor to see vou. Wake up. . . ." 
" He raised his head aiid looked at me. An elderly man, 
with a grey beard and very bright eyes. From the first they 
regarded me with suspicion. His voice was surprisingly re- 
fined. A man who had gone down in the world, I decided.i 
And when he came to show me his injured hip, I could see that 
lie was ashamed to be as filthily dirty as he undeniably was. 
All the time his eyes were insisting : ' You've got me at a dis- 
advantage, you know, t wasn't always like this.' A poor 
■ old man . . . but not so old as I had imagined at first. 
A merchant seaman who has knocked about tJie world in the 
slums of great seaports doesn't wear well, and I could see that 
this fellow had had his whack of drink and other things. 
" In the demented plungings of this foul and unlit cabin it 
was dilScult to find out what his trouble was. If he had lain 
in the lower bunk it would have been easier. As it was, it 
took me some time to discover that he had fractured the neck 
of his thighbone, and I couldn't be sure that he hadn't a dislo- 
cation as well : but I won't lx)re you with technicalities. 
' The mate seemed pleased with my verdict. ' I told the 
old man you wasn't shamming, Jim,' he declared ; but thu 
patient became alarmed at once. ' You've made a mistake, 
Doctor," he protested. ' You've made a mistake. I only 
just slipped like, wfien a sea caught her. It's only a bit of a 
sprain. My leg can't be broken. You look. ... I can 
move mv toes. The feeling's all right too. That's not a 
break. \ shall be all right to-morrow when this dirty weather's 
gone. You give me a bottle of stuff to rub it with, sir.' 
" Of course, it was no good talking about it. The thing 
was there and had to be dealt with. 'We can't move him to- 
night, you'd never get him ashore in this sea,' 1 told the mate. 
' All we can do now is to fix him up in some sort of splint that 
won't come adrift when the ship rolls.' 
Now you're asking, Doc,' said the mate ; ' we've got a 
bandage or two and some plaster and Epsom salts and 
chlorodyne, but that's about the height of it. Still, I'll go 
and turn Chips out and see what we can do for a batten.' 
I told him exactly what I wanted, and he left us in the 
dark, taking his lamp with him. ,' 
You're a West-countryman,' I said to my patient. In 
the first minute his speech had told me that. 
" He said : ' Yes, sir, I'm a Devonian ... or was.' 
" 'Well,' said I, ' you'll be quite at home when wc get you 
ashore into the Cottage Hospital to-morrow.' 
" ' At home . . . ? ' says he, anxiously. ' At home ? 
What do you mean ? ' 
Wliy, don't you know where you are ? ' I said. 
" He hadn't the least idea. He'd been in too much, pain 
to think, and no wonder ; and since his accident he had kept 
it down with brandy and laudanum. I told him that we were 
now lying in Fishcombe roads. 
" Good God, sir," he cried. ' Y'ou never mean it." He had 
jumped right up in his bunk and the movement made him 
scream with pain. I reassured him. He began to talk 
excitedly and was more indubitably Devonian than ever. 
'" If this is Fishcombe,' he said, ' I'll be damned if this isn't 
the dirtiest trick that Providence has ever served me. I'd rather 
die in this rotten ship than go ashore here. You can do what 
you like with me. You can kill me ; but for God's sake don't 
send me ashore here. You'll understand if I tell you. A 
doctor like you is bound to hear a lot of funny things in your 
life, but you'll never hear a truer than this, rni a Fishcombe 
man. I le_ft this port thirty years ago as mate of a saiUng 
vessel. You can trust a Fishcombe man to do well for 
himself. I was a prosperous young fellow. I'd nothing in 
t le way of trouble in my life but one thing, and that was my 
wife. We never hit it off well. She was one of these Ply- 
mouth Brethren, you know, and I was never a Bible hand 
myself. When we were first married it was all right, but bit 
by bit she began to get on the top of me. I was doing very 
well, as I told you, working my way up gradual, and very 
pleased with myself ; but there was no joy in that woman'. 
The better I done tlic harder she were on me. You couldn't 
call your house your own. Clean, I'll admit. Cleanliness 
and godliness was all she thought of. It was all very well. 
I told her that I could get on without her ; went out east and 
got on to a Chinese coasting vessel. Nobody can say as I 
didn't do my duty by her. I was earning good money and 
she had half of it. I settled half in the beginning and I stuck 
to it all the way. 
" At first it was a good living. A little later it was some- 
thing extra. I took my master's ticket. Five years I was 
master of a Yangtse steamer, and that meant a lot of 'cumshaw' 
in those days. My God ! ... the dollars I've handled. 
Then I had a run of bad luck : got nm down by one of Holt's 
boats in a fog off Woosung. The court gives it against me, 
and I lost my ticket. What's the good of fighting ? I reckon 
if a doctor like you is struck off the rolls or whatever they call 
it he's just about done. Well, I was done. Ever since then 
it's been downhill. I'm reconciled to it. I know that a man's 
liable toups and downs and I take what comes, but it's more 
than a man can stand to be took at his lowest and shown off 
in a town where he was at his best. Why, every man on 
Fishcombe quay would be up to me saying : ' Well Jim, how 
be 'ee then ? ' It's as like as not my wife's living. Her 
wouldn't marry again unless one of her Plymouth Brothers 
got round her. She's got her life and I've got mine, and they'm 
past mixing at our age, You wouldn't send me ashore, doctor, 
to be shown up and read scripture to by my own wife ! I'm 
not that kind of man. I couldn't stand it. " I've always had 
my freedom. I've paid for it. But to have that woman on 
the top of me when I was helpless and down in the world and 
not more than a month's wages to my name ! By God, if I 
thought that was going to happen I'd do m5rself in with a dose 
of .\h Ling's dope ' 
" I suppose the name must somehow have penetrated into 
the cloudy recesses of the Chinese cook's brain, for he turned 
in his sleep and yawned heavily 
" ' It's a funny story,' I said. 'We'll see what can bo done.' 
" Land me anywhere you like. Doctor . . . anywhere 
hut here. 
A big sea made the whole ship shudder and threw him over 
against the wooden side of his bunk. He gave a squeal of pain. 
• That got me,' he said. ' Come to think of it this is a funny 
old turn-out. . . .' 
" A moment later the mate came in with two ridiculous 
pieces of wood. ' That's the best I can do for vou,' he said ; 
' any good ? " 
" They weren't the least bit of good, but somehow with 
rolled newspapers and cardboard and a bit of broomstick we 
fixed him up. When once the splint was firm a look of extra- 
ordinaiy relief came into his face. I could see that he had 
once been a good-looking man, not so very long ago. I 
seemed to know that face too, though I couldn't remember 
Nvhere I had seen it. Of course, people in this place are so 
inbred that it isn't ditificult to find family hkenesses. * Thank 
you doctor,' he said smiling. That, vou know, is the most 
usual way in which doctors get paid ; biit I know he must have 
meant it. ' Don't forget the yarn I told 'ee,' he .said. 
" Once more we climbed the ladder and emerged upon the 
windy deck. The captain had not yet shaken off his bad 
temper. I believe it incensed him to hear that the man was 
really ill more than if he had been shamming. ' That's a 
matter for compensation,' he said gloomily. ' I hope you 
didn't put him up to any dodge of that kind"? ' He grunted. 
' Well, there's only one "thing for it. You'd better take him 
ashore to your hospital and I'll wire the Company. That 
doesn't imply any responsibility, you know. ' Without 
prejudice,' as the lawyers say. 
" I explained that in any case we couldn't 'move him until 
the sea had gone down. I did my best for Jim (at that time 
I didn't know his other name) and pointed out that even 
when it did calm down it would be better to take him round to 
Southampton or London or Newcastle or some place where 
there were big free hospitals. I told him that in Fishcombe 
the Company would have to pay for accommodation, and this 
made him hesitate for a moment ; but in the end he decided 
that there would be less risk of trouble if he put him ashore at 
once, or, at any rate, as soon as the weather allowed. 
" He gave me a suriy good-night. The old man's not as 
bad as he sounds,' the mate assured me as I descended the 
ladder. Perhaps he wasn't. 
" It was a rough journey home. The sea ran higher and 
the air was very cold. AU that night it blew like hell. Next 
day the bay was so wild that we had no chance of moving 
our patient. In the middle of that next night the wind 
changed. Changed, not dropped. It swung round, as it 
sometimes wiU on our coast, to the north-east, and all the small 
craft that had been sheltering in the bay had to haul up their 
anchors and put their noses into it and run, for now they 
found themselves on a lee shore. With them the Matifoa. 
In SIX hours there was not a steamer left in the roads. . . . 
The doctor knocked out the ashes from his pipe. " You're 
a good listener," he said, " and as you're evidently not 'unsym- 
pathetic I'm gohig to let you into a secret tliat I haven't 
shared with anyone else." He took the lamp from the table 
aiid poor Tristram looked up to see what was happening. 
He carried it to the far side of the room and raised it till it 
illuminated the features of the handsome young man with 
curled moustaches in the red plush frame. 
" This," he said; " was the steward of the Matifou." 
***** 
I stayed in Mrs. Seaward's rooms for close on six weeks. 
Tristram recovered from his distemper. A doctor who is a 
student of the humanities is the best man in the world for 
dogs. 
