*
Ramage was just dunking of going below when Southwick, who was officer of me watch and had been tactfully keeping to the other side of me quarterdeck, leaving him to his thoughts, came over and said casually, 'Sawbones had a bad night, sir...'
The old Master said it sympathetically but firmly. Ramage knew he was being told that the problem of the drunken surgeon, Bowen, must be tackled very soon; and in his clumsy; way Southwick was trying to prod him into doing it now, realizing how repugnant the task but knowing, with all his years at sea, that it would get worse the longer it was left Ramage nodded. 'I heard him. If he yelled to his steward for one new bottle he must have yelled for half a dozen.'
'Four times,' Southwick said grimly, 'I counted. How do you stand under the Regulations, sir; can you forbid him any liquor?'
Ramage appreciated the 'you': Southwick was well past fifty, Ramage just past twenty-one. If Southwick was anything but a good man, he'd use 'we' as much as possible, just to let the captain know how much he depended on the Master. But not Southwick: he was content and accepted the situation—and perhaps knew Ramage appreciated it Indeed he must know, since there were three or four score unemployed masters at the moment, probably even more, and Southwick knew that Ramage had asked the First Lord for him in the Triton. None of which had much relevance to Bowen's drinking.
Ramage shook his head. 'I don't think the Regulations cover it. I can suspend him from duty pending an inquiry, that I do know. But it doesn't solve the problem.'
'I agree,' Southwick nodded and Ramage, realizing the old man wanted to say more, prompted him by adding:
'We can get rid of him as soon as we get to Barbados— though how we'd find another one I don't know. But he's probably a very good doctor when he's sober and we're going to faced one in the West Indies.'
'That's what I was thinking, sir. Yellow fever, blackwater ... doesn't do to think about all the diseases, even with a good "sawbones". In fact it's got a lot worse in the last year or so, from what I heard in a letter I had in England, A lot worse.'
'In what way?'
'Just the sheer number o' men dying, sir. I kept the letter. It's from the Master of the Hannibal'—he rummaged in a pocket and brought it out. 'These are the figures he gives.
I hope they won't worry you too much, sir?'
'No,' Ramage said dryly. 'I've been to the West Indies before...'
'Well, the soldiers to start with. Out of nearly 16,000 white soldiers stationed there at the time, 6,480 died from fevers in the year ending last April—that's forty per cent. In the Santo Domingo campaign of '94, forty-six masters of transport ships and 11,000 men died. The Hannibal buried 170 of her crew in a month and lost two hundred in six months. Jamaica to Port au Prince is less than 300 miles, but the Reasonable frigate had yellow jack on board and buried thirty-six of her crew on the way. That's one man in three...'
Ramage held up a hand to stop the recital. If 16,000 troops were sent into battle and lost 6,500 killed, it would mean they'd suffered a disastrous defeat. A sail of the line going into action and losing two hundred men out of about seven hundred would mean she'd been battered and probably sinking...
'Send Bowen to the cabin.'
'He mayn't be sober, sir...'
'Probably not; but I'll see him in fifteen minutes. As sober as you can make him...'
'I understand, sir. Five minutes under the wash-deck pump, if need be!'
CHAPTER NINE
Ramage looked up from the desk as the door opened. From outside a man said: 'You thent for me, thir?'
The blasted fellow had forgotten his false teeth.
'Come in, Bowen.'
The surgeon shuffled in like a sleepwalker, walking in a reasonably straight line but only because what would have been staggers to left and right were being counteracted by the Triton's rhythmic rolling.
Bowen had once been tall, and, despite a weak mouth, handsome. And from what Southwick said, once an excellent surgeon in London with a long list of fashionable patients. Then, for reasons no one knew, Bowen found his hand preferred reaching for a glass of gin rather than a scalpel.
Ramage looked up at the man again, hating what he had to do. Bowen's carriage had obviously once been proud and erect; but now—even allowing for me low headroom in the cabin—the shoulders were hunched and his head rested athwart them as though the neck had all but given up trying to do its job. Both arms hung loosely, the muscles slack, and being long they gave him an ape-like appearance.
But the clothing and the face revealed the full story. His shirt, greasy with dirt, obviously hadn't been off his back for a fortnight; the coat and breeches were stained by liquor slopping from glasses held by a shaking hand, and the humidity was producing a crop of mildew.
The face was grey; not the greyness of someone rarely in the sun, but the greyness of a very sick man. The cheeks sagged and the mouth hung open, lips slack, as if the muscles were too gin-sodden to hold the flesh in place. There was a slight hint the muscles on the left side were still trying because the right side of the mouth hung lower, the lop-sided effect increased by a habit of permanently tilting his head to the right. His grey hair, just pushed clear of the brow, was greasy and unkempt, matted together like a wet deck mop.
Ramage thought sourly he could well be one of the wretched, liquor-sodden creatures loitering outside some sordid gin palace, pleading with the potman for a glass of swipes or begging a penny from a customer for a drop of gin. Yet almost unbelievably those long and still delicate fingers, now trembling and spasmodically clenching, had been capable of fine and delicate surgery; that brain, now lost in the befuddling fog of gin fumes, could diagnose and treat complex illnesses. Although any man's death was a tragedy, sometimes the way a man lived was worse.
'Sit down, Bowen.'
The man nodded gratefully and stupidly, groping for the chair and lowering himself into it. Then slowly be raised his head and tried to focus his eyes on his captain.
At that point Ramage realized that in all the past days and hours of thinking about the man, he had not only failed to think of a solution, but now couldn't think what to say.
Yet ironically his position was the reverse of that of a doctor. He knew what the illness was, but until he knew what caused it neither he nor the medical world could cure it. What made a man crave liquor to the exclusion of everything? Perhaps Bowen----- 'I'm afraid I haven't had much chance to get to know you, Bowen.'
'Thmy fault, thir—I've been too beathly drunk to be fit company for anyone.'
The answer was so honest Ramage began to feel sympathetic.
'Perhaps. Tell me, how old are you?'
'Fifty, thir; old enough to know better and too old to do anything about it'
He had obviously long since given up the struggle: Ramage sensed the man now had no desire to change.
'And how long in the Service?'
Bowen was obviously thinking hard, groping in his memory as if in a dark room scrabbling for something in a drawer.
'Two yearth, thir.'
Ramage, who constantly fought an inability to pronounce the letter 'r' when he was excited, knew he couldn't stand a long conversation with a man who lisped and hissed.
'Sentry! Pass the word for my steward! Now, Bowen, where the devil have you left your teeth?'