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Several weeks, sometimes whole months, elapse before the sailor is sufficiently recovered to resume his duties. During the greater part of that interval he lies in the sick-bay, groaning out his days and nights; and unless he has the hide and constitution of a rhinoceros, he never is the man he was before, but, broken and shattered to the marrow of his bones, sinks into death before his time.
"Go to the medical officer and tell him how your tooth troubles you. Tell him what you tried on shore. I'll go with you, if you want." "Will you, old man? I'll be a thousand times obliged!" So the pair went off in search of the sick-bay, as the hospital part of a battleship is called.
I perceived, as I proceeded, that I was gradually losing ground in her affections that she was, in spite of herself, espousing the cause of my pledged enemy; and when I told her of the defiance that I had received in the sick-bay, she murmured forth, "Well done! well done!" followed by a name that was not mine.
The corporal sniggered at this audibly, not being any longer in the presence of his superior officer the master-at-arms, and therefore not now bound in the interests of discipline to repress his emotions; and, in another minute, pushing aside a red curtain that hung in front of the open door of a cabin on the starboard side, forward of the galley, where there was an appetising smell of cookery going on that made my friend Mick sniff approvingly and wink at me, our conductor led the three of us into the doctor's quarters, or hospital of the ship, nautically styled the sick-bay.
"Any word, sir?" asked Astro eagerly as the white-clad medical officer emerged from the room. The man smiled. "Thanks to you, Cadet Astro," he replied, "your friend will be able to leave as soon as he gets his pants on." "Yeow!" bawled Astro in his famous bull-like bellow. "Thanks, sir. Thanks a million!" He turned and wrenched open the sick-bay door, almost splintering it in his enthusiasm.
Two communicated with storerooms, one opened into the passage that led to the aft observation pit, the fourth gave access to the sick-bay. This door the Master slid back. Followed by the major he passed through. A small but fully equipped hospital met their eyes. Cots, operating-table, instrument-cases, sterilizers, everything was complete. Immaculate cleanliness reigned.
I concluded that Daunton was really ill, for he kept to his hammock in the sick-bay; and Dr Thompson was much too clever, and too old a man-of-war's man, to be deceived by a simulated sickness.
"Yes, sir," I said; "that's my name." "Well, it strikes me, Thomas Bowling," said he drily, in the chaffy sort of way he adopted sometimes when hauling any of us `over the coals' for some offence, performing his duty ever of guardian of the peace as lightly as he could make it, "there's some sort o' circumbendibus between this here arm of yourn and the spoilt face of that there joker I've jist sent to the sick-bay.
The Legion had already begun to fall into well-disciplined routine, each man at his post, each doing duty to the full, whether that duty lay in pilot-house or cooks' galley, in engine-room or pit, in sick-bay or chartroom. The gloom caused by the death and burial at sea of Travers, the New Zealander, soon passed. This was a company of fighting men, inured to death in every form.
"I s'pose now," he said to Mick Donovan, whose queer description of himself had already got wind through the ship. I'm afraid from the corporal who took us to the sick-bay having `split' upon him, "in your country you'd eat them tea leaves, instead o' wettin' on 'em, stooed in ile, same as the I-talians cook everything I'm told, hey?"
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