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Updated: May 22, 2025
Being carried to the sick berth, my foot was treated and bound, and I was ordered to my hammock. On arrival at Devonport, the sick-berth steward took me to the hospital in the naval barracks, where I lay in bed six weeks. You will perceive that my right foot has been unfortunate.
"Now, strip off your clothes to the waist, Reeks, and you, Trimmens, just take his chest measurement, please. You need not take off your trousers, boy!" He added this caution in the nick of time, for `Ugly' appeared about to peel off everything, to his naked pelt! The sick-berth steward then proceeded to put a tape-measure round his body, just under the armpits, compassing his chest.
Here, the sick-berth steward, distinguished by a red-cross badge within a circlet of gold on his arm, took us in tow, the corporal handing him our papers, which he in turn handed to the doctor, who was in the usual undress uniform of an officer, a thin line of red braid interlarded between the rows of gold lace on the cuff of his tunic sleeve betokening his special medical rank.
With that, the sick-berth steward, hailing the ship's corporal, who had been waiting all the while at the entrance to the doctor's sanctum, handed him our papers; and the three of us were then escorted to the paymaster's office, aft there, to undergo our last ordeal.
"Yes, sir," answered the sick-berth steward in the same snappy, mechanical way; and then, turning to us, he said, "Which of ye came first, boys?" "Me, zur," replied `Ugly, stepping forwards. "I were first aboard this mornin'; an', by rights, I comes first."
Trimmens, the sick-berth steward, on the contrary, never moved a muscle of his mahogany face when `Ugly' said that he had knocked his head against the hatchway, and I told a `banger' by volunteering the statement that I had broken a plate on the mess-table, and one of the pieces had run into my arm.
However, in spite of his dilapidated raiment, Mick passed all the medical tests; though he had a narrow squeak in regard to the dimensions of his chest, failing in the proper measurement for his age by just an eighth of an inch. "Faith, sor, I'll fill out soon enough whin I git outside ov a good male or two," pleaded the defaulter, on the sick-berth steward noting the deficiency.
You don't mean to say you've brought in another batch of boys to be examined?" "Yes, sir," replied the sick-berth steward, opening his mouth, and closing it again with a sort of snap, and uttering the two words as one. "Three of 'em now, sir!" "Why, that makes the fourth lot this morning!" exclaimed the other plaintively. "The ship'll be chock-full if they keep on coming in like this.
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