Ship of Fire by Michael Cadnum Page B

welcome,” said the ship’s master, sparing me not another glance but explaining to William where the surgeon’s quarters could be found, and adding, “We have two hundred and fifty men aboard a ship that can be worked by a score or less.”
    â€œWe sail with a battalion!” said William.
    Captain Foxcroft nodded, but he was already turning away, calling out orders in tart naval language.
    Admiral Drake would not captain the ship himself, my master explained as we entered the shadowy interior of the vessel—those duties would be discharged by Samuel Foxcroft. The admiral would be free to contemplate military matters, and stay out of sight, no doubt with a chart and compass.
    The interior of our ship was like the inside of a great wooden house, with many stories of pegged oak floors, ladders leading from one level to the other. Great cannon lined the gun deck, but wood-joints creaked all around, just like any city dwelling of timber. At times I could not stand upright below-decks—the ceilings were low and crossed with heavy wooden beams. But most of the sailors were short men, and scrambled easily through the badly illuminated living and storage places.
    Our berth was a little chamber beneath the ship’s aft castle, with shelves of medical supplies ordered some weeks past by Titus Cox. The surgeon’s cabin was very small, but most dwelling rooms in London were little larger, a small room being easier to heat and keep tidy.
    The ship’s below-decks may have resembled a house, but they did not smell like one. Sulfur had been burned to fumigate rats out of the hold, and vinegar had been employed to cleanse the ballast—the stones in the ship’s hold that kept her steady in the waves. And through the odor of new paint rose the permeating perfume of the salt sea.
    My master examined his own bone saws before he hung them on hooks provided for just such items, the broad-toothed tools for large limbs, and the glittering whipsaw, the sort a chair maker might use—or a surgeon cutting a hand at the wrist. Titus’s supplies included clay containers of spearmint syrup and others of dried mace, useful against lung diseases, and aqua vitae—distilled spirits—useful against pain. There was even a jug of opium-wine, my master noted approvingly. But he chuckled sadly when he took down an earthenware container and slipped off its wax-cloth lid.
    A glistening, dark gray worm, as large as my fist, slowly felt its way along the mouth of the jug.
    â€œTitus,” said my master, “would never sail without his leeches.”
    Somewhere above there was a muffled crash. The ship shivered almost imperceptibly. A cry rose, an involuntary, wordless wail of pain.
    From the hatchway came the scuffling, stumbling procession of feet as someone was helped, half-dragged, half-carried, down the steps.

Chapter 13
    â€œDoctors, by your leave,” said a sailor, stiff with good manners. “If you please, sirs, a seaman has squashed his finger.”
    I always braced myself before I took in the sight of an injury, and I became quietly apprehensive now at the sounds as they approached—stifled cries of agony. His fellows were reassuring him, “The two doctors will see you right, Davy.”
    My master and I cleared a space on the pinewood table in our cramped cabin.
    A young man, suntanned and bearded, gritted his teeth against the pain, blood flowing from a finger crushed flat. His fellows supported him, their weathered faces lined with concern. “Davy Wyott here suffered a great accident,” said a seaman formally, as though describing an event many weeks past. “A heavy barrel of beer, if it please you, sirs, fell down upon his hand.”
    â€œI was helping to lower it into the hold,” said Davy, pale under his sun-browned complexion, “and the poxy rope slipped.”
    My master shook his head sympathetically, and bid the gathered seamen a good