Medical Life in the Navy

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Stables Gordon. Medical Life in the Navy

Chapter One. By Rail to London. Little Moonface. Euston Square

Chapter Two. Doubts and Fears. My First Night in Cockneydom

Chapter Three. A Feline Adventure. Passed – Hooray! Conversation of (not with) Two Israelitish Parties

Chapter Four. The City of Enchantment. In Joining the Service! Find Out what a “Gig” Means

Chapter Five. Haslar Hospital. The Medical Mess. Dr Gruff

Chapter Six. Afloat. A Storm in Biscay Bay. A Word on Bass’s Beer

Chapter Seven. The Modern Roderick Random. Half a Servant. A Pretty Picture

Chapter Eight. A Good Dinner. Enemy on the Port Bow. Man the Life-Boat

Chapter Nine. Containing – If not the Whole – Nothing but the Truth

Chapter Ten. Round the Cape and up the ’Bique. Slaver-Hunting

Chapter Eleven. An Unlucky Ship. The Days when we went Gipsying. Inambane. Quilp the pilot and Lamoo

Chapter Twelve. Pros and Cons

Chapter Thirteen. Odds and Ends

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What if I were plucked? What should I do? Go to the American war, embark for the gold-diggings, enlist in a regiment of Sepoys, or throw myself from the top of Saint Paul’s? This, and such like, were my thoughts, as I bargained with cabby, for a consideration, to drive me and my traps to a quiet second-rate hotel – for my purse by no means partook of the ponderosity of my heart. Cabby did so. The hotel at which I alighted was kept by a gentleman who, with his two daughters, had but lately migrated from the flowery lands of sunny Devon; so lately that he himself could still welcome his guests with an honest smile and hearty shake of hand, while the peach-like bloom had not as yet faded from the cheeks of his pretty buxom daughters. So well pleased was I with my entertainment in every way at this hotel, that I really believed I had arrived in a city where both cabmen and innkeepers were honest and virtuous; but I have many a time and often since then had reason to alter my opinion.

Now, there being only four days clear left me ere I should have to present myself before the august body of examiners at Somerset House, I thought it behoved me to make the best of my time. Fain – oh, how fain! – would I have dashed care and my books, the one to the winds and the other to the wall, and floated away over the great ocean of London, with all its novelties, all its pleasures and its curiosities; but I was afraid – I dared not. I felt like a butterfly just newly burst from the chrysalis, with a world of flowers and sunshine all around it, but with one leg unfortunately immersed in birdlime. I felt like that gentleman, in Hades you know, with all sorts of good things at his lips, which he could neither touch nor taste of. Nor could I of the joys of London life. No, like Moses from the top of Mount Pisgah, I could but behold the promised land afar off; he had the dark gates of death to pass before he might set foot therein, and I had to pass the gloomy portals of Somerset House, and its board of dread examiners.

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Israelite of the red. – “He’s a liar and a thief.”

Shylock of the green. – “And he’ll get round you some way.”

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