The Ghost Ship/Chapter Seventeen.

Chapter Seventeen. Doctor and Patient.

“Faith, it’s moighty glad I am, sor, to say you at last!” cried Garry O’Neil, starting up from his seat at the cuddy table, on our ultimately reaching the saloon, where the Irish mate was having a rather late lunch with Mr Stokes, who had preceded us below. “I was jist comin’ after ye ag’in, colonel, whin I had snatched a bit mouthful to kape the divvil out of me stomach, sure. I want to inspict that game leg o’ yours, sor, now that I’ve sittled your poor f’ind’s h’id. Begorrah, colonel, somebody gave him a tidy rap on the skull whin they were about it!”

“It was done with a hand-spike,” explained the other, groaning with pain as we assisted him to a seat at the further end of the table, where the skipper’s armchair was drawn out for him to fix him up more comfortably. “One of those treacherous niggers came behind his back and dealt him a terrific blow that landed on the side of his head partly, nearly cutting his ear off!”

“Aye, I saw that, sor, of course,” put in Garry, pouring out some brandy into a tumbler which he proceeded to fill up with water—“aqua pura,” he called it. “I’ve shtrapped it on ag’in now, and it looks as nate as ninepins. But jist dhrink this, colonel, dear. It’ll warrm the cockles of your heart, sure, an’ put frish loife into you!”

The American took a sip first at the glass proffered him, and then drained off the contents with a deep sigh of satisfaction.

“Ah!” he exclaimed, “I feel a little better. But how is poor Captain Alphonse now?”

“Bedad, he’s gitting on illegantly,” replied Garry, sniffing at a soup plate containing some steaming compound which Weston, the steward, had just brought in, and directing that worthy to place it in front of our poor invalid guest. “There was a nasty paice of bone sphlinter sticking in the crayture’s brainpan; but, first, I trepanned him an’ raymoved the impiddimint, an’ the poor chap’s now slayping as swately as a babby, slayping in the cap’en’s cot over yonder! But come, colonel, I want ye to take some of this pay soup here afore I set to work carving ye about. Begorrah, it’s foine stuff, an’ll set ye up a bit to roights!”

“Thank you a thousand times,” returned he, taking a mouthful or two of the soup which Weston had placed before him, eating very sparingly at first like one who had been deprived of food for some time. “I’m not afraid of your handling me, sir. I have undergone too many operations for that!”

“Faith, colonel,” cried the Irishman, laughing in his usual good-tempered racy manner, “you’d best spake well of the craft or I’ll be afther payin’ you out, sure, alannah, whin I get your leg in me grip! Jist you stow some more o’ that illigint soup inside your belt, sor, before I start on the job, an’ while ye’re aitin’ I’ll tell you how I once sarved out an old woman whom I was called in to docther, whin I was at ould Trinity, larnin’ the profession, in faith!”

“That’s right, O’Neil,” said the skipper, seeing his motive in trying to set our sad guest at his ease and to try and distract his thoughts from the awful anxiety and grief under which he was labouring. “Have I heard the yarn before, eh?”

“Faith, not that I know of, cap’en,” returned the doctor pro tem in his free and easy manner. “Begorrah, the joke’s too much ag’inst meself, sor, for me to be afther tillin’ the story too often!”

“Never mind that; it will make it all the more interesting to us,” said the skipper with a knowing wink to Mr Stokes, both of them knowing Garry’s old stories only too well, but at such a time as this they would have listened to anything if it would only serve to distract the poor colonel’s thoughts for a few minutes, and they chuckled in recollection of the many jokes against himself that Garry had perpetrated. “Fire away with your yarn.”

“Bedad, then, here goes,” began O’Neil with a grin. “Ye must know, colonel, if you will have it, that I was only a ‘sucking sawbones,’ so to spake, at the toime. Faith, I was a medical studint in my first year, having barely mastered the bones.”

“The bones!” interrupted the skipper. “What the deuce do you mean, man?”

“Sure, the inthroductory study of anatomy, sor,” explained Garry rather grandiloquently, going on with his yarn. “Well, one foine day whin I an’ another fellow who’d kept the same terms as mesilf were walking the hospital, wonderin’ whin we’d be able to pass the college, sure the hall porter comes into the ward we were in an’ axes if we knew where Professor Lancett, the house surgeon, was to be found, as he was wanted at once.

“‘Faix,’ says Terence Mahony, my chum, the other medical studint who was with me. ‘He’s gone to say the Lord Lieutenant, who’s been struck down with the maysles, an’ the divvle only knows whin he’ll get back from the castle, sure! What’s the matter, O’Dowd? Who wants ould Lancett at this outlandish toime of day?’

“The hall porter took Mahony’s chaff, faith, in all sober sayriousness. ‘It’s moighty sorry I am,’ says he; ‘Master Lancett’s gone to the castle, though proud I am for ould Trinity’s sake, sayin’ as how the Lord Lieutenant has for to send to us, sure, bekase them murtheren’ ’sassa docthers that he brought from over the say with him from Inkland ain’t a patch on our chaps! But, faix, sor, a poor woman as the professor knows is took moighty bad in her inside, some of her neighbours says, an’ wants help at onst!’

“‘Who is it, O’Dowd?’ I asks. ‘Do you know where she lives?’

“‘Mistress Flannagan’s her name,’ says the porter. ‘She’s Mistress Lancett’s ould la’ndress, sor; a cantankerous ould woman, too, an’ wid the divvle of a temper! She lives jist out of Dame Strate, sure, in Abbey Lane. Any one’ll till ye the place, sure!’

“‘What say you to goin’ to say the poor crayture?’ says I to Terence Mahony. ‘We’ll lave word where we’re gone, an’ I’m sure Mr Lancett will be plaised to hear we’re looking afther the ould lady!’

“‘Begorrah, that he will, sor,’ agreed O’Dowd, the porter. ‘It’s moighty kind of you two young gintlemen going for to say her, an’ I’ll make a p’int of lettin’ the docther know whin he comes back from the Lord Liftinnint!’

“‘All right, O’Dowd,’ says I. ‘Mind you till the professor, an’ he can thin follow us up on his return to the college—that is, if he loikes!’

“With that off the two of us wint on our errind of mercy, though it was lucky I lift that message with O’Dowd, as ye’ll larn prisintly!

“It didn’t take us long to find the house where the sick woman was, for as we turned into the strate, a dirty ould hag, smoking a short pipe, came up to us with a smirk on her ugly phiz.

“‘God save Ireland!’ says she, addressing Terence. ‘Be yez the docther jintlemen from the hospital, avic?’

“‘Faix, we’re that,’ says my companion; ‘the pair of us!’

“‘Thin come along,’ says she. ‘Mistress Flannagan is dyin’ to say you, sure. The soight of yez is good for sore eyes!’

“‘Begorrah!’ says Terence, ‘I wouldn’t have come at all at all if she hadn’t been dyin’, the poor crayture! Where is she?’

“‘In the corner there,’ returns the old hag, removing her dirty little black dhudeen of a pipe for a minnit from between her teeth, in order to spake the bether. ‘She’s a-sottin’ in that cheir there, as she hav’ been since the mornin’, widout sayin’ a worrd to mortial saol afther she tould us to sind for the docther. May the divvle fly away with me, but Peggy Flannagan can be obstinate in foith, whin she likes!’

“Terence Mahony and I then poked our noses into the corner of the room, the old hag stirrin’ the turf fire on the hearth to give us a bit of loight; an’ then we saw the ould crayture, who looked as broad as she was long, sittin’ in a big armchere, an’ starin’ at us with large, open eyes. But though she was breythin’ hard loike a grampus, she didn’t spake nothin’!

“‘What’s the mather, my good woman?’ says Mahony, going up to her an’ spaking kindly to the poor crayture. ‘Let me feel your pulse.’

“He caught hold of her hand, which hung down the side of the chere and fumbled at the wrist for some toime, the ould woman starin’ an’ sayin’ nothin’ at all at all!

“‘Faith, Garry O’Neil, I can’t foind any pulse on her at all at all. She must be di’d, worse luck!’

“‘Och, you omahdaun; can’t ye say her eyes open?’ says I. ‘Git out o’ the way an’ let me thry!’

“Begorrah, though, I couldn’t fale any pulse at all aythar.

“‘She’s in a faint, I think,’ says Terence, pretendin’ for to know all about it. ‘We had jist sich a case in hospital t’other day. It’s oine of suspended animation.’

“‘Blatheration, Terence,’ I cried at hearing this. ‘You’ll be a case of suspended animation yoursilf by-and-bye.’

“‘Faith, how’s that?’ says he. ‘What do you mean?’

“‘Why, whin you’re hung, me bhoy! for your ignorance of your profession. Sure, one can say with half an eye the poor crayture is sufferin’ from lumbago or peritonitas on the craynium, faith!’

“As we were arguin’ the p’int, the ould hag who had introduced us brought our discussion to an end jist as Terence made up his mind that the case was cholera or elephantiasis or something else equally ridiculous!

“‘Bad cess to the obstinate cantankerous ould crayture,’ cried she, catching the poor sick woman by the scruff of the neck an’ shakin’ her violently backwards an’ forrads, afther which she banged the poor thing violently on the sate of the chere. ‘Will ye now spake to their honours, or will ye not? Won’t ye now? She be that stubborn!’ said she, turnin’ to us; ‘did ye ivver see anythin’ loike it afore?’

“Mahony then tould her to put out her tongue, but the divvle a bit of her tongue saw we! Nor would she say a worrd as to her ailment, to give us a clue, though I believe on me oath, colonel, we mintioned ivery complaint known in the Pharmacopaia, Terence even axin’ civilly if she had chilblames in the throat, for it was the depth of winter at the toime, to prevent her talkin’!

“But our coaxin’ was all in vain, loike the ould hag’s shaking!

“Faith, not a worrd moved our patient. She was that in all conscience, sure.

“‘Begorrah, I’ll sind a bucket of could wather over her an’ say if that’ll tach her manners!’ said the ould hag, who tould us her own name was Biddy Flynne, on our giving her an odd sixthpence for a dhrop of drink. ‘It’s a shame to bring yez honours out for nothin’!’

“She was jist going to do what she had threatened, sure enough whin, providentially, in walked the professor from the college.

“He’d been listenin’ outside the door, I believe, all the toime Terence an’ mesilf were talkin’ an’ arguin’ about the ould dame’s complaint, puzzlin’ our brains to find out what was the mather with her, for the baste of a man had a broad grin on his face, loike that you say on a mealy petaty whin the jacket pales off of it, whin he toorned round to us afther examinin’ poor Mistress Flannagan, now all a heap on her chere.

“‘Faith, I must complimint you, jintlemin, on the profound skill an’ knowledge you have shown in your profession,’ says he. ‘I don’t think I ivver heard a more ignorant or illeterate diagnosis of a case since I’ve been professor at Trinity College!’

“He was a moighty polite man was Professor Lancett. Terence an’ I both agrayed on his sayin’ this, an’ thought our fortunes were made an’ we’d git our diplomas at once, without any examination, sure!

“But his nixt remark purty soon took the consate out of both of us.

“‘It’s lucky for you two dunder-headed ignoramases!’ he went on to say in a nasty sneerin’ way the baste had with him whin he was angry and was any way put out. ‘Preshous lucky for you, Misther Terence Mahony, an’ you, too, Garry O’Neil, that I chanced to come afther you, thinkin’ ye’d be up to some mischief, or else ye’d have put your foot in it with a vengeance an’ murthered between you this poor, harmless ould woman lying here. I am ashamed and disgusted with you!’

“He thin prosayded to till what the poor crayture was sufferin’ from, an’ what d’ye think her complaint was, colonel? Jist give a guess, now, jist to oblige me, sure.”

“Great Scot!” cried the American, smiling at O’Neil’s naïve manner and the happy and roguish expression on his face, our guest’s appearance having been much improved by the food of which he had partaken as well as the stimulant, which had put some little colour into his pale cheeks. “I’m sure I can’t guess. But what was it, sir, for you have excited my curiosity?”