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The wardroom was narrower than the great cabin above it, having the officers’ individual cabins to either side, but it was also longer, stretching forward under the coach and sleeping cabins. It was dominated by a long, heavy, scarred wooden table running down its length, and a reasonably magnificent window across the stern bulkhead, at present showing part of the victualing wharf and the space beyond it.
Sublieutenant Greenstreet and another man sat over a chess board in the middle of the table. They leapt to attention on seeing Captain O’Brian and saluted.
“I beg your pardon, I should have knocked,” said Jack, returning the salute. “This is Doctor - er - Russ, who will be traveling with us this trip as my guest and who, if we make him comfortable, I hope will then consent to be our surgeon.”
“Are you a physician, then?” asked the shorter of the two men. He wore a checkered shirt and loose canvas pants that flared slightly at their cuffs, and he walked over to Jack and Stephen and extended his hand. “Conrad Strasser - Sergeant Strasser, of the Marines.”
“Stephen Russ,” said Stephen, shaking the sergeant’s hand. “Yes, I am a physician.”
“Russ is your last name?” cried Jack. “All this time I thought it was your first name. Why didn’t you say anything?”
“You didn’t ask.”
Jack waited for a further reply, but nothing came. “You are a deep one, doctor,” he said, trying not to look too put out.
By now Mister Greenstreet had worked his way down to meet them, stooping under the ceiling with his unnatural height. “Subleftenant Greenstreet,” he said, interjecting his hand into their midst.
“Stephen Russ,” said Stephen, shaking hands again. “Forgive me sir, but I’m afraid that I don’t know what a subleftenant is?”
“It means that I’m a midshipman who passed for leftenant - lieutenant sir, if you prefer - but I’m serving under a leftenant instead of as a leftenant. Their Lordships have yet to promote me.”
“Ah,” said Stephen. He thought that he detected a certain brittleness in the subleftenant’s voice, and perhaps a certain falseness to the smile, too, but he merely shook the man’s hand again and offered a pleasantry.
“The wardroom has a stern window, too,” said Jack, gesturing at the row of panes that made up much of the aft bulkhead. “Automatic deadlights, of course, just like the ones in the great cabin, so you won’t go blind when the thrust engines fire. Which one is the surgeon’s cabin, Mister Greenstreet?”
“Almost the last on the starboard, sir. The left,” he added for Stephen’s benefit, “just between my cabin and the shower.”
“Well, it’s not much,” said Jack, as he peered over Stephen’s shoulder at the depressingly small cabin: barely big enough for a cot and a small wardrobe, and with much of the headroom taken up by the cut-out for the number four engine, “but you take your meals and leisure in the wardroom and there is also your office down in sick bay, that is, if you should decide to stay. And though the quarters are not as , hey, regal as in a first rate, you are also spared the tedium of a blockade.”
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