STO'B 44

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Chapter 4

Once they were well clear of the battery Philip tacked and stood the crew down from quarters. He fed them watch by watch, set them on repairing the damage wrought by the battery, and retreated to his cabin to think.

It was not until he was sweeping aside the curtain that now served that cabin for a door that he remembered that for the moment, the cabin not his, but by then he had already intruded. “I beg your pardon,” he said. Then, “I merely meant to ask if you had been, uh, inconvenienced by the banging.”

“Not at all,” said Dr M’Mullen. “Would you care for some coffee? I’m sure there’s another mug somewhere.”

There was another mug, and thus it was in the great cabin that Dr Foster found Captain Fitton (Dr M’Mullen having stepped into the quarter gallery for the moment) when the surgeon went to make his report. “Three dead, sir, and seven wounded, of which most should survive.”

Ten casualties - about ten percent of his men. He took the list from the surgeon. “Wykoff and Brown, ordinary, and Mitchel, able, killed.” He remembered Wykoff, a strong, talkative fellow, covered with tattoos, and Mitchel he had served with in an earlier command. “Brown was the man with the red handkerchief, yes?”

“Yes, sir, he died of a leg wound, and after some interference by - oh, Dr McMuffin, how do you do?”

“Very well, sir, and yourself?” asked Patrick, buttoning the last button on his breeches. “You were saying something about interference? How did the man with the leg wound do?”

“He died,” said Philip.

Patrick sat down. “Cautery might have saved him.”

“There was not time to find out. And may I request, sir, that you leave the care of the men to their proper physician?”

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