The Reverse of the Medal Read Online Free PDF

malignant, and that we are in the presence not of the tumour you mentioned, still less of a metastasis - God between us and evil - but of a splanchnic teratoma. It is awkwardly situated however and must be removed at once.'
    'Certainly, dear colleague,' said Waters, fairly glowing with relief. 'At once. How grateful I am for your opinion!'
    'I never much care for opening a belly,' observed Stephen, looking at the belly in question with an objective, considering eye, rather like a butcher deciding upon his cut. 'And of course in such a position I should require intelligent assistance. Are your mates competent?'
    'They are reckless drunken empirical sots, the pair of them, the merest illiterate sawbones. I should be most reluctant to have either of them lay a hand on me.'
    Stephen considered for a while: it was difficult enough in all conscience to love one's fellow men by land, let alone cooped up in the same ship with no possibility of escape from daily contact, or even to remain on civil terms; and clearly Waters had not accomplished this necessary naval feat. He said, 'I have no mate myself. The gunner, running mad, murdered him off the coast of Chile. But our chaplain, Mr Martin, has a considerable knowledge of physic and surgery; he is an eminent naturalist and we have dissected a great many bodies together, both warm-blooded and cold; but as far as I can recall he has not seen the opening of a living human abdomen and I am sure it would give him pleasure. If you wish, I will ask him to attend. In any case I must return to the ship for my violoncello.'
    Stephen mounted the Irresistible's various ladders, losing his way once or twice but emerging at last into the brilliant light of the quarterdeck. He stood blinking for a while, and then, putting on his blue spectacles, he saw that the larboard side of the ship was crowded with bumboats and returning liberty-men. The flag-lieutenant was leaning over the rail, chewing a piece of sugar-cane and bargaining for a basket of limes, a basket of guavas, an enormous pine-apple; when these had been hoisted aboard Stephen said to him, 'William Richardson, joy, will you tell me where the Captain is, now?'
    'Why, Doctor, be went back to the ship just after five bells.'
    'Five bells,' repeated Stephen. 'Sure, he said something about five bells. I shall be reproved for unpunctuality again. Oh, oh. What shall I do?'
    'Do not let it prey on your mind, sir,' said Richardson.
    'I will pull you over in the jolly-boat; it is no great way, and I should like to see some of my old shipmates again. Captain Pullings told me that Mowett was your premier now. Lord! Only think of old Mowett as a first lieutenant! But, sir, you are not the only one to be asking after Captain Aubrey There is a person just come aboard again on the same errand - there he is,' he added, nodding along the larboard gangway to where a tall young black man stood among a group of hands.
    Stephen recognized them all as men he had sailed with in former commissions, most of them Irish, all of them Catholics, and he observed that they were looking at him with curiously amused expressions while at the same time they gently, respectfully urged the tall young black man to go aft; and before Stephen had time to call out a greeting - before he could decide between 'Ho, shipfellows' and 'Avast, messmates' - the young man began walking towards the quarterdeck. He was dressed in a plain snuff-coloured suit of clothes, heavy square-toed shoes and a broad-brimmed hat; he had something of the air of a Quaker or a seminarist, but of an uncommonly powerful, athletic seminarist, like those from the western parts of Ireland who might be seen walking about the streets of Salamanca; and it was in the very tones of an Irish seminarist that he now addressed Stephen, taking off his hat as he did so. 'Dr Maturin, sir, I believe?'
    'The same, sir,' said Stephen, returning his salute. 'The same, at your service.' He spoke a little at random, for the