Sixteen: A Replacement for Dr. Trimm

Captain Horatio Marsh was hanging in a great bucket, wearing shirt sleeves with a common sailor's rag tied around his long black hair.

The bucket dangled from a crane fixed to a roof beam at the peak of the Blue Oriole's hangar.

It wasn't common for a ship's captain to inspect his carpenter's fine work, but Marsh believed in looking after details.

Too many times in his career he had discovered that a joining job had been done with salvaged timber or rotting bolts. Or found that his tins of stored beef were shot through with spoilage.

In any event, such "scut" work, as he called, was also a convenient way to escape the creditors and lawyers and merchants and insurance men who crowded around any sizable dream clipper.

Thanks to the fiasco with the parrots, Captain Marsh had been forced to borrow heavily against the value of the Oriole.

The idea of mortgaging his ship made him feel distinctly disloyal and dodgy.

He made up for it by going over her planks one by one, knocking the wood, striking the rivets with a small jeweler's hammer that he kept in his belt.

It was just getting on toward his mid-day supper when someone hailed him from below. It was Marcus Barkle, hat in hand.

There were rules against interrupting the Captain, when he was "fondling his lass," as the crewmen said.

Even from a height, Marsh could see that his Lord of Shrouds had a sheepish look on his face, and a swelling bruise on one cheek.

"Well, now," he said. "What the yellow hell have you got yourself into this time, Mr. Barkle?"

"I've been hunting, sir," said the little man. "I got a good one, but he came at a cost."

"What kind of cost?"

"Well, he's a runner, for one thing. I've had to lock him up special, apart from the others."

Marsh made a noncommittal noise. Half the kids they nabbed were runners. There had to be something more.

"It's Dr. Trimm," Barkle confessed. "Seems he accidentally swallowed half his bottle of aether."

"Dead, is he?" said the Captain.

"No, sir, not quite. But we had to drop him round at the Charity Hospital. They said he'd be two weeks coming out of it."

Orum Braithwaite, the ship's steward, seemed to have an ear for trouble that might affect his well-ordered world of cooks and scullers and maids.

He looked over the deckrail from above and said, "That's no damned good, sir. We have got a full list of First Class passengers, half a hundred booked already. They start coming aboard next week."

Braithwaite was a fat, keene-eyed man, who doubled as chief of one of the cannon crews.

"That passage money's spent twice over, as you well know, sir. The Admiralty'll have our charter if we allow civilians aboard without a surgeon."

"Thank you, Mr. Braithwaite, I am aware of the Admiralty's regulations."

"There's more," said Marcus Barkle. "We have a sick kid in the brig. One of the better recruits."

"Sick how? Ain't the plague, is it?"

"No, sir. He took an honest knock on the noggin a week or so ago--" Again Barkle looked sheepish. "--and ain't been right since."

The Captain swayed for a moment in his bucket, pondering.

Then he said, "It happens I have an old acquaintance in Piketon, a medical man. Not the straightest arrow in the quiver, but no quack either. Wouldn't want to sail with him, but he'll do as a fill-in for Dr. Trimm until he returns."

"Will he take the job, sir?" asked Marcus Barkle. "We haven't any money, have we?"

"Hardly two nibs to rub together, I'm afraid. Which means we will have to pay him in lies and deceit, at least to start."

The little man shrugged. "I suppose that's better pay than some get."

Captain Marsh nodded. "All the experienced shroud-walkers are hard at work making repairs and setting the new rigging. Do you have anyone in that new rabble of kids down there who can be trusted with a message?"

"Yes, sir, a girl. Calls herself Nail. She's one of us."

"Send her to my quarters in a half hour and I'll have a letter for her."

Marcus touched his knuckle to his forehead and turned away. A little too hastily for the Captain's liking.

"Hey, Marcus!" he cried. "Did anything else go wrong with this latest kid-napping of yours? Anything worse than poisoning poor Dr. Trimm?"

Marcus Barkle paused, then turned and said, "No, sir, nothing worth mentioning."

"Very well," said the Captain. Tilting his head, he cried, "Haul me up, will you? And somebody see about my supper!"

Next: Professor Soonoo's Black Bag