maximum. I blinked in the hurtfully sudden wash of white light.
Smithy was by the chart-table, Oakley by the wheel, the former on his side, the latter upright, but that, I could see, didn’t mean that Oakley was in any better state of health than the first mate, it was just that neither appeared capable of moving from the positions they had adopted. Both had their heads arched towards their knees, both had their hands clasped tightly to their midriffs. Neither of them was making any sound. Possibly neither was suffering pain and the contracted positions they had assumed resulted from some wholly involuntary motor mechanism: it was equally possible that their vocal cords were paralysed.
I looked at Smithy first. One life is as important as the next, or so any one of a group of sufferers will think, but in this case I was concerned with the greatest good of all concerned and the fact that the ‘all’ here just coincidentally included me had no bearing on my choice: if the Morning Rose was running into trouble, and I had a strange fey conviction that it was, Smithy was the man I wanted around.
Smithy’s eyes were open and the look in them intelligent. Among other things the aconite article had stated that full intelligence is maintained to the very end. Could this be the end? Paralysis of motion, the article had said and paralysis of motion we undoubtedly had here. Then paralysis of sensation—maybe that’s why they weren’t crying out in agony, it could have been that they had been screaming their heads off up on the bridge here with no one around to hear them, but now they weren’t feeling anything any more. I saw and vaguely recorded the fact that there were two metal canteens lying close together on the floor, both of them very nearly emptied of food. Both of them, I would have thought, were in extremis but for one very odd factor: there was no sign of the violent vomiting of which the article had spoken. I wished to God that somewhere, sometime, I had taken the trouble to learn something about poisons, their causes, their effects, their symptoms and aberrant symptoms—which we seemed to have here—if any.
Mary Stuart came in. Her clothes were soaking and her hair was in a terrible mess, but she’d been very quick and she’d got what I’d asked her to— including a spoon, which I’d forgotten. I said: ‘A mug of hot water, six spoons of salt. Quick. Stir it well.’ Gastric lavage, the book had said, but as far as the availability of tannic acid and animal charcoal was concerned I might as well have been on the moon. The best and indeed the only hope lay in a powerful and quick-acting emetic. Alum and zinc sulphate was what the old boy in my medical school had preferred but I’d never come across anything better than sodium chloride—common salt. I hoped desperately that aconitine absorption into the bloodstream hadn’t progressed too far— and that it was aconitine I didn’t for a moment doubt. Coincidence is coincidence but to introduce some such fancy concoction as curare at this stage would be stretching things a bit. I levered Smithy into a sitting position and was just getting my hands under his armpits when a dark-haired young seaman, clad—in that bitter weather—in only jersey and jeans came hurrying into the wheel-house. It was Allison, the senior of the two quartermasters. He looked—not stared—at the two men on the deck: he was very much a seaman cast in Smithy’s mould.
‘What’s wrong, Doctor?’
‘Food poisoning.’
‘Had to be something like that. I was asleep. Something woke me. I knew something was wrong, that we weren’t under command.’ I believed him, all experienced seamen have this in-built capacity to sense trouble. Even in their sleep. I’d come across it before. He moved quickly to the chart-table then glanced at the compass. ‘Fifty degrees off course, to the east.’
‘We’ve got all the Barents Sea to rattle about in,’ I said. ‘Give me a hand with Mr Smith, will you?’
We took an arm each and dragged him towards the port door. Mary dear stopped stirring the contents of the metal mug she held in her hand and looked at us in some perplexity.
‘Where are you going with Mr Smith?’
‘Taking him out on the wing.’ What did she think we were going to do with him, throw him over the side? ‘All that fresh air. It’s very therapeutic.’
‘But it’s snowing out there! And bitterly cold.’
‘He’s also—I hope—going to be very, very sick. Better outside than in. How does that concoction taste?’
She sipped a little salt and water from her spoon and screwed up her face. ‘It’s awful!’
‘Can you swallow it?’
She tried and shuddered. ‘Just.’
‘Another three spoons.’ We dragged Smithy outside and propped him in a sitting position. The canvas wind-dodger gave him some protection but not much. His eyes were open and following our actions and he seemed aware of what was going on. I put the emetic to his lips and tilted the mug but the fluid just trickled down his chin. I forced his head back and poured some of the emetic into his mouth. Clearly, all sensation wasn’t lost, for his face contorted into an involuntary grimace of distaste: more importantly, his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down and I knew he’d swallowed some of it. Encouraged, I poured in twice as much, and this time he swallowed it all. Not ten seconds later he was as violently ill as ever I’ve seen a man be. Over Mary’s protests and in spite of Allison’s very evident apprehension, I forced some more of the salt and water on him: when he started coughing blood I turned my attention to Oakley.
Within fifteen minutes we had two still very ill men on our hands, clearly suffering violent abdominal pains and weak to the point of exhaustion, but, more importantly, we had two men who weren’t going to go the same way as the unfortunate Antonio had gone. Allison was at the wheel, with the Morning Rose back on course: Mary dear, her straw-coloured hair now matted with snow, crouched beside a very groggy Oakley: Smithy was now sufficiently recovered to sit on the storm-sill of the wheel-house, though he still required my arm to brace him against the staggering of the Morning Rose. He was beginning to recover the use of his voice although only to a minimal extent.
‘Brandy,’ he croaked.
I shook my head. ‘Contra-indicated. That’s what the textbooks say.’
‘Otard-Dupuy,’ he insisted. At least his mind was clear enough. I rose and got him a bottle from Captain Imrie’s private reserve. After what his stomach had just been through, nothing short of carbolic acid was going to damage it any more. He put the bottle to his head, swallowed and was immediately sick again.
‘Maybe I should have given you cognac in the first place,’ I said. ‘Salt water comes cheaper, though.’
He tried to smile, a brief and painful effort, and tilted the bottle again. This time the cognac stayed down, he must have had a stomach lined with steel or asbestos. I took the bottle from him and offered it to Oakley, who winced and shook his head.
‘Who’s got the wheel?’ Smithy’s voice was a hoarse and strained whisper as if it hurt him to speak, which it almost certainly did.
‘Allison.’
He nodded, satisfied. ‘Damn boat,’ he said. ‘Damn sea. I’m sea-sick. Me. Sea-sick.’
‘You’re sick, all right. Nothing to do with the sea. This damn boat wallowing about in this damn sea was all that saved you: a flat calm and Smithy was among the immortals.’ I tried to think why anyone who was not completely unhinged should want Smithy and Oakley among the immortals but the idea was so preposterous that I abandoned it almost the moment it occurred to me. ‘Food poisoning and I was lucky. I got here in time.’
He
