The North Water by Ian McGuire Page B

people.”
    Drax stares back at Brownlee for a moment as if readying himself to disagree, then nods and turns aside.
    Later, after the dead oarsman has been stitched up in sailcloth and slid, with gruff and minimal ceremony, over the side, Cavendish skins the she-bear with a hatchet and a flensing knife. The cub, secured now in its cask, watches on, trembling, as Cavendish hacks, cuts, and tugs away.
    â€œCan a bear be eaten?” Sumner asks him.
    Cavendish shakes his head.
    â€œBear meat is foul-tasting, and the liver is downright poisonous. All that a bear is truly good for is the skin.”
    â€œFor ornament then?”
    â€œSome rich man’s drawing room. It would have been better for the price if Drax had been less eager with the boat spade, but I suspect the gash can be repaired.”
    â€œAnd the cub will be sold to the zoological gardens if it lives?”
    Cavendish nods.
    â€œA full-grown bear is a sight of fearsome beauty. People will pay a ha’penny a time to see a full-grown bear and think it cheap at that price.”
    Sumner crouches down and peers into the darkness of the cask.
    â€œThis one might die of heartbreak before we get him home,” he says.
    Cavendish shrugs and pauses from his work. He looks back at Sumner and grins. His arms are dyed bright red up to the elbows and his waistcoat and trousers are stippled with gore.
    â€œHe will forget the dead one soon enough,” he says. “Affection is a passing thing. A beast is no different from a person in that regard.”

 
    CHAPTER NINE
    They come to him with wounds and bruises, headaches, ulcers, hemorrhoids, stomachaches, and swollen testicles. He gives them poultices and plasters, ointments and balms: Epsom salts, calamine, ipecac. If nothing else works, he bleeds or blisters them, he induces painful vomiting, explosive diarrhea. They are grateful for these attentions, these signs of care, even when he is causing them discomfort or worse. They believe he is an educated man and that he must, therefore, know what he is about. They have a kind of faith in him—foolish and primitive perhaps, but real.
    To Sumner, the men who come to him are bodies only: legs, arms, torsos, heads. Their flesh forms the front and rear of his concern. Towards the rest of them—their moral characters, their souls—he remains solidly indifferent. It is not his task, he thinks, to educate or move them towards virtue, nor is it his task to judge, soothe, or befriend them. He is a medical man, not a priest or a magistrate or a spouse. He will heal their lesions, remedy, where it is possible, their maladies and disease, but beyond that they have no call on him, and he, reduced in spirits as he currently is, has no comforts available to give.
    One evening, after supper has concluded, Sumner is visited in his cabin by one of the ship’s boys. His name is Joseph Hannah. He is thirteen years old, slightly built with dark hair, a broad, pale brow, and gloomy, sunken eyes. Sumner has noticed him before and remembers his name. He looks, as the ship’s boys do, grubby and disarranged, and he appears, as he stands in the doorway, to be suffering from an attack of shyness. He is twisting his cap in his hands and wincing every now and then, as if even the thought of addressing the surgeon is painful.
    â€œDo you wish to speak to me, Joseph Hannah?” Sumner asks him. “Are you feeling ill?”
    The boy nods twice and blinks before responding.
    â€œMy stomach is bad,” he confesses.
    Sumner, who is seated at the narrow fold-down shelf which serves him as a desk, gets to his feet and beckons the boy forwards.
    â€œWhen did this problem begin?” Sumner asks him.
    â€œYesterday night.”
    â€œAnd can you describe the pain to me?”
    Joseph frowns and looks perplexed.
    â€œHow does it feel?” Sumner asks.
    â€œIt hurts me,” he says. “It hurts me a good deal.”
    Sumner nods and