Doing No Harm Read Free

was one virtue of the sea life—yes, the ships smelled to high heaven too, but it wasn’t horse poop.
    He secured a hotel frequented by fellow officers and took his letter to the Navy Board. The clerk sighed to see it and looked at him over smudged spectacles.
    “Captain, who in the world will take care of our sailors?”
    “Someone other than I,” Douglas said cheerfully. “I take it you have been dealing with many of these?”
    “The number is legion,” the clerk said. “Sir.”
    He was sent to another office, where a second overworked man stamped approval to his desire to sever himself from the Royal Navy; then he sent Douglas on to yet another functionary intent upon changing his mind.
    “Captain Bowden, you have no idea how many surgeons have decided to swallow the anchor,” Captain Bracewood told him. With reluctance, as though the stamp was too heavy to lift, he suspended it over Douglas’s written resignation. When one pleading look went nowhere, Bracewood sighed the sigh of centuries as he stamped, initialed, and dated the letter.
    I am a free man , Douglas thought, even as he tried to look properly sympathetic. “Look at it this way, Captain: perhaps there will be another war soon.”
    That didn’t go well. Captain Bracewood’s face turned an amazing color not ordinarily found in nature, and he pointed to the door. Douglas snapped off as fine a salute as he had ever executed, did an about-face, and took the hint.
    He stayed another week in London, visiting a tailor recommended by his last captain. He commissioned three new civilian suits, more shirts, some ordinary trousers, and a low-crowned beaver hat that he thought looked stupid. He was so used to the intimidation factor of his lofty bicorn that he felt like a midget from Astley’s Royal Amphitheatre, which he also visited. He kept one good uniform to be buried in eventually.
    A morning at a balloon ascension was followed by a visit to the shabby sheds that housed Lord Elgin’s famous marbles. He stayed a long time, walking around the pieces and remembering a visit to Athens when the statues were still in their proper places high up in the Parthenon.
    A night in Drury Lane Theatre observing the great Edmund Keane portray Othello had charged his tired brain but mainly served to remind Douglas of his own time spent in Cyprus, doing what he could during an outbreak of diphtheria. Most of his patients had fared no better than Desdemona, which meant he added those Cypriot corpses to his never-ending list when he was supposed to be sleeping.
    His most enjoyable bit of tourism took him to the British Museum solely to look at poor dead Sydney Parkinson’s magnificent watercolors drawn in Australia and South Sea islands, during one of Captain Cook’s voyages. He had to ask a bored clerk to let him see the delicate little beauties, stored in the nether regions of the museum. Douglas admired the exquisite drawings and felt some of the tension leave his shoulders. They reminded him of better times at sea, including a lengthy stopover in Otaheite, with its lovely women. They were not the stuff of nightmare, thank the Almighty; quite the opposite.
    When he collected his new clothes at the end of the week, Douglas had to agree that even if he didn’t cut a dashing figure—too many wrinkles, hair too gray at thirty-seven—at least he was comfortable, especially in the trousers. Who knew that really good tailors could actually add a little extra fabric to whichever side where a man needed more room?
    Then it was back to the mail coach, with his new clothing and the old smallclothes and nightshirt folded carefully into an equally new traveling case. He wore one of his new suits, since his navy days were done. His boat cloak remained useful and would probably never wear out. Back went his one good bicorn into its hatbox, and everything else into his duffel bag. He wore the beaver hat but with regrets.
    As usual, he carried his capital knives and medical kit in