Free Bear Island by Alistair MacLean

said.
        "With canvas. Count's cabin cleaned up. Death has to be logged. Death certificate. And Mr. Smith will have to make the funeral arrangements.”
        “Mr. Smith?" The Count was vaguely surprised. "Not our worthy commanding officer.”
        “Captain Imrie is in the arms of Morpheus," I said. "I've tried.”
        “You have your deities mixed up," Goin said. "Bacchus is the one you're after."
        “I suppose it is. Excuse me, gentlemen."
        I went directly to my cabin but not to write out any death certificate. As I'd told Goin, I did carry a medical library of sorts around with me and it was of a fair size. I selected several books, including Glaisters's Medical Jurisprudence and Toxicology, 9th edition (Edinburgh, 1950), Dewar's Textbook of Forensic Pharmacy (London, 1946) and Gonzales's, Vance's and Helpern's Legal Medicine and Toxicology, which seemed to be a prewar book. I started consulting indices and within five minutes I had it.
        The entry was listed under "Systemic Poisons" and was headed Aconite. "Bot. A poisonous plant of the order Ranunculaccae. Particular reference Monk's-hood and Wolf's-bane. Phar. Aconitum napellus. This, and aconitine, an alkaloid extract of the former, is commonly regarded as the most lethal of all poisons yet identified: a dose of not more than 0.004 gm. is deadly to man. Aconite and its alkaloid produce a burning and peculiar tingling and numbing effect where applied. Later, especially with larger doses, violent vomiting results, followed by paralysis of motion, paralysis of sensation and great depression of the heart, followed by death from syncope.
        "Treatment. To be successful must be immediate as possible. Gastric lavage, iz gm. of tannic acid in two gallons of warm water, followed by 1.2 gm. tannic acid in 18o ml. tepid water: this should be followed by animal charcoal suspended in water. Cardiac and respiratory stimulants, artificial respiration and oxygen will be necessary as indicated.
        "N.B. The root of aconite has frequently been eaten in mistake for that of horse-radish."

        3
        I was still looking at, but no longer really reading the article on aconite when it was gradually borne in upon my preoccupation that there was something very far amiss with the Morning Rose. She was still under way, her elderly oil-fired steam engines throbbing along as dependably as ever, but her motion had changed. Her rolling factor had increased till she was swinging wickedly and dismayingly through an angle of close on seventy degrees: the pitching factor had correspondingly decreased and the thudding jarring vibration of the bluff bows smashing into the quartering seas had fallen away to a fraction of what it had previously been.
        I marked the article, closed the book then lurched and stumbled-I could not be said to have run for it was physically impossible-along the passageway, up the companionway, through the lounge and out on to the upper deck. It was dark but not so dark as to prevent me from gauging direction by the feel of the gale wind, by the spume blowing off the top of the confused seas. I shrank back and tightened my grip on a convenient handrail as a great wall of water, black and veined and evil, reared up on the port side, just foreword of the beam: it was at least ten feet higher than my head. I was certain that the wave, with the hundreds of tons of water it contained, was going to crash down square on the foredeck of the trawler, I couldn't see how it could fail to, but fail it did: as the wave bore down on us, the trough to starboard deepened and the Morning Rose, rolling over to almost forty degrees, simply fell into it, pressed down by the great weight of water on its exposed port side. There came the familiar flat explosive thunderclap of sound, the Morning Rose vibrated and groaned as overstressed plates and rivets adjusted to cope with the sudden shearing strain, white, icily cold water foamed over the