Free Hoare and the Portsmouth Atrocities by Wilder Perkins Page B

him, sirs,” said Mr. Watt fondly. “He is very new, and very small.”
    Wondering about the relationship between Mr. Watt and Mr. Prickett, Hoare again dismissed the clerk. Hoare was sensitive to anything smelling of sodomy.
    â€œDo you know Mr. Watt well, then?” he asked the child.
    Mr. Prickett cheered up immediately. “Oh, yes, sir! He was Papa’s clerk before he decided to go to sea, and he prayed the captain to take me into Vantage! He has six daughters! Papa’s a solicitor! Vantage is my first ship, sir, you know! I was first aboard, sir! After Mr. Courtney and the captain, that is! I came aboard with Mr. Watt! Isn’t she a smacker?”
    Hoare assumed the “smacker” the child was referring to was Vantage. He wondered if the six daughters were the reason why a “peaceful man,” as the clerk had described himself, had decided to join the Navy.
    â€œIndeed. Now, Mr. Prickett,” Hoare said, “have you been aboard long enough to know Mr. Hopkin, the surgeon? If so, is he aboard?”
    â€œYes, sir! He was just telling us men of the gun-room mess about Mr. Wallace’s Awful Wound and how it bled!”
    â€œWell, please be so good as to find him, present my compliments, and ask him to favor us with his company in the cabin.”
    Hoare had Mr. Prickett repeat his orders and found that, while he was apparently unable to speak without exclaiming, he had a good memory, so he sent the lad on his errand.
    *   *   *
    â€œW ELL MET AGAIN , gentlemen,” said Mr. Hopkin upon entering. Like the other officers, he had to stoop to clear Vantage ’s five-foot overhead, so all three seated themselves. “I wish I could say this occasion is a more pleasant one.”
    â€œI am of a similar mind, sir,” replied Gladden for them both. “But so it is in war.”
    â€œI hope your patient is none the worse for his misadventure of this morning?” Hoare asked. “With your permission, I would like to interview him.”
    â€œI would not mind, sir, not in the least, provided he is sober enough to talk. I find that the drunker a man is, the faster the work proceeds. The ball passed through only one of Mr. Wallace’s buttocks, missing the anus entirely. It cut no important vessels on its way and carried into the wound only a few fragments of his breeches. I probed them out easily, he having had the sense to wear buckskins for the encounter. Leather extracts much easier than fabric, you know.
    â€œTo tell the truth, the man’s probably better for a bit of bloodletting—a plethoric nature, you understand. And, of course, he now has not one arsehole but two, in case he should mislay the one he was born with.”
    Mr. Hopkin had no apparent interest in ending his case history. Hoare ended it for him with a terse request that the surgeon address himself to the matter of his late captain’s death.
    â€œIt was a simple wound, sir. Triangular in cross section, from a blade thrust into the victim’s back on the right side. It slipped between the ribs and slanted to the left and forward as it entered. It nicked the aorta and pierced the left lung. The damaged aorta burst, perhaps as the victim collapsed on the deck, and he exsanguinated through the wound and from his mouth.”
    â€œWas Captain Hay’s death immediate, or could he have spoken before he died?”
    Hopkin looked at Hoare pityingly. “Since he crawled nearly twenty feet, sir, I would expect him to be able to speak a few words. It takes a pig a minute or more to bleed to death, and I’m sure you’ve heard their dying prayers.”
    Gladden paled.
    â€œNow as to the wound,” Hoare whispered. “You say it was triangular in cross section?”
    â€œYes,” the doctor replied. “Or V -shaped. Narrow at the base, long on the edges. It was obviously inflicted by the Marine bayonet that lay on the deck halfway