Work Text:
Jack ducked under the beam by force of long habit as he entered the doctor's cabin. "How is he, Stephen?"
"Joy, it was a brutal wound; I have done my best, but if he lives he will be most dreadfully scarred."
"But he will live?"
"With the blessing, and if he escapes any great infection, he will live."
Jack let out a relieved sigh, and at Stephen's gesture of invitation, stepped in from the doorway and took a seat. "The men are concerned for him, Stephen. They're very fond of him. Did you see the way they watched?" Stephen could hardly have avoided it; he had operated on deck so that the daylight might allow him to more precisely place his tiny, careful stitches, and despite the intense business of the repairs that were being undertaken in the wake of their battle against the Torgud and Kitabi, he had noticed a surprising proportion of the crew pausing in their ascent of the shrouds for a better view of the operation, or finding an opportunity to swab or sweep in his general vicinity. Jack himself had stood by Stephen throughout the operation, despite his uselessness as a surgeon's assistant; after standing over Pullings' fallen body and fighting off Turks to protect -- or, as he had thought at the time, avenge -- him, he had developed a proprietory attitude to his first lieutenant, and could not be compelled to stand aside.
"And how are you, Jack?" Stephen took a cursory glance at the gash on his forehead, then motioned him to take off his shirt. As his deft, quick hands examined Jack's wounded body -- a ball had gouged across his ribs on one side, and a sword had pierced the other, but the dressings on both, though bloody, showed no sign of sepsis, and the captain was stiff and sore but in no way disabled -- he considered his friend's state of mind. The aftermath of battle often brought him low, and on this occasion it was clear that Pullings' disfiguring wound weighed particularly heavy on Jack's mind. It was not the first time Stephen had heard him express himself through the medium of his crew; he understood it as a euphemism, a polite circumlocution which permitted him to express the gentler emotions he would seldom admit on his own behalf. Yet there was no dissimulation in it; Stephen was perfectly aware that aboard this ship the captain's state of mind was invariably reflected by his crew; emotion was as easily transmitted via this uncanny aether as spoken words were heard through the thin bulkheads; he was only glad that the captain's was, on the whole, a sanguine creature: the ship would be unbearable otherwise.
If the crew were reflecting the captain's state of mind a week later when Pullings first came on deck, Jack must have resembled a mother hen. As Stephen rose through the hatchway he found awnings spread over the quarterdeck for protection from the bright Mediterranean sun, an elbow-chair set at the base of the mizzen-mast, and Killick fluffing a cushion to put upon it. Bonden and Davies, dressed like the rest of the crew in their Sunday-best beribboned trousers, stood at the hatch and each took one of Pullings' elbows, guiding him gently to the quarterdeck. "There now, sir, step carefully; clap on to the railing, sir; easy does it."
"Well, Tom, I am glad to see you above decks again," said Jack when Pullings had settled into his chair. Tom replied with a twisted, battered smile, and the decks rang with "Three cheers for Lieutenant Pullings! Huzzay! Huzzay! Huzzay!"