The North Water(40)

“Very well,” he says. “If you must. Although if Drax objects to being poked and prodded, I’m not so inclined to press the issue.”

When Drax is called for, he makes no objection. He drops his britches in front of them and stands there grinning. The captain’s cabin fills with a stink of stale urine and potted meat.

“At your pleasure, Mr. Sumner,” Drax says, giving the surgeon a coquettish wink.

Sumner, breathing only through his mouth now, bends and examines, with the aid of a magnifying glass, the dangling parabola of Drax’s glans.

“Pull back the foreskin please,” Sumner says.

Drax does as he is asked. Sumner nods.

“You have the crabs,” he tells him.

“Aye, I usually do have them. But that int a hanging offense now, is it, Mr. Sumner?”

Brownlee chuckles. Sumner shakes his head and then stands up.

“No visible chancres,” he says. “Show me both your hands now.”

Drax holds them out. Sumner looks at the palms, then turns them over. They are as black and rough as lumps of pig iron.

“The cut on your hand has healed, I see.”

“That wont anything,” he says. “Just a scratch.”

“And you have full use of all your digits, I suppose.”

“Of my what?”

“Fingers and thumbs.”

“I do indeed, thanks God.”

“Take off your peacoat and roll up your sleeves.”

“Do you doubt me, Mr. Sumner?” Drax asks as he tugs his arms out of the jacket and starts to unbutton his shirtfront. “Do you doubt me when I tell what I saw by the deckhouse?”

“McKendrick denies it. You know he does.”

“But McKendrick is a sodomite, and what is the word of a sodomite worth in a court of law? Not too much, I’d say.”

“I have good reason to believe him.”

Drax nods at this and continues to undress. He takes his shirt off and his flannels. His chest is dark-pelted, broad, and stoutly muscled; his belly is proudly bulbous, and both his arms are coated in a checker-worked swirl of blue tattoos.

“If you believe the word of that cunt McKendrick, then you must fancy I’m a liar.”

“I don’t know what you are.”

“I’m an honorable man, Mr. Sumner,” Drax says, pressing down gradually on the word honorable as if honor itself is a complex and esoteric notion, but one he is proud to have mastered. “That’s what I am. I do my duty, and I have no cause to feel any shame because of it.”

“What do you intend by that, Drax?” Brownlee asks him. “We’re all honorable men here, I think, or honorable enough at least for the requirements of our calling, which is a dirty enough kind of business, as you know.”

“I think the surgeon gets my drift,” Drax says. (He is standing fully naked now—thick-limbed, fistic, unashamed. His face is burned brown and his hands are black from toil, but the rest of his skin—where it is visible beneath the mats of dark hair and the panoply of crude tattooing—is a pure pinkish white like the skin of a babe.) “Him and me are old pals, after all. I helped him search his way back to his cabin after that famous night in Lerwick. You likely won’t remember, Mr. Sumner, since you were fast asleep at the time, but me and Cavendish had a good look around before we left to make sure your necessaries was safe and sound just as they should be. Nothing disturbed or out of place.”

Sumner, staring at Drax, instantly understands. They have rooted through his sea chest, read the discharge papers, seen the looted ring.

Brownlee is looking at him curiously.

“Do you know what the fuck he’s talking about?” he says.

Sumner shakes his head. He casts his eye unthinkingly over Drax’s arms and torso, breathing carefully as he does so, pushing back against the inner uproar.

“Do you doubt my knowledge or competency as a surgeon?” he says (sounding preposterous even to himself). “I have served an apprenticeship and have certificates from the Queen’s College of Belfast.”

Drax smiles at this, then laughs. His yellowy cock thickens and twitches noticeably upwards.

“You have your little scrap of paper, Mr. Sumner, and I have mine. Now, which one of those two little scraps of paper weighs the most, I wonder, in an English court of law? I never did learn my letters, so I’m not the one to say, but a good lawyer would likely have an opinion, I suppose.”

“I have my evidence,” Sumner says. “It is not a matter of my opinion or my reputation. Who I am, or who I have been, is not the question.”

“And what evidence do you hold against me?” Drax asks more fiercely. “Tell me that.”

“We are not accusing you of any crime,” Brownlee says. “That’s not why we are here. McKendrick is still down in the hold in chains, remember. Sumner is merely curious about some details of the outrage, that is all.”

Drax ignores Brownlee and continues staring at Sumner.

“What evidence do you hold against me?” he says again. “Because if you have none, then it’s thee against me, I’d say. My solemn word, sworn on the Bible, against yours.”

Sumner steps backwards and digs his hands into his pockets.

“You are lying about McKendrick,” he says. “I know very well you are.”