I had breakfast in the saloon with Hornbeam and the Mates. Their conversation was as mysterious to me as the chat at the hospital lunch-table would have been to them: it was about 'tween decks and stowage, dunnage and ullage, tank tops and cofferdams. The only fact I could grasp was that the Lotus's sailing date was as unpredictable as Judgment Day.

After breakfast I went to my cabin, sat on the narrow strip of settee, and opened the first page of _War and Peace._ This I had bought in three volumes from a bookseller's near Euston Station before catching the train for Liverpool. I thought the voyage would allow me to achieve a ten-years' ambition of finishing the thing; besides, I was determined to make use of the time I was obliged to spend inactively at sea improving my mind. And its long, restful paragraphs might begin to soothe my headaches.

A fortnight ago I had been an assistant in general practice-the medical equivalent of the poor curate, the unbriefed barrister, the new subaltern-living in an atmosphere of Dettol and damp overcoats and dispensing the loot of the National Health Service like a maniacal Lady Bountiful. My principal had a bedside manner and two stock remedies with which he had built up a local reputation of infallibility, and we divided the work between us. He saw the private patients, who diminished in number each Budget day, and took the morning surgery; I had the night calls and the evening clinic. As my clinic came conveniently after work, school, and high tea, it was popular with everyone who wanted a certificate, new teeth, hair, or spectacles, or simply to pass the time. The patients brought their troubles and left them on my doorstep like unwanted babies. They wedged themselves into the uncomfortable and unhygienic-looking sofas in our waiting-room, mirthlessly turning the pages of Punch, and glancing shiftily at their neighbours wondering what they had got and if it was catching. There were so many of them they could idle the drab hours of their evening away contentedly. It was cheaper than the pub, and more interesting.