Heated Debate, Sunday afternoon

"Ain't anybody goin' to slip. You'll see. An' I best had get this letter delivered, hadn't I? I'll be right back, promise." He grinned as he saw Little Jacky Fisher come up the fore companionway. "Here's the first of 'em, anyways. You'll be all right till I get back, won't you?"

"Aye, for sure. You just hurry n' get that delivered!" He glanced at Fisher and nodded. " N' jus' be sure it's gotten to t' right place n' not lost somewhere on t' way." And then he stood back a little. He still had those bruises on his elbows, but they were changing their colour from dark bluish-purple to something lighter. Damn wind. If it only picked up when they were getting into the boats, n' not when they had done all that work before it!

Oxley grinned and scampered below. He'd get his jacket off too, once he'd given the Doctor his letter - or asked someone to give it to him. There was no use skylarking in a thick woollen jacket, when all the other lads would be in shirts and trousers only, after all.

He stood there for a few moments, then looked down and shook his head. Right! He had to change, no use to risk getting his shirt damaged for something as silly as running up a mast. He didn't take too long to decide that he'd certainly change and waiting around, standing and doing nothing was not really what he wanted to do. Alas, the papers and ink and quill needed placing back in his, his and Chase's seachest as well.

Picking the quill and cloth from the ground, he balanced all of his supplies in hand and wend down the companion way, again skipping a step or two as he went.

He pulled off his jacket, laying it carefully in his sea-chest before taking a deep breath and heading aft with the letter in his hand. He ducked quickly round the startled Marine sentry, who blinked before deciding that a ship's boy heading aft had probably been sent, realising too late that it was Private Oxley.

He knocked on the Doctor's cabin door quietly.

Stephen was sitting on the floor of his cabin, slowly folding the midshipman's borrowed coat - he was flushed and sleepy from the laudanum he had drunk, and the slow, simple task gave him the warm sense of satisfaction that came to the extremely depressed upon the completion of an everyday job.

There was a knock on the door, and he looked up.

Oxley couldn't face him, he decided, and slipped the piece of paper under the door, with his heart in his mouth.

Lieutenant George, sitting at the Wardroom table, looked up at the sound. "What are you doing here, Marine?"

A piece of paper was slid under the door; Stephen picked it up, turning it over in his hand. He unfolded it, and looked immediately at the bottom of the letter - a rounded, boyish, immature hand, and to the signiatures - Oxley and de Guarde. He did not know the former, but the latter name made him crumple up the letter without reading it, and he let the ball of paper slide with the ship's movement as he folded a shirt.

He rested his head against the closed door for a moment. "We only just wanted to say how... how we're awful sorry, sir," he managed.

"Sorry? Sorry for what?" George remembered the Marine as the one who had been in trouble with de Guarde, the day Mr Crozier had been injured. Clearly he was in trouble again, but that was no reason why he should be troubling the doctor.

He gulped as he heard Mister George's voice from behind him. He spun round and came to attention.

"That... that I couldn't stop Mister Crozier fr'm gettin' up earlier, sir. An' he gave hisself a dose of summat. An', well, I never meant to get anyone in trouble earlier when I come to get the doctor after we got Mister Crozier back in his cot. Sir."

"Dr Maturin is not to be disturbed.... How long ago did this happen?" George asked, realising one thing that Oxley had said. "How long ago since Mr Crozier took something?"

"A bell?" Oxley guessed. "Though I showed Bridgens what bottle it was from, an' he told Mister M'Clure. I never touched anythin' in the dispens'ry, though, sir, I swear."

"You've told M'Clure who is in charge in the surgery, so why waste Dr Maturin's time with it also? A guest on this ship, an officer, and you think to push notes under his door? Do you think M'Clure is incapable of dealing with the situation?"

"N...no, sir."

He'd tried, they both had, to make things right. He clung to that knowledge like a drowning man would to a rope.

"So - why did you think it necessary to push a note under the doctor's door? And - who else is involved? You did not write the note, did you?"

"No, sir." He wasn't going to get de Guarde in any more trouble, he wasn't. Not now. The whole idea had been to say sorry, after all.

George looked at the Marine - as blank faced as all of them. "So who else is involved? Your friend de Guarde? He can write, I assume."

Of course he could write. He'd been a midshipman, a young gentleman, hadn't he?!

"He only done it 'cause I axed him to, sir," Oxley said. He was not going to get the other boy in trouble, he wasn't. "It was only 'cause I wanted to say sorry, an' that I never meant for Doctor Matterin to... to get angry with Mister M'Clure. And that I tried to get Doctor Crozier back in his cot earlier, but he wouldn't." And that's what had started this whole mess off in the first place, anyway.

"So you were complaining to Dr Maturin - not apologizing to him, if I understand you right. You thought he should not have been angry with M'Clure, and you have the impudence to write to tell him that! Why was Dr Maturin angry with Mr M'Clure?"

Oxley stared at the officer. "That's not true, sir! I only said as I was sorry that I couldn't get Doctor Crozier back to bed an' I never meant to make him angry at Mister M'Clure or..or anythin' like that. An', well, it was all a-cause I was goin' down to sickbay to ask Bridgens or someone if it'd be all right to have the bandage off me wrist yet, an' there was Doctor Crozier wanderin' around on crutches, lookin', well, he couldn't see straight, but he could see there was someone there, sir, so he calls me over an' tells me to help him to th'dispensary, sir. I tried to get him back to bed, but he said as he was the surgeon, not me, so I had to help him. And I didn't know where Mister M'Clure was or anythin', so when I managed to get the doctor back to bed, I come for Doctor Matterin, 'cause I knew he was lookin' after him an' I knew where he was. And I only just wanted to 'pologise about all that to him, sir."

And now he'd gone and got Mister M'Clure and Bridgens into trouble again, probably. If he got out of this, he promised himself he'd never leave the Marines' berth again unless he was on duty, or needed the head.

It sounded as if the Terpsichores had displayed their inadequacies to Dr Maturin - again. The sick bay left unattended, its injured left to wander around on their own, except for a foolish Marine drummer boy. From the start, when de Guarde had been insolent, when his minor bruises were not given the care he thought they deserved. If that pestilential cur had been bothering the doctor again...

"I will speak to Lieutenant Cartwright," he said. "And to Mr M'Clure. But in future, you will remember that you should - if you ever need to speak to a guest on this or any other ship - make any such approach through your officer."

He nodded soberly. He wanted nothing more than to be able to get out of there. "Yes, sir. An', I'm most awfully sorry, sir."

"Get out, Private," George said, and jerked his head towards the door.