"Jesus, Mary and Joseph - this is a ship of discomforts." Stephen levered himself out of his midget hammock and limped to his wash basin, uncomfortably aware that Jack would have been patiently awaiting his breakfast arrival for ten minutes past. An irate hammering on his door startled him into dropping his shaving tackle into the sink.

"Do not pound away like that, Killick!" Stephen protested, "I shall be along directly!"

"Which your soft boiled eggs is hard boiled already, ain't they?" screeched the steward, and his clumping footsteps receded in volume down the corridor and up the afterdeck steps of the temporary frigate. Stephen regarded his bloodshot eyes in the dusty, cracked mirror, pulled himself upright with a pained twinge after the briefest of splashes of cool water over his face, and headed for the Captain's cabin.

"There you are, Stephen - heavens!" Jack's joviality halted briskly and Stephen felt himself being appraised. "You do not look at all the thing."

"If you are referring to my ruffled, unshaven appearance, I must confess that I placed punctuality above appearance in my morning priorities. And coffee, of course." He reached for the pot, and winced as a muscle in his left lumbar hurt him.

"I was referring to your rhubarb-end eyes, and the forty-five degree angle at which you are shuffling about," Jack commented evenly, and pushed over the toast kindly. "What ails you, Stephen?"

"What ails me," Stephen began irritably, "covers a list of considerable length, and if I were to embark upon its telling, I would never get to my coffee, and you would never get to your poop. The gravest issue is this: there are nails sticking out at angles all over the orlop - they poke impolitely from the walls, they jut perilously from the floor boards - "

"I shall have the carpenter see to it."

"And - do not sigh in that defamatory fashion, Jack - and the hammock is unfeasibly small." 

"I see." Jack pondered this, looking like the prince of gentle perplexity, leaning back in his seat, his fingers laced behind his head. "It is this ship, of course, I'd honestly incur Nelson's own injury to have the Surprise back - "

"It is the HMS Fucking Awful," Stephen commented in an undertone, and at Jack's astonished expression, he modulated his tone a little, to indicate a lessening in blame. "Forgive my fractiousness, Jack. When I am no longer nightly scooped up in a device clearly designed for the offspring of a dwarf and a banana, my good graces may return."

"Damn these domestic excursions. I shall have a hanging cot installed for you. Anyway Stephen, I have an issue that requires a discussion, and it relates to a patient of yours, Mr. Fulsome."

Stephen stopped scraping the butter onto his toast, and tried to put the body to the name. It came to him presently, and he shot Jack a concerned look. 

"Not so much patient, as corpse, surely! He gathers flies as I speak!"

Jack scraped his chair forward confidentially. 

"This is how it is, Stephen. Seven of the men pooled a goodly amount of their prize money and invested it, and have seen considerable profit upon it. They had withdrawn the proceeds, and put it in a lock box. Mr. Fulsome is one of those individuals, and the only man not horrified to discover that the box had gone missing. A thorough search of all his belongings did not turn up the key, and it is the men's belief that..."

"That?" Stephen encouraged after a couple of moments of uncomfortable shifting on Jack's part.

"That he swallowed it. But the men want the key back."

"And you wish me to operate, to withdraw the missing key?"

"Yes."

"Certainly. I have not done a dissection of the intestinal tract in some time!" Stephen brightened up at the prospect, and gave Jack the nearest that he could manage to a sunny smile. The Captain thanked him hurriedly, scuttled out onto the main deck, having agreed to be down in the medical bay at the beginning of the dogwatch.

The air was dank, but no more so than Stephen was used to. The only impinging factor upon this operation was the lack of light. The galley windows were thrust open by incoming officers, and finally they were ten in the room. Stephen operating, Jack, Babbington, Pullings, and Mowett standing by to 'oversee' matters, Killick to whine, and the remaining four syndicate investors shuffling about behind the officers to witness the return of their fortune.

Stephen glanced about in bemusement. "Is there anyone left on the deck?"

"There is no wind, Stephen," Jack said patiently. "We chose this time, as I knew that the breeze would settle - and we are also happily close to dock."

"Very well, I shall begin." Stephen linked his fingers and pushed his hands away from him, stretching the muscles in his arms. "It is not a pleasant operation, and so I warn you," he said evenly, but did not look up to see if this warning had been absorbed.

He flipped the scalpel neatly into his fingers and sliced a trail from breastbone to groin, dipping his fingers into the wound to open the cavern within. Fulsome had not been dead more than 18 hours, so the smell, as such, was not the most disturbing.

"Severe distension of the liver," he commentated, "severe ulceration of the underside, and a pusilating wound at the forefront, oozing black and green mucus."

There was a soft thump as Babbington hit the floor. 

"Oh Stephen - that just weren't charitable in you!" Jack chided, and Stephen hid his smile, able to hear even without looking up, Jack's vehement attempt to talk around rising bile. "I don't doubt that Fulsome was ill, Stephen, but-"

"There was little Fulsome, wholesome, or healthy about the man." Stephen joked, and reached for his clenches. With brisk, hard snaps at the sides of the ninth to twelfth ribs on either side, he slipped them away, allowing greater access to the cavity within.

"The lungs are unharmed, but mildly warted about the sternum," he observed with interest, "and as for the liver... "Stephen slipped the blade of the scalpel into the liver perpendicularly, ducking back to avoid a fountain of pus.

There was a second thump as Mowett followed Babbington to the floor. 

"The stomach, Stephen," Jack begged. 

"Of course," he replied courteously, and made the vital incision, slicing into the stomach cavity. There was nothing solid in there, nothing that could have been confused for a key. "Well, gentlemen, there is one other place your missing treasure could be."

There was a pregnant pause, and the men looked about at each other uncomfortably before a young foretopman piped that he'd get the key out himself if it meant he got his money back. Jack was clearly the arbiter in this situation, not directly involved by finance, yet wishing to ensure that the business went ahead fairly.

"Stephen, if you were to be assisted in turning Mr. Fulsome over, would you continue the investigation into the whereabouts of the key?"

"Of course!" 

The navy men drew closer, seized a limb each and between them, they flung the corpse onto its front before running away like ninny-hammers, each trying to wipe the coldness off their hands.

Stephen regarded them gravely, wondering which would fall next - it was becoming quite a sport, trying to predict the succeeding swooner. Jack looked to be a fine contender, yet he was not as tinged as Pullings, whose lips were bloodless, and his eyes dilated. Jack was prone to weakness after seeing a procedure, but was not a common fainter. Pullings, however, was an unknown quantity. Stephen made a bet with himself: if it were Jack to go down next, he would give his preserved booby to his friend Joseph Blaine as a gift.

He made two very deep incisions on either side of the spine from the small of the back to Fulsome's anal exit, and began to peel back the overlying flesh. After a few tugs, he found what he required, and extracted it with relish. "Gentlemen! You are rich again!"

He put the key on the side of the operating table, and watched Pullings, almost in slow motion, breathe a deep sigh and crash over sideways, almost taking Killick with him.

Jack was still standing, albeit paler than his hair, and sweating heavily. "Thankee, Stephen," he said weakly, and spread his hands up against the side of the wall. The groggy lieutenants on the floor were just beginning to stir, huddled into head-hugging balls on the floor, wincing from the pain of impact.

'What a bunch of girls,' thought Stephen, but it was a thought borne of any malice - merely surprise. Jack himself was criss-crossed with scars, holes from musket wounds and such forth, and there was barely six square inches of uninterrupted flesh on his body - and had borne up like a hero - yet could not watch an operation without coming over peculiar. Such fine men, such weak stomachs.

Tactfully, Stephen wrapped the sheet over the top of the eviscerated corpse, and there was a deep groan from the dead man as air was released from stifled pockets. The deep groan was almost, but not quite, drowned out by the timber-splintering slam of a sixteen stone body hitting the deck, and then by the ongoing tinkle as the contents of Stephen's instrument table clanked out onto the floor.

"Killick, assist the Captain, would you now?" He moved smoothly over to the basin and doused his hands off in clean water before moving round the table, to where Jack lay on his back, wholly unconscious.

A light dabbing of cool water on the brow did not relieve the syncope, neither did a scratching of the breastbone through the thin lawn shirt, nor a loosening of the neck of his garment. After a couple of moments of awkward silence, Stephen uncomfortably eased his fingertips beneath Jack's head to feel for any cranial damage - very little there beyond a lump from landing, and crouched, hand on chin, bemused.

Stephen beckoned Killick around Jack's inert form so that they were on the same side, and together, they rolled Jack towards them, Stephen holding Jack's head in his hand. Stephen peeled up the navy long coat to reveal an enormous blood patch on the back of his shirt.

"He's bleedin'!" Killick screeched accusingly, and Stephen shot him one of those stares he usually reserved for people calling him out for medical emergencies in the middle of an opera, or musical performance.

"Yes, thank you Killick. I am more of a lynx by way of spotting a haemorrhage than you may think!"

The steward silenced, Stephen inspected the wound. Landing directly upon a nail - one of those damn sticking-out nails - caused it, and Jack had gouged himself nastily as he did so. There was a four-inch, quarter-deep cut from his spine to just below his right kidney, and a discoloured puncture where the nail had dug into him.

"Hell and death, it is too dark to operate in here," Stephen growled, and summoned a shutter. "How fast can we get to land?"

"Mahon's four miles by the lee," Pullings volunteered groggily, pulled himself to his feet, and staggered off to sail the ship to the dock. Stephen nodded, and supervised the careful movement of Jack onto the shutter, swabbing the wound with acres of liniment and bandage to keep all in place. The filthy orlop was no place to carry out a delicate stitching operation, and God only knew what grime coated the nail that had done the damage.

"Mercedes, my dear!" Stephen called up into the hallway and the sweet Minorcan maid stuck her head around the corridor at the top of the stairs.

"Esteban!" she squealed, and bounded down the stairs, filling his face to the nostrils with bosom as she wrapped her arms about him. Stephen did not protest, did not struggle furiously from her grasp, per se, but there were priorities to be followed. He pushed her away gently.

"It is a delight, as ever, but I must confess to urgency - I need a room, for Captain Aubrey - "

"El Capitán está lastimado?" she gasped, and he nodded gravely.

"Listen will you now, I need a clean room, a bucket of clean water, and sheets for bandaging. Could you arr - "

Stephen found himself talking to the thin air. Mercedes dashed outside with a surprising turn of speed for so solid a girl, and as Jack was brought in on the shutter, she appeared to have gripped her arms quite firmly about his head.

"Pobre Capitán," she murmured at him soothingly as he was hauled into a side room. Mercedes opened the door in a rush, and evicted two old soaks sitting at the side of the room with their wine.

The men carrying the shutter were dismissed for a time, and Stephen was left with Jack while Mercedes shot about, collecting the water and the sheets as requested.

"I help you," she volunteered, and sat in front of Jack, stroking his cheek, brushing his yellow hair out of his face as Stephen carefully cut all his clothes off, laid a sheet over Jack's nether regions, and wandered to the other side of the long table to begin.

The cut was deep and jagged, and had to be washed first. This Stephen did carefully, wiping at the lacerated flesh and squeezing cold clean water into the wound liberally until no more traces of rust flushed out with the water and the seepage of blood. It was beginning to clot, the wound, and there didn't seem to be a vast amount of blood lost. Stephen plied his needle and got to work upon the puncture.

Mercedes stroked her hand lightly over the blond fur on Jack's chest, and traced a delicate line down his stomach with her fingertips. He was not as round as the last time she had seen him and she was a little disappointed, but his stomach was still as soft, warm and pattable as it had ever been, his upper body just as broad and heavily muscled. The urge to lie alongside and soothe - horizontally - forced her into an attempt at English.

"I lie with him," she announced to the surgeon, and hopped up on the table, her face on his pillow-like arm muscle, her hand resting lightly on his side, her knee nuzzling his soft parts. "Is okay?" she queried, but Esteban merely nodded absently.

"I need to roll him a little towards you - "

Mercedes' face was promptly cushioned in the warm flesh of Jack's shoulder, and her eyes moistened a little: he smelt of sea, hard work, and bravery. His head shifted a little as he flinched, and she moved her lips to the base of his neck, kissing that little hollow with a maidenly nuzzle. Jack's eyelids fluttered, and she moved her upper hand from his side to his jaw, trailing her fingertips down its underside, down the tendons of his corded neck, and outwards along his shoulders. She loved his tremble, his low mutter: he opened his eyes slowly, and a lazy smile flickered over his lips.

"Well, hello there, Mercy darling!"

His voice was too quiet - not that boom of happiness that she loved so much. She would make him boom, she decided.

"Grasp his rear, if you would my dear." 

The polite yet harsh voice of Esteban from the other side of Jack made her jump, and on the heels of that, giggle: Mercedes grasped Jack's rear with great enthusiasm - allowing her fingertips to caress the slight gap between his legs. Jack opened his eyes wide as she tickled that tender part, his mouth a perfect 'O' of shock. She beamed up at him, then rapidly shuffled down the table, and buried her face in the little hollow between his thigh and his cojones, licking the tendon there slowly and carefully, taking it carefully between her teeth to chew upon.

A bass rumble travelled from the long neck at the table, all the way down his stomach and to Jack's legs, making his wonderful, round cojones shudder against her cheek, and she felt a drowsy hand rest lightly in her hair.

"Hold him firmly, now dear, I arrive at the crucial part."

So had Mercedes arrived at the crucial part - the pert, silky hood of his manhood shuffled up to her cheek expectantly, uncurling slowly and shyly, exposing the very tip of his head, proffering its pinkness with hope.

Mercedes smiled fondly upon it, and clamped her lips around that little hood, teasing it from side to side, rubbing it against the growing pink bulb that was fighting to get out. Jack's member expanded with joy, as did his entire body, every muscle tightening as he stretched himself out: his thighs grew long and hard as he shifted on the table, his fingers stroking through her hair urgently.

The muscle between his legs meekly urged itself between her lips, impatiently begging for entry. She pushed the little hood back and closed her mouth softly around the pulsing, pink head, delighting in its taste and liveliness against her tongue.

How it grew! No longer meek, his head engorged and darkened, the whole length filling out and twitching, its owner sighing softly to himself as she suckled, and licked a bead of nectar from his peeping slit.

Mercedes cupped her hands together beneath the keen muscle and nestled its head between the heels of her hands; she licked at him, making him stream with joy, drinking timidly from him as a sprite drinks clear water from a mountain stream. Jack sighed hard, his body trembling under her delicate lapping, and a heavy hand moved to her shoulders, stroking wearily.

"Gently there....handsomely now..." Esteban announced, and Jack grunted then yelped, snapping his hips forward out of her grasp, and planting several inches of his length straight into her mouth. She took the throbbing invasion kindly, massaging it between tongue and palate, taking it down an inch at a time until he was caressing the back of her throat with his seeping tip.

Very deliberately, she swallowed against it, immediately wracking his body with the tight undulations of her muscles around his, both slick, both throbbing and shivering, and a low whine travelled to her ears from up the table, his hips jittered, his thighs bunched.....

Mercedes reclaimed her grasp upon his rear, slipping her thumb between his strong, round cheeks and stroking up and down the softly furry crevice, making him quiver against her. As he pushed towards her, she withdrew her thumb and took more of him in her mouth; as he pulled away, she circled the pad of her thumb gently within that cavern of sensitivity, pulling all the way off his throbbing muscle until her lips once again teased its tip...

And so it went on, sucking him hard as he pressed forth; teasing his rear as he retreated, all the time making him moan - moans that turned into rattling gurgles of dire need, his hips moving harder and harder until a hot splash filled her mouth, and she swallowed it greedily: she suckled, massaged, drained, and rubbed until he panted wearily upon the table top, his hand resting more limply upon her shoulder than his softening penis rested in her loving mouth.

Still with her hand wrapped about his maleness, Mercedes shuffled back up the table, and lifted Jack's rattling, purring, and mewling head into a one-armed embrace. His shoulders shook with effort - the sweat making him hard to hold. Mercedes gave his soft cock an affectionate cuddle in her palm, squeezing slightly.

Stephen approached the last quarter inch of the wound with trepidation, for here was where it was at its rawest, the least easy part to make a fine job of. Concentrating with burning eyes, he stretched the flesh there between forefinger and thumb, and pulled it as taut as it would happily be. He had merely pricked the skin, taking nothing of the epidermis in his grasp, when Jack jerked in advance of the plying of the needle for the umpteenth time, making him swear and cast the sharp instrument down in exasperation.

He looked over the broad expanse of Jack's heaving back, and observed the slender line of Mercedes' arm reaching to an unbidden area - a part of Jack which, to his knowledge, required no nursing.

"Mercedes my dear," he said tersely, "whatever it is you are doing to make him jerk so, to make him writhe, vibrate, and heave in that libidinous manner, I must beg you to desist! It does not make for neat stitching!"

There came a distant whine of disappointment from Jack's sleepy head, and immediately Mercedes scooped him up with both arms, planting his nose and mouth squarely into her bosom. There was no further complaint from the captain, merely an occasional idle giggle.

Some time later, with all done, and Jack painfully easing his shirt back on, Stephen witnessed Mercedes descend upon Jack's unbidden parts once again, this time to tie his breeches. He sighed heavily and left the room, his own cock twitching for similar attention. However, that was very much Jack's domain.

He clicked the salon door shut, contemplating that there were times where he could barely move for tripping over some wench or another, desperate to cram his dear friend's head into their bosom, and pondered the possibility of becoming a patient himself for the loving attention that it incurred.

"What I desperately desire," Stephen said, "is a good, warm night's sleep wrapped up in the arms of a plump lady with dark hair and an insistent mouth."

"Are you the doctor?" 

Stephen jumped in shock, and turned to see a small plump lady with dark hair, noticeably attractive, looking at him with keen vigour - his heart jumped over with joy, and he said that indeed, he was the doctor.

The lady handed him a package, full of new knives and scalpels. "I'm from the smithy. The men in your ship say that this is your share of the takings from the prize money - they take it very kind in you for returning the key."

Stephen glanced miserably into the package, and then at her ample form. "I am heaped with gratitude for sure... Knives, yes. Marvellous."

He heard loud moaning and the sounds of abandoned rutting from the salon, and the lady blushed as much as he. She shuffled up to him and parked herself by his chest.

"I can do it louder than that, if you give me the pincers back," she confided, and they were away at once... in search of a quiet little barn....