#killick can help

‘In five minutes,’ said Dr Maturin. He lifted the bandage over Jack’s eye: he looked at the pike-wound. ‘You must swear by Sophie’s head to suffer Killick to dress both these places with their respective lotions and pommades before breakfast, before dinner, and before retiring: I have given him precise instructions. Swear.’

‘I swear,’ said Jack, holding up his right hand. ‘He will grow absolutely insupportable, as usual.’

He turned him out quite presentably for dinner with Yorke today, and he is working on what he thinks is the proper kind of wig for a doctor to wear, making it out of spun-yarn crimped at the galley fire.

‘He’ll take his nice bolus, sir, or my name’s not Preserved.’

'I think any newcomer would wither away even quicker under the effect of his ill-will. He has grown so used to it since poor Padeen was sent away that he looks upon you as his own property, and he would resent anyone else.’

‘Thank you kindly, Killick,’ said Stephen, when he was tied in.

In an angry whine Stephen said that his presence was not necessary, that the meeting, such as it was, would go along perfectly well without him, and that the note from the flagship should be construed not as an order but as a mere invitation, to be accepted or not according to the … Jack walked out during these remarks, however, and as neither mercy nor reason was to be expected from Bonden or Killick, Dr. Maturin said no more.

They came, but a grim, bent Killick came hobbling in with them and for a moment Jack thought he would have to top it the Tartar, which he could hardly bear: he had underestimated their kindness, however, for without any wrangling they divided the task. Padeen, the acknowledged surgical dresser, very gently removed the soaking bandage; Fabien replaced the exhausted salves with others from the medicine-chest; Killick applied them, stating that as far as he could see in this light the eye had not suffered but that he would give a considered judgement come the morning; and Padeen dressed the place again. ‘Will I shave you at all, sir dear?’ he asked. 'Sure you would lay… lay… ’

'More easy,’ said Killick.