Another day in paradise

[ex_sherlock300]

So far as Holmes was concerned, the devil could take this miserable place with all its irritating peculiarities, and do with it whatever he saw fit. Provided, of course, that the devil was not responsible for this island in the first place, which seemed more and more likely even to his unapologetically pragmatic perspective. A little exploration

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[cryptogam]

Stephen rarely visited the clothes box, but he had torn one of his stockings, and was in need of another pair. He held little hope of finding anything in the box that was not better suited to a courtesan or a madman, but it was worth an attempt.

The fellow impatiently tossing garments about seemed to have come to the same conclusion. "I do believe that box ought to bear the same motto as Dante's Inferno," Stephen remarked wryly. "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here."

[ex_sherlock300]

Holmes chuckled in response. "'"Here all suspicion needs must be abandoned, All cowardice must needs be here extinct,'" he supplied in his turn. "My own determination is not so great, I fear, though I fancy myself less a coward and more a man of limited patience." The other man had a look and manner quite familiar, at least to Holmes' way of thinking, than any other man he had met thus far in this place.

"Sherlock Holmes," he said by way of willing introduction, offering a hand. "Might I ask how long you served at sea?"

[cryptogam]

Stephen raised his eyebrows slightly as he shook the man's hand. "I am Dr. Maturin. If you think me a sailor, sir, you have made a most grievous error." He presumed someone had told Mr. Holmes of his previous profession, but it was true enough that he was little more than a glorified passenger - a Navy man by name only, unlike Jack Aubrey, who was far more at home on a ship than on land.

[ex_sherlock300]

"It has been known to happen," admitted Holmes with an inward wince. "I confess that I am somewhat out of my depth in this place, with so many men of such...varied...origins." Which still proved rather simpler to say than people of all different times and places, to quote Miss Starling.

[cryptogam]

Stephen's eyebrows edged further upwards. Had this fellow somehow deduced that he had served at sea? "You are not entirely in error, sir; though I am a physician by training, I have served as a ship's surgeon for nigh on thirteen years now. Many people here, however, have made the mistake of presuming that I am also a sailor - a man of the sea - which I am most certainly not."