Читать книгу Picked up at Sea - John C. Hutcheson - Страница 4

“Waal, how’s the man getting on now?” asked the skipper as he entered the cuddy.

“Man?” said Mr. Rawlings, looking up on the captain’s entrance. “It isn’t a man at all. Only a lad of sixteen summers at best.”

“Poor chap!” said the other sympathisingly. “Man or boy, I guess he’s had a pretty rough time of it out thaar!”

“Just so,” answered the passenger. “And it’s a wonder he’s still alive.”

“Is he? I was afraid he was gone!” said the captain.

“No, sah. Um berry much alibe, sah, yes sah,” said the steward, who, having seen many half-drowned persons before, had known how to treat the present patient properly. “See, sah, him chest rise and fall now, sah. When jus’ lilly time back um couldn’t hear him heart beat!”

It was as the man said, and a tinge of colour appeared also to steal into the thin, blanched face of the lad, or boy, who seemed even younger than the mate had said, and who looked very delicate and ill—more so, indeed, than his long exposure to the violence of the waves and the terrible peril in which he had been, quite warranted.

“He’ll come round now, I think,” said the skipper, expressing more his hopes than his actual belief; for the boy had not yet opened his eyes, and his breath only came in convulsive sighs, that shook his extended frame “fore and aft,” as a seaman would say.

“Yes, sir, he’ll do. But it was a narrow squeak for such a slim youngster.”

“So it must have been, Seth,” replied the skipper to the mate, who had last spoken. “But his time hadn’t come yet, as it had for many a brave fellow bigger and stronger than him! Look, Seth!—he’s opening his eyes now! I’m blest if they aren’t like a girl’s!”

The boy, whose lids had been previously closed, the long lashes resting on his cheek, had raised them; and the large blue orbs, fixed in a sort of wondering stare on the face of the American captain, bore out his remark in some sense, as they appeared feminine in character, although wanting in expression and intelligence more strangely.

“Seems dazed to me, Cap’en Blowser,” observed the mate.

“So he does. But no wonder, Seth,” replied the skipper. “Get him a drop of brandy, steward. That may bring him to himself more than he is at present.”

The steward fetched the brandy quickly in a glass, and putting it to the boy’s lips, as he raised his head from the locker on which he had been laid, made him drink a few drops, causing the faint colour to return more strongly to his face. But that was all, however, for he still gazed alternately at the captain and mate, and the steward who had just ministered to him, with the same fixed, expressionless gaze.

“He has seen death, Cap’en Blowser,” said the mate, solemnly. “I’ve noticed that same look on a chap’s face before, when he was dug out of a mine, where he had been banked up with others through its falling in, and never expected to see God’s daylight again! He’d jest that same identical expression in his eyes, though they warn’t as big nor as handsome as this poor lad’s—jest as if he was a lookin’ through you at somethin’ beyant!”

“It kinder skearts me,” said the captain, turning away from the boy with a slight shiver. “Let’s come on deck, Seth. I guess he’ll do now, with a bit of grub, and a good sleep before the stove. Mind you look after him well, steward; and you can turn him into my cot, if you like, and give him a clean rig out.”

“Yes, sah, I hear,” replied the steward, who had been trying to get some more of the spirit down the boy’s throat.

But he started up before the others left the cabin.

“Him wounded, Cap’en Blowser,” said the man in an alarmed voice. “Crikey! I nebber see such a cut!”

“Where?” exclaimed the skipper and mate almost simultaneously, turning round from the door of the cuddy and coming back to the side of the locker, on which the boy still lay stretched.

“Here,” said the steward, lifting, as he spoke, the long clustering curls of hair from the forehead of the rescued lad, and laying bare a great gash that extended right across the frontal bone, and which they must have seen before but for the encrustation of salt, from the waves washing over him, which had matted the bright brown locks together over the cut and likewise stopped the bleeding.

“Jerusalem! It is a sheer, and no mistake!” ejaculated the skipper.

“You bet,” chimed in the mate; “but for the wash of the water a stopping it, he would have bled to death! Have you got a needle and thread handy, Jasper?”

“Sartain, Massa Allport,” answered the steward.

“Then bring it here sharp, and a piece of sponge, or rag, and some hot water, if you can get it.”

“Sure I can, Massa Allport. De cook must hab him coppers full, sah. Not got Cap’en’s breakfass, you know, sah, yet.”

“I forgot all about breakfast!” laughed the skipper, “I was so taken up with running across this young shaver here. But what are you going to do, Seth, eh? I didn’t know as you had graduated in medicine, I reckon.”

“Why, Cap’en Blowser, I served all through the war after Gettysburgh as sich.”

“Waal, one never knows even one’s best friends, really!” said the captain musingly. “And to think of your being a doctor all this time, and me not to be aware of it, when I’ve often blamed myself for going to sea without a surgeon aboard.”

“That’s just what made me so comfortable under the loss of one!” chuckled the mate.

“Ah! you were ’cute, you were,” replied the skipper. “Kept it all to yourself, like the monkeys who won’t speak for fear they might be made to work! But here’s the steward with your medical fixin’s; so, look to the poor boy’s cut, Seth, and see if you can’t mend it, while I go up and see what they are doing with the ship, which we’ve left to herself all this while.”

Washing away, with gentle dabs of the saturated rag that the steward had brought in the bowl of warm water, the salt and clotted blood that covered over the wound, the mate soon laid it bare, and then proceeded with skilful fingers to sew it up, in a fashion which showed he was no novice in the art.

“Golly, Massa Allport! I didn’t know you was so clebbah!” said the steward admiringly.

“You don’t know everything, you see, Jasper,” said the other good-humouredly. “There, I think that will do now, with a strip or two of plaster which I have here,” producing some diachylon from a pocket-book. “How do you feel now?” he added, addressing himself to the boy, who had kept his eyes fixed on his face in the same meaningless stare as when he had first opened them. “Better?”

But he got no reply.

The boy did not even move his lips, much less utter a sound, although he was now well warmed, and there was life in his rigid limbs and colour in his face, while his faint breathing was regular, and his pulse even.

“He looks very strange,” Mr. Rawlings said. “Concussion of the brain, I should say.”

The sailor-surgeon was puzzled.

“I guess he’s dumb, and deaf too,” he said to the passenger who had been acting as his medical assistant, and watching the mate’s operations with much interest. “But no,” he added presently; “a boy with such eyes and such a face could never be so afflicted! I’ve seen scores of deaf-mutes, and you could never mistake their countenances. I know what it is, he has received such a shock to the system that it has paralysed his nerves—that’s it!”

“It’s either that or concussion,” the passenger argued.

And the steward, who did not know what to say, and would indeed now have endorsed any opinion that the mate had propounded after what he had seen of his practical skill, gave a confirmatory nod, expressive of his entire approval of the other’s dictum.

“Yes, Jasper,” replied the other, “it’s only a temporary shock to the system, and rest and attention will work it off in a short time.”

It was a peculiarity with Mr. Seth Allport, the first mate of the Susan Jane, that when he spoke on medical topics and subjects, which formed the only real education he had received, his mode of speech was refined and almost polished; whereas, his usual language when engaged in seafaring matters—his present vocation—was vernacular in the extreme, smacking more of Vermont than it did of Harvard and college training.

“I’m certain my diagnosis is correct,” he said again to Mr. Rawlings—after seeing the lad clothed in a flannel shirt and thick pair of trousers of the skipper’s, into whose cot he was then carefully placed, and wrapped up, the little fellow closing his eyes at once and sinking into a sound sleep—“and when he wakes up he’ll be all right, and be able to tell us all about himself.”

“I hope you may be right,” Mr. Rawlings said, doubtfully. “Sleep may do much for him; at any rate, I will remain in the cabin to watch him for a while.”

So saying, he took his seat by the boy, while the mate proceeded to go on deck and rejoin the skipper, and the steward went to work to prepare breakfast.

The wind had now got well abeam of the Susan Jane and lessened considerably, although still blowing steady from the southwards and eastwards; and the sea being also somewhat calmer, the good ship was able to spread more sail, shaking the reefs out of her topsails and mainsail, while her courses were dropped, and the flying-jib and foresail set to drive her on her way across the Atlantic.

“I guess picking up that boy brought us luck, Seth!” said the skipper, rubbing his hands gleefully as the mate came to his side and joined in the quick quarter-deck he was taking, varied by an occasional look aloft to see that everything was drawing fair. “I think we might set the topgallants now, eh?”

“You’re not a slow one at piling on the canvas, I reckon!” answered the other with a laugh. “No sooner out of one gale than you want to get into another. Look at those clouds there ahead, Cap’en,” pointing to a dark streak that crossed the horizon low down right in front of the vessel. “I guess we aren’t out of it yet!”

“Waal, if we’ve got to have another blow,” replied the skipper, “we’d better make some use of the wind we have, specially as it looks like chopping round. What is she going now?” he asked of the quartermaster or boatswain, one individual performing both functions in the Yankee craft.

“Close on nine knots, Cap’en,” answered the man, who had just hove the log over the stern, and now stood, minute-glass in hand, calculating the result.

“Nine knots with this breeze? That will never do. Away aloft there, and shake out the topgallant sails! Now, men, stir yourselves in proper man-o’-war’s fashion; and let us see it done in ship-shape style! That’s your sort, men. Johnson shall shell out some grog presently to splice the main brace.”—He continued aloud, as the hands came down the ratlins again without losing time, after lowering the sails—“Now, hoist away at the halliards. Cheerily, men! cheerily ho! The Boston girls have got hold of our tow-rope; up with the sticks with a will!”

The Susan Jane plunged through the waves with redoubled speed, leaning over until the water foamed over her gunwale and was knee-deep in her scuppers, an occasional billow topping over her foc’s’le, and pouring down into the waist in a cataract of gleaming green sea and sparkling spray, all glittering with prismatic colours, like a jumble of broken rainbows.

“What does she make now, Johnson?” asked the skipper again of the quartermaster.

“Eleven knots, I reckon, sir, good.”

“Ah, that’s more like it! The poor dear thing! she was crippled without her wings, that she was! She’ll do twelve-knots yet, eh, Seth?”

“I don’t doubt that, sir,” replied the mate, who was much more cautious than his captain; “but it ain’t quite safe with those gentlemen there gathering together ahead, like a mass meeting in Faneuil Hall.”

“Oh, never mind the clouds,” rejoined the delighted skipper, whose thoughts were filled with the fond belief that the Susan Jane would make the most rapid run across the herring-pond ever known for a sailing-ship. “Guess we’ll beat the Scotia, if we go on like this.”

“Yes, if we don’t carry away anything!” interposed the mate cautiously.

“Oh, nonsense, Seth! We’ve got a smart crew, and can take in sail when it’s wanted! How’s your patient getting on?” continued the skipper, turning to Mr. Rawlings, who had come up, the boy being in a profound sleep.

“Well, I hope,” he answered; “he is resting very tranquilly.”

“That means, I suppose, that he’s all right, and having a good caulk in my cot.”

“Exactly so, Cap’en; and when he wakes by and by, I hope he’ll be himself again.”

“That’s good news! Did he tell you who he was before he dropped to sleep?”

“No,” answered Mr. Rawlings, “he did not speak.”

“Not speak!” said the captain. “Why didn’t he?”

“He couldn’t,” replied the other. “Whether from the cut on his forehead, or what, I can’t tell; but he has had such a shock that his nerves seem paralysed. You noticed his eyes, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” said the captain, “but I thought that was from fright or a sort of startled awe, which would soon go off. I’m sorry I didn’t have a look at those spars before we cast them off; we might have learned the name of the ship to which he belonged. Don’t you think, Seth, though, that he will recover his speech and be able to tell us something?”

“Certainly, Cap’en, as Mr. Rawlings says, I believe he’ll wake up all right.”

“Well, then, we’d better go below for breakfast now—here’s the steward coming to call us. Davitt can take charge of the deck,”—hailing the second mate as he spoke, and telling him to “keep his weather-eye open, and call him immediately should any change occur, but not to reduce sail on any account.”

“I wouldn’t have given him that order, if I were you, Cap’en,” said the mate, as they went down the companion together.

“Oh, Davitt isn’t a fool,” replied the skipper lightly; and the two entered the cuddy together, where they were welcomed by a hospitably spread table that spoke well for the cook’s culinary skill.

“Josh is a splendid chap for fixing up things,” said the skipper heartily, as he popped a portion of a capital stew into his capacious mouth with much gusto. “I’d back him against one of those French what-do-you-call-’ems any day!” alluding, possibly, to the chef of the hotel in Bordeaux at which he had been staying on the Susan Jane’s previous voyage.

“So would I,” echoed the mate, who was performing equally well with his knife and fork; but, what he would have further observed must remain unrecorded, for at that moment a tremendous crash was heard on deck, and a heavy sea pooped the ship, flooding the cabin, and washing the two, with the débris of the breakfast table, away to leeward, where they struggled in vain to recover their footing, until the ship righted again—the steward coming to their assistance and being likewise thrown down on the floor, to add to the confusion. Then Seth Allport darted up the companion.

The contretemps was so sudden that the skipper was quite startled; but what startled him more was the sight of the boy who had been saved, and who was supposed to be sound asleep, standing at the open door of his cabin, with his light brown hair almost erect, and his blue eyes starting out of his head with a look of unspeakable terror, and the blood streaming down his face, and dropping with a sort of hissing sound into the water that surged about the cuddy floor and over his feet, from the terrible cut across his forehead.

“Mercy upon us, Rawlings, look there!” exclaimed Captain Blowser, trying to regain his feet, and almost forgetting what might be going on on deck at the sight before him. “Is he gone mad, or what?”