Picked up at Sea. John C. Hutcheson
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