The Ghost Ship Part 19

"Sixteen knots, sir!" he sang out, and then we could hear the old sea dog add his customary comment, whether of approval or discontent, "Well, I'm blowed!"

"By George, colonel!" cried Captain Applegarth to our melancholy-looking guest at his side. "We're going sixteen knots, sir; just think of that!

I didn't believe the dear old barquey had it in her!"

"It is a good, wonderful speed, captain," replied the other, who, I noticed, was looking even more exhausted now than when we removed him from the boat. "Remember, though, sir, the _Saint Pierre_ is sailing on all this time before the wind, as she was this morning, and must be miles ahead of us!"

"Aye, I know she's going; or at least, I suppose so, and I've made every allowance for that in my calculation of her whereabouts," returned our skipper, in nowise daunted by the colonel's argument. "But if she had every rag set that she could carry, she couldn't go more than three or four knots at the most, in this light breeze; and for every foot she covers we're going five!"

"That is true," said the American, with a very weary and absent look on his face. "But--but I'm afraid we may be too late after all! I--I'm-- G.o.d protect--my--my--"

"The fact is, my dear sir," cried the skipper abruptly, interrupting him as the other hesitated in his speech, turning a deadly white and clutching at the bridge rail in front of him, as if to save himself from falling or fainting. "You're completely worn out and your nerves shaken! Why, you can't have had much, if any, sleep the last three or four days--not since that rumpus broke out aboard your ship, eh?"

"Heavens!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the other. "I don't think I have closed my eyes, senor, since Friday, excepting when I was drifting in the boat, part of which time I must have been senseless; for though I recollect seeing your vessel, and trying to signal her by holding up a piece of the bottom planking of the boat, as we hadn't oar or sail in her, I have no remembrance of seeing your vessel steaming up to help us, or of this brave young gentleman here jumping into the water and swimming to our a.s.sistance, as you tell me, captain, that he gallantly did. Believe me, sir, I shall never forget you, and I shall be ever and eternally grateful to you for that n.o.ble act of yours!"

He half-turned and bowed to me politely as he said this, but I was too much confused, by his exaggerated estimate of what I had done to say anything at the moment in reply. And, after all, it was only a very simple thing to do, to swim with a line to a boat; any other fellow could have done the same, and would have done it under the same circ.u.mstances.

The skipper, however, spoke for me.

"Come, come, sir," he said. "Haldane only did his duty, like the brave lad he is; and I'm sure you only make him uncomfortable by your thanks.

I want you, colonel, to go below and have a little rest and some refreshment. Besides, I promised Mr O'Neil to send you down to have your wounded leg dressed and seen to, more than half an hour ago, when he came up on deck after attending to that other poor chap, and yet here you are still, talking and exciting yourself. How is your leg now, colonel? Easier?"

"Confound it! No, no!" replied the other, with a writhe of torture as he changed his position so as to relieve the strain on the wounded limb, which I had quite forgotten about, the brave follow having stoically repressed all indication of pain while urging on the pursuit of the black mutineers. "It's hurting me like the devil! But, sir, I cannot rest or leave the deck till we come up to that accursed ship and save my poor child, my little darling--if we be not too late, too late!"

"This is nonsense, sir," said the skipper bluntly, and rather angrily, I thought, and he continued:

"The ship, we know, must be a goodish bit ahead of us still, and we can't possibly overhaul her for an hour or more at the earliest. So come, cheer up, and come along with me and have your leg attended to at once. I insist, colonel; come."

"But," persisted Colonel Vereker, evidently trying to make out the time in arguing, and loth to leave the scene of action, though apparently ready to drop now from sheer pain and exhaustion combined, "Who will-- who will--"

"My first officer here, Mr Fosset, will remain on the bridge during our absence below," interposed Captain Applegarth, antic.i.p.ating his last, unuttered objection. "He's quite competent to take charge, and I'm sure will let us know the moment the ship comes in sight, if she appears before we return on deck."

"Aye, that I will, sir," cried out Mr Fosset. "I'll keep a sharp look- out, and I'll hail you, sir, sharp enough, as soon as she heaves in sight on the horizon."

"There!" exclaimed the skipper in an exultant tone, taking hold of the colonel's reluctant arm and placing it within his own, so as to lead him away and to give him the benefit of his support down the bridge-ladder.

"Won't that satisfy you now, sir, and you see you'll lose nothing by going below for a spell? Come, come, my good friend, have the leg seen to and eat something, for you must require it. Why, colonel, unless you keep up your strength and spur yourself up a bit, you won't be able to tackle those black scoundrels when we get up to the ship and catch them, and it comes to a fight, as I expect it will. So come along, my hearty; rouse yourself and come!"

This concluding remark of the old skipper affected more than all his previous persuasion, the colonel at once allowing himself to be helped down the laddering without further demur, and so along the gangway on the upper deck, towards the lower entrance to the saloon under the beak of the p.o.o.p, I lending the aid of my shoulder for the crippled man to lean on as he limped painfully onward, having to pause at almost every step, his wounded leg dragging now so much, now that excitement no longer sustained his flagging frame; the skipper gave aid too, his arm propping him up on the other side.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

DOCTOR AND PATIENT.

"Faith, it's moighty glad I am, sor, to say you at last!" cried Garry O'Neil, starting up from his seat at the cuddy table, on our ultimately reaching the saloon, where the Irish mate was having a rather late lunch with Mr Stokes, who had preceded us below. "I was jist comin' after ye ag'in, colonel, whin I had s.n.a.t.c.hed a bit mouthful to kape the divvil out of me stomach, sure. I want to inspict that game leg o' yours, sor, now that I've sittled your poor f'ind's h'id. Begorrah, colonel, somebody gave him a tidy rap on the skull whin they were about it!"

"It was done with a hand-spike," explained the other, groaning with pain as we a.s.sisted him to a seat at the further end of the table, where the skipper's armchair was drawn out for him to fix him up more comfortably.

"One of those treacherous n.i.g.g.e.rs came behind his back and dealt him a terrific blow that landed on the side of his head partly, nearly cutting his ear off!"

"Aye, I saw that, sor, of course," put in Garry, pouring out some brandy into a tumbler which he proceeded to fill up with water--"_aqua pura_,"

he called it. "I've shtrapped it on ag'in now, and it looks as nate as ninepins. But jist dhrink this, colonel, dear. It'll warrm the c.o.c.kles of your heart, sure, an' put frish loife into you!"

The American took a sip first at the gla.s.s proffered him, and then drained off the contents with a deep sigh of satisfaction.

"Ah!" he exclaimed, "I feel a little better. But how is poor Captain Alphonse now?"

"Bedad, he's gitting on illegantly," replied Garry, sniffing at a soup plate containing some steaming compound which Weston, the steward, had just brought in, and directing that worthy to place it in front of our poor invalid guest. "There was a nasty paice of bone sphlinter sticking in the crayture's brainpan; but, first, I trepanned him an' raymoved the impiddimint, an' the poor chap's now slayping as swately as a babby, slayping in the cap'en's cot over yonder! But come, colonel, I want ye to take some of this pay soup here afore I set to work carving ye about.

Begorrah, it's foine stuff, an'll set ye up a bit to roights!"

"Thank you a thousand times," returned he, taking a mouthful or two of the soup which Weston had placed before him, eating very sparingly at first like one who had been deprived of food for some time. "I'm not afraid of your handling me, sir. I have undergone too many operations for that!"

"Faith, colonel," cried the Irishman, laughing in his usual good- tempered racy manner, "you'd best spake well of the craft or I'll be afther payin' you out, sure, alannah, whin I get your leg in me grip!

Jist you stow some more o' that illigint soup inside your belt, sor, before I start on the job, an' while ye're aitin' I'll tell you how I once sarved out an old woman whom I was called in to docther, whin I was at ould Trinity, larnin' the profession, in faith!"

"That's right, O'Neil," said the skipper, seeing his motive in trying to set our sad guest at his ease and to try and distract his thoughts from the awful anxiety and grief, under which he was labouring. "Have I heard the yarn before, eh?"

"Faith, not that I know of, cap'en," returned the doctor _pro tem_ in his free and easy manner. "Begorrah, the joke's too much ag'inst meself, sor, for me to be afther tillin' the story too often!"

"Never mind that; it will make it all the more interesting to us," said the skipper with a knowing wink to Mr Stokes, both of them knowing Garry's old stories only too well, but at such a time as this they would have listened to anything if it would only serve to distract the poor colonel's thoughts for a few minutes, and they chuckled in recollection of the many jokes against himself that Garry had perpetrated. "Fire away with your yarn."

"Bedad, then, here goes," began O'Neil with a grin. "Ye must know, colonel, if you will have it, that I was only a 'sucking sawbones,' so to spake, at the toime. Faith, I was a medical studint in my first year, having barely mastered the bones."

"The bones!" interrupted the skipper. "What the deuce do you mean, man?"

"Sure, the inthroductory study of anatomy, sor," explained Garry rather grandiloquently, going on with his yarn. "Well, one foine day whin I an' another fellow who'd kept the same terms as mesilf were walking the hospital, wonderin' whin we'd be able to pa.s.s the college, sure the hall porter comes into the ward we were in an' axes if we knew where Professor Lancett, the house surgeon, was to be found, as he was wanted at once.

"'Faix,' says Terence Mahony, my chum, the other medical studint who was with me. 'He's gone to say the Lord Lieutenant, who's been struck down with the maysles, an' the divvle only knows whin he'll get back from the castle, sure! What's the matter, O'Dowd? Who wants ould Lancett at this outlandish toime of day?'

"The hall porter took Mahony's chaff, faith, in all sober sayriousness.

'It's moighty sorry I am,' says he; 'Master Lancett's gone to the castle, though proud I am for ould Trinity's sake, sayin' as how the Lord Lieutenant has for to send to us, sure, bekase them murtheren'

'sa.s.sa docthers that he brought from over the say with him from Inkland ain't a patch on our chaps! But, faix, sor, a poor woman as the professor knows is took moighty bad in her inside, some of her neighbours says, an' wants help at onst!'

"'Who is it, O'Dowd?' I asks. 'Do you know where she lives?'

"'Mistress Flannagan's her name,' says the porter. 'She's Mistress Lancett's ould la'ndress, sor; a cantankerous ould woman, too, an' wid the divvle of a temper! She lives jist out of Dame Strate, sure, in Abbey Lane. Any one'll till ye the place, sure!'

"'What say you to goin' to say the poor crayture?' says I to Terence Mahony. 'We'll lave word where we're gone, an' I'm sure Mr Lancett will be plaised to hear we're looking afther the ould lady!'

"'Begorrah, that he will, sor,' agreed O'Dowd, the porter. 'It's moighty kind of you two young gintlemen going for to say her, an' I'll make a p'int of lettin' the docther know whin he comes back from the Lord Liftinnint!'

"'All right, O'Dowd,' says I. 'Mind you till the professor, an' he can thin follow us up on his return to the college--that is, if he loikes!'

"With that off the two of us wint on our errind of mercy, though it was lucky I lift that message with O'Dowd, as ye'll larn prisintly!

"It didn't take us long to find the house where the sick woman was, for as we turned into the strate, a dirty ould hag, smoking a short pipe, came up to us with a smirk on her ugly phiz.

"'G.o.d save Ireland!' says she, addressing Terence. 'Be yez the docther jintlemen from the hospital, avic?'

"'Faix, we're that,' says my companion; 'the pair of us!'