“Help our friends, doctor—save them for God’s sake. We have no doctor on board. Herr Klein sailed with Mr. Imroth. We can do nothing for ourselves.”
The woe of it appalled me. I knew neither what to answer them nor how best to help them. Many a day had passed since I practised my own profession. And to be called upon as a surgeon upon a battlefield!
“Have you stores?” I asked. “Is there a surgery on board?”
They shouted an affirmative all together. Half-a-dozen among them were ready to lead me below. Hesitating an instant to give my command to Okyada, I went with them as they desired.
“Miss Joan is on the ship,” I said to the faithful fellow. “Find her and take her to the yacht.”
Okyada looked up at me with one swift, almost wistful glance, and disappeared immediately from my sight. The burly American, who posed as my guide, pushing his comrades aside, led me through the wicket gate, and we descended the great companion-way. It would be impossible adequately to describe the luxury and the splendour of this part of the ship even as one brief scrutiny revealed it. The very lamps appeared to be of solid silver. The panelling was of the rarest woods, teak and old Spanish mahogany and satin wood. I caught a glimpse of the great dining saloon, and beheld walls covered by pictures of undoubted mark and quality—chiefly of the French and Spanish schools. We passed by a boudoir furnished with such elegance that Paris alone could have commanded its ensemble. There was a card room not unlike that of a great London club, with little tables and electric lamps upon them, and even discarded packs scattered in angry disorder upon the blue Persian carpet which covered a parquet floor. Crossing this room and leaving it by a door toward the centre of the ship, I found myself immediately in a broad corridor lighted from above, and the walls of this appeared to be of steel. Had I been in doubt as to the meaning of it, the American’s candour would have settled the matter without question.
“Old Five’s strong box,” said he. “That’s where he keeps what isn’t good to eat. I guess the best of the stuff’s landed by this time. It went off in Colin Ross’s ship. You might buy yourself a gold brick out of what’s left and not be much poorer. We share and share in that now. There used to be a guard down here night and day when old Isaac was aboard. I guess you scared him pretty badly. He ran for the Brazils the day after we sighted you——”
I asked him but one question in turn.
“Was General Fordibras on board with the man you speak of?”
“Not this trip. I heard tell he’d gone to Europe. He’s too easy for this job. Three-Fingers never could look a Sheffield knife in the face. I guess his daughter’s got all the courage.”
We had passed another door of steel as he spoke and descended a short flight of stairs to a second corridor, about which were cabins of a commoner order. Here the surgery of the ship had been located—a well fitted, thoroughly modern apartment, recently tenanted, it seemed, by a doctor who knew what the hospitals of Europe were doing. A quick search discovered the antiseptics, the wool, the liniment and the lancets, without which so little could be done for the wounded men above. There was nothing missing for the practice of a modern art.
It would be a work of supererogation to tell you of the long hours which followed immediately upon my assumption of the rôle of ship’s doctor. I passed through them as one passes through a dreamland of restless thoughts. There were no fewer than thirty-one wounded men upon the steamer; and, of these, seven belonged to the fo’castle party, twenty-four to the saloons. The latter chained my interests in spite of their condition, for there were Englishmen among them, and faces that the stories of recent crimes had made familiar to me. One lad, slashed heavily across the forehead by a clasp knife, had been mentioned, I remembered, in connection with the famous forgeries upon the Bank of England some five years ago. I recognised the Italian jewel thief, Detucchi, the German forger, Urich, the young Belgian, Monterry, supposed to be serving a sentence of penal servitude for life for his attack upon King Leopold. Happily, few of these men had been wounded by rifle bullets. Those whom the guns had killed fell upon the instant and their bodies were already in the sea. My patients were the victims of cuts, fearful gashes in some cases, and difficult fractures in others. Two died while I tried to help them. It was a woeful task, and I trust that I may never be called to its fellow.
The honest men, happily, for so I called the sailors of the ship, had suffered considerably less. I found them profoundly grateful for such services as I could render them; nor did the American hesitate to tell me frankly the story of the mutiny.
“We were making for Rio, but Mr. Ross stood out,” he said. “A relief’s expected, and I guess there are some law-sick folk on board her. He treated us like dirt, and began to talk of rafting. Do you know what rafting is, doctor—no, well, it’s putting living men overboard on a raft as big as a deal board and wishing ’em good luck while they go. Don’t try it while you can sail saloon. Colin Ross fell sick of a fever and is down below raving now. We got the arms by tickling the mate’s whiskers and promising him Ross’s berth. That was the first and the last of it. We shot ’em down like sheep, and now we’re going ashore to spend our money—those that live, though they’re like to be few enough.”
Here was a truth beyond all question. I stood on the deck of a veritable plague ship. A wail of death rose unceasingly. Night had come down, and a thick white mist enveloped the ocean all about us. The yacht was nowhere to be seen. Of all the hours of that great endeavour, this, to me, was the most terrible, alike in its menace and its suggestion.
For I said that the yacht might lose me in the fog and leave me, the prisoner of these desperate men, and their hostage against the justice which awaited them.
CHAPTER XXIX.
THE BRIDGE AND AFTERWARDS.
Dr. Fabos Visits Colin Ross.
I was in a situation of grave peril; but it would have been imprudent beyond measure to have admitted it. Possibly the accident of their advantage did not occur to the men, nor had they discovered it. There was no order on the ship, no commander, no person in authority above others. The agony of wounds forbade any consideration of that which should be done or of the methods of doing it. I perceived that the men regarded me in some sense as their good angel, paying me the compliment of trusting me, and obeying my commands as faithfully as if I had been their captain. They could even remember that I had gone fasting, and speak of food and drink.
“Old Valentine knew a good tap when he tasted it, and there’s plenty of the right sort on board,” the American said to me good-naturedly. “You only give a name to it and the corks will be flying like rockets. Ask for what you’re wanting, doctor, and I’ll skin the lubber who doesn’t run to fetch it. The Lord knows what my mates would have done if you hadn’t come among them.”
It was honestly said, and as honestly meant. And yet, willingly as I would have accepted his cordial offer, fear of the consequences held me back. Who would dare to think of drink amid such a crew as this, or to remind men that drink was to be had? I could depict a Saturnalia defying the powers of a Poe to describe, such an orgie as a sane man might dream of in a horrid sleep, should these ruffians broach the casks or be reminded of