John C. Hutcheson
Picked up at Sea
The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek
Published by Good Press, 2019
EAN 4064066146900
Table of Contents
Story 1—Chapter II.
Rescued.
“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