ht mistake us after dark. Keep your weather
eye lifted, lad; you, too, must look behind when you walk in the dark."

"And what shall I look for?" asked I.

"Death," he said.

CHAPTER X

Came morning, but not the lady.

And the foc'sle was in sad need of her ministrations. Quite half the
crew needed salves and bandages for their bruises and cuts, and there
was, besides, a more serious case demanding attention.

When the starboard watch was called at four o'clock, we heard a low,
insistent moaning in the port foc'sle. The man who called us said that
the little squarehead--the lad Swope had manhandled--had again fallen
afoul the masters. The hurts Swope had inflicted prevented the boy
moving about as quickly as Mister Fitzgibbon desired, so the bucko had
laid him out and walked upon him during the mid-watch. When he was
through, the lad had crawled on his hands and knees into the foc'sle,
and collapsed.

By eight o'clock in the morning, when the starboard watch went below
again, we found the poor chap daft, and babbling, and on fire with
fever. The mate gave up his efforts to arouse him, and admitted to
Lynch that "the damn little stock fish is a bit off color. Needs a
dose o' black draught."

After breakfast, Newman and I stepped into the port foc'sle. The
squareheads of our watch were already there, sitting gloomily about, or
clumsily attempting to make the injured youth more comfortable.

He looked bad, no mistake. Newman shook his head, gravely, as we
turned away.

"It is a task for her," he said to me. "She has the healing gift. The
boy is badly hurt."

A growled curse took my answer from me. It came from one of the
squareheads, from Lindquist, a sober, bearded, middle-aged man, the one
man among them who could manage a few words of English conversation.

"Koom vrom mine town," he said, indicating the tossing form in the bunk.

His blue eyes had a worried, puzzled expression, and his voice bespoke
puzzled wrath. It was evident his slow moving peasant's mind was
grappling with the bloody fact of a hell-ship. It was something new in
his experience. He was trying to fathom it. Why were he and his mates
thumped, when they willingly did their work? What for? "Nils iss goot
boy," he said to us. "So hard he vork, _ja_." Then he bent over the
bunk and resumed the application of his old folk remedy, the placing of
wetted woolen socks upon Nils' forehead.

Before the foc'sle door, we