lad's progress being checked
twice by his coming in contact with wire stays, before head and shoulder
struck the deck with a sickening thud.

CHAPTER TWO.

The doctor was first by the injured lad's side, quickly followed by the
captain and a score of passengers who had been roused to action by the
accident.

"Keep everyone back," cried the doctor, "and let's have air."

The doctor was for the moment in command of the vessel, and the captain
obeyed without a word, forming all who came up into a wide circle, and
then impatiently returning to the injured lad's side.

"Well?" he panted, as he took off his gold-banded cap to wipe his
streaming forehead. "Tell me what to do."

"Nothing yet," replied the doctor, who was breathing hard, but striving
to keep himself professionally cool.

"Not dangerously hurt?" whispered the captain; but in the terrible
silence which had fallen his words were distinctly heard above the
throbbing of the vibrating engines, which seemed to make the great
vessel shudder at what had occurred.

"I am not sure yet," said the doctor gravely.

"But the blood--the blood!" cried one of the lady passengers.

"As far as I can make out at present the leather case of his glass has
saved his skull from fracture. He fell right upon it, but I fear that
the collar-bone is broken, and I cannot say yet whether there is
anything wrong with the spine.

"No!" he said the next minute, for the sufferer stretched out his hands
as if to clutch and save himself, and he moved his legs.

There were plenty of willing hands ready to help, and a canvas stretcher
was drawn beneath the sufferer so that he could be carried carefully
down to one of the state cabins, which was immediately vacated for his
use; and there for hours Doctor Kingsmead was calling into his service
everything that a long training could suggest; but apparently in vain,
for his patient lay quite insensible in the sultry cabin, apparently
sinking slowly into the great ocean of eternity.

And all the time the huge steamer tore on over the oily sea through a
great heat which rivalled that of the engine-room, and the captain and
first and second mates held consultations twice over in connection with
barometer and chart, by the light of the swinging lamp below.

The passengers supposed that those meetings concerned the injured boy,
but the sailors, who had had experience, knew that there was something
more behind, and that evening after the