, with his white face
toward the light, his eyes partly closed and showing nothing but the
whites, and a fearful gash about four inches long in the left side of
his throat, from which the blood seemed to have been pouring as from a
pump, judging from the appearance of his clothes and the bunk; it was
merely oozing now. I seized his hand and felt for his pulse; there was
none. I tore open his saturated shirt and laid my hand upon his breast;
there seemed to be an occasional slight flutter of the heart, but if so,
it was so exceedingly faint as to render the matter extremely doubtful;
it was clear that the unfortunate man had bled, or was bleeding, to
death, and was far beyond such poor and inefficient help as I could
afford him. I left him, therefore, and turned to the next bunk, which I
now saw was occupied by the body of the carpenter. He lay, stretched
out on his back, just as he had been tossed in, and might have been
asleep but for the ghastly pallor of his face and the tell-tale purple
stain upon the breast of his waistcoat and shirt. He was dead, beyond
all doubt; so I turned to the next man, who proved to be a gigantic
Dutchman named Dirk Van Zyl, the author of all the trouble. This man, I
presently discovered, had received no fewer than nine wounds, four of
which, from their extent and situation, I considered desperate. He
groaned, and cried, and screamed in the most bloodcurdling fashion when
I began to examine him, begging that he might be left alone to die in
peace; but I washed his wounds, one by one, and bound or stitched them
up as best I could--the job occupying fully three-quarters of an hour--
and when I at length left him, he seemed somewhat easier. The next man
claiming my attention was an Irishman named Mike, whose left hand had
been struck by the Dutchman's knife such a savage blow exactly on the
joint of the wrist that the member was nearly severed. I could do
nothing with such an injury as that but bind it up tightly, and place
the hand and forearm in splints and a sling, leaving Nature to work out
the rest of the cure, if she would. There were three other men who had
received rather serious hurts, and for whom I did my best; and finally,
I stitched up O'Gorman's face for him, which completed a fairly stiff
morning's surgical work. Then, having again examined the man Tom, and
found him to be quite dead, I carefully cleansed myself from all traces
of my ghastly labour and went aft, reachin