r you. Got room
for a little one inside, Pierce?"

The joke sent Gray off again, but I was aware that this gross fooling
was as much a piece of acting as had been the feint of shooting at me.
He was playing to an audience, and that audience a gallery that dealt
only in crude fun. Why did he do it? What was his object? He puzzled
me. But I made answer very plainly.

"You know my profession, Mr. Holgate. We had a second officer...?" I
paused.

"Have!" he corrected mildly. "Have; not, of course, on active
service--resting, let us say."

Gray giggled. His master was as good as the clown in a circus to his
tickled ears. Holgate looked at me.

"There's nothing much the matter with Legrand," he went on, "save
natural chagrin and a crack on the head. You see, I got him just so."
He put both hands together in a comprehensive gesture, "and it
interfered with his vertebrae. But better see him, doctor, better see
him; and while you're about it, we've got a job or two more for you."

I followed him, as he spoke, towards the forecastle deck, and soon was
busy in my professional capacity, Holgate chatting the while very
wheezily in my ear. And when I had finished he had the hatch opened and
I descended to the prisoners.

"I'm accompanying you, doctor," explained Holgate, "not because I'm
going to spy on you--that would be mean, and not in the game--but as a
guarantee of good faith, as one might say. You see I feel responsible
for you, and if some one with an imperfect sense of honour, say like
the Prince, should take it into his head to clap hatches on you, where
would my reputation be?"

He smiled, took a lamp from one of his men and descended after me.

The prisoners were standing or squatting moodily about in that small
compartment of the hold, which was otherwise almost empty, and lying on
his back with his face turned towards us was the second officer. His
eyes gave no indication that he was aware of my presence, though they
were wide open, and, I confess, I was alarmed to see his condition. It
looked like death. I felt his pulse, and examined him, and all the time
his eyes were on me unwavering. His high colour had fallen away, and
his face was now spotted with unhealthy blotches on a pallid skin. I
pressed my fingers to the back of his neck, puzzled, and as I did so my
body came betwixt Holgate with the light and Legrand.

It seemed to me that now the eyes moved, and I could have declared that
one of them closed sh