erely volatile sewage! A few men looked on; they are kind, but they all
suffer so much that the suffering of others is watched with passive
callousness.

"Brandy now, my man. This is your first and last drink, and you may make
it a good one. Don't give him any more, skipper, even if you have it on
board. You know why? Ah! the colour's coming back again. Now, my lad,
we're going to make your bed up on the cabin floor. Hand me a flannel;
and you, my man, some water out of the kettle. Now for a clean place.
I'll set up as a housemaid when I go ashore."

"Excuse _me_, sir, but if you thinks you're goin' to be let to scrub
that ar plank, sir, you're mistaken. I'm skipper here, and I'll do that
jest to show you how we thinks of your politeness, mister. Hand over
that scrubber."

"All right, you obstinate mule; of course you'll have your own way. Let
me see his mattress, then. Won't do! Which of you durst come with the
boat, and I'll send a cocoanut-fibre one for him?"

"We never talks about durst here, sir. Not many on us doesn't. We'll go,
when you goes."

So Lewis cheerily ended his task, and when his man was laid out, with a
dry bundle of netting under his head, the doctor bent over him only to
smile in his face quietly. He never looked at himself in a glass
excepting to part his hair; but he had learned that something in his
look tended to hearten his patients, so he gazed merrily at the cripple
and said, "Now, when you're better, tell your friends Professor Ferrier
said you were the pluckiest fellow he ever saw. I couldn't have borne
what you did. You are a real good, game bit of stuff! and don't let any
one tell me otherwise."

This unconscionable young doctor was picking up the proper tone for the
North Sea; he had no airs, and, when his boat was reeling away to his
own vessel again over the powdery crests of the sea, an Aldeburgh
fisherman said, "Well, Joe, be sewer, he's a wunnerful fine gent, that
is! He's the wunnerfullest, finest gent ever _I_ fared for to see. And
that he is--solid."

"Yes, Jimmy," said the skipper. "It's my belief, in a way o' speakin',
that if that theer mizen-boom catched you and knocked your head off,
that theer wunnerful young gent 'ud come, and he'd have his laugh, and
he'd up and he'd mend you, same as if you'd never come adrift, not one
little bit. What a thing is larnin', to _be_ sewer. Yes, sir, he'd mend
you. Nobody knows what he can dew, and nobody knows what he can't dew.
If