!" ejaculated the skipper.

"You bet," chimed in the mate; "but for the wash of the water a stopping
it, he would have bled to death! Have you got a needle and thread
handy, Jasper?"

"Sartain, Massa Allport," answered the steward.

"Then bring it here sharp, and a piece of sponge, or rag, and some hot
water, if you can get it."

"Sure I can, Massa Allport. De cook must hab him coppers full, sah.
Not got Cap'en's breakfass, you know, sah, yet."

"I forgot all about breakfast!" laughed the skipper, "I was so taken up
with running across this young shaver here. But what are you going to
do, Seth, eh? I didn't know as you had graduated in medicine, I
reckon."

"Why, Cap'en Blowser, I served all through the war after Gettysburgh as
sich."

"Waal, one never knows even one's best friends, really!" said the
captain musingly. "And to think of your being a doctor all this time,
and me not to be aware of it, when I've often blamed myself for going to
sea without a surgeon aboard."

"That's just what made me so comfortable under the loss of one!"
chuckled the mate.

"Ah! you were 'cute, you were," replied the skipper. "Kept it all to
yourself, like the monkeys who won't speak for fear they might be made
to work! But here's the steward with your medical fixin's; so, look to
the poor boy's cut, Seth, and see if you can't mend it, while I go up
and see what they are doing with the ship, which we've left to herself
all this while."

Washing away, with gentle dabs of the saturated rag that the steward had
brought in the bowl of warm water, the salt and clotted blood that
covered over the wound, the mate soon laid it bare, and then proceeded
with skilful fingers to sew it up, in a fashion which showed he was no
novice in the art.

"Golly, Massa Allport! I didn't know you was so clebbah!" said the
steward admiringly.

"You don't know everything, you see, Jasper," said the other
good-humouredly. "There, I think that will do now, with a strip or two
of plaster which I have here," producing some diachylon from a
pocket-book. "How do you feel now?" he added, addressing himself to the
boy, who had kept his eyes fixed on his face in the same meaningless
stare as when he had first opened them. "Better?"

But he got no reply.

The boy did not even move his lips, much less utter a sound, although he
was now well warmed, and there was life in his rigid limbs and colour in
his face, while his faint breathing was regul