ar off, ye murthorin' divvles!" he cried, waving his arms above the
heads of the crowd of onlookers, as I could now see. "The poor chap
wants air, and ye're stayling the viry br'ith out of his nosshrils!
Away wid ye all, ye spalpeens! or by the powers, it's a-pizening the
howl batch of ye I'll be doin' the next toime ye comes to me for pill or
powdher!"

The men clustering round him spread out, moving nearer to me; and they
laughed at his comical threat--which sounded all the more humorous from
the Irishman's racy brogue, which became all the more prominent when
Garry was at all excited. God knows, though, their merriment, untimely
as it might have sounded to outside ears, betrayed no want of sympathy
with their comrade. They laughed, as sailors will do sometimes, holding
their lives in their hands, as is the practice of those who have to
brave the manifold dangers of the deep below and aloft on shipboard,
even when standing on the brink of eternity.

As they moved away, the fierce light from one of the open furnace doors
was beating on their bare bodies and making them look, indeed, the very
devils to whom the Irishman had jocularly likened them; the latter
looked up quickly, saw me, and beckoned me to approach nearer.

"Arrah, come along, man, with those bandages!" he said. "Sure ye moight
have made 'em in the toime since I called up to the skipper. Where are
they now, me darlint?"

I produced the roll of lint at once from the pocket of my monkey jacket.

"Hullo!" said he as he took and deftly proceeded to unroll the bundle of
bandages, "what's that you've got on your shoulders--a rick?"

"A hammock, sir," I replied. "Cap'en Applegarth told me to bring one
down for lifting the poor chap who's so hurt, and so I took my own,
which had blankets already in it, thinking it would be warmer for him,
sir."

"Begorrah, the skipper's got his head screwed on straight, and you the
same, too, Haldane," said he approvingly, with a sagacious nod as he
bent over the pile of sacks in the corner. "Come and see the poor
fellow, me bhoy. There doesn't seem much loife lift in him, sure, hay?"

There certainly did not; to me he looked already dead.

Stretched out on the pile of dirty sacking, in a half-sitting, half-
reclining position, lay the recumbent figure, or rather form, of the
unfortunate fireman Jackson, his face as ghastly as that of a corpse,
while his rigid limbs and the absence of all appearance of respiration