Wings of the Wind Part 21

"I know about that, you prince of liars. Who's this? But hold him!--we're going on through!"

"You needn't," he said. "I took a speedy trip down the other pa.s.sageway while Gates went to you. There isn't a soul on board, except this poor devil who's got a crack on the bean."

"It isn't possible," I cried. For, indeed, it was not possible, and we hurried forward, leaving him as he was.

But a two-minute search revealed the truth of Tommy's words. There was not a sign of anyone. The yacht was as absolutely deserted as if it had been sailed by spirits--except, of course, the wretch in Tommy's charge.

"You're sure we've looked everywhere, Gates?" I asked, stunned at the disappearance of Sylvia and mystified by the whole affair.

"Everywhere, sir. To tell the truth, Mr. Jack, a minute ago it was as complete a mystery as I ever saw. But I understand it now. They've taken to the small boats and escaped, sir. They've just sailed in close to sh.o.r.e and done that during the night, sir; and all morning we've been chasing a boat with n.o.body on it. I should have noticed the small boats gone, if I hadn't been so sure the people were here."

I leaned against the wall too utterly disappointed to move, vaguely wondering if this were another dream from which I should awake and find the _Orchid_ sailing out ahead of us. But it was no dream. In dreams one can not always know that one is dreaming, but there is never a doubt of knowing when one is awake.

"They couldn't be under the floor?" I asked, absurdly clinging to a straw of hope that Sylvia might be there.

"Lor' bless you, no, sir! I tell you, Mr. Jack, they just sailed as close as they dared to those islands, and skipped--the hull pack of 'em; first having headed the _Orchid_ out as we found her. That's why everything was so quiet the larst part of the night--there warn't anyone here to _make_ a noise!"

Pa.s.sing back to the galley we saw half our crew, in a circle, looking down at the wounded man.

"Who is it, Tommy?" I asked. "Not the old scoundrel himself, by any good luck?"

"Stranger yet," he said, waving the others back and standing up, "It's your black giant of the Key West docks!"

"How the devil did he get here?" I cried, pus.h.i.+ng between the men and also looking down at him. "How did he get here?" I asked again, but Tommy had gone.

Someone had put a cus.h.i.+on under his head. His eyes were open, gazing up with their former gentle expression; more sad now, I fancied, since the great human machine he had controlled was wounded.

"How did he get here?" I repeated my general question, this time straight at him.

His lips moved with a curious, rather horrible, inarticulate sound, and his glance swept our crew as though in search of a face. Then he seemed to give it up, and pa.s.sed a hand slowly over his forehead. I was about to order him carried on deck when Tommy called through the galley portlight:

"Fetch your wounded, Jack! The professor's here with his outfit!"

As our men stooped to obey the big fellow surprised us by quietly arising; and, when cus.h.i.+ons had been arranged in a shaded place above, he laid on them as obediently as a docile mastiff. Monsieur, very much in his element, became busy at once.

The _Whim_ and the _Orchid_ were still at grips--or rather were it more correct to say the _Orchid_ was in the _Whim's_ grip. Lines had been pa.s.sed through the chocks of each, sails had been hauled down, and both yachts rode inertly side by side.

The part of our crew that had stayed behind to attend these matters now came over the rail like monkeys, grinning broadly and crowding up to shake hands with me--a wholly uncalled for proceeding which charmed me, nevertheless.

"Lie on your face," I heard Monsieur saying to the big black. He had become excessively busy and his fingers were feeling everywhere over the man's cranium, yet as tenderly as a woman's. "What struck you?" he asked.

"I've told you he can't talk," Tommy, who was also kneeling by him, explained.

"And I did not ask you," the professor snapped. "What if he can not! May I not see him make the effort?"

"But what's the use of having the poor beggar make the effort when you know he can't put it over? Why not get down to cases and cure him, instead of monkeying?"

"Down to cases! Cure him!" Monsieur sputtered. "How great a surgeon are you to direct me in this impertinent manner?"

Really, he was quite a great deal put out.

"You fellows cut it," I interposed. "While you're squabbling the chap might click it, and then what?"

"I'm not squabbling," Tommy looked up earnestly. "I'm only saying it's a rotten shame to put a _blesse_ through a lot of unnecessary paces that hurt him, and I stick to it! But go ahead, professor!"

"I shall go ahead, have no fear of it! You think me cruel--but see: if I am aware something is wrong with a machine, how better to find out what than by trying to make it run?"

He turned again to his examination, while Tommy lit a cigarette and sat nearby, looking on. At last Monsieur gave a sigh, indicating that his diagnosis was ready. I waited until he, too, had lit a cigarette, then asked:

"Well, doctor, how serious?"

"Perhaps not serious, as there is no fracture. He has suffered a concussion over the third frontal convolution, resulting in an aphasia--aphemia we are sure of, and doubtless also agraphia----"

"Hold on! This isn't the University of Bucharest," Tommy cried. "If you insist on telling us, instead of putting this man to bed where he ought to be, tell it nursery-fas.h.i.+on!"

"Already I have said it for children," he witheringly replied.

"Then G.o.d help 'em!" This in a whisper from Gates, but with no thought of levity.

"Go ahead and cure the man," I implored. "We couldn't understand you, anyhow."

"But, yes, you will understand--I desire it! This blow has produced the aphemia. If he were not illiterate we could, by asking him to write, say if agraphia also is present. But he can not write, therefore we do not know whether he can or not; so, therefore, we only know that he can not speak."

"You know he can't write, too--you just said so!"

"Exactly, my boy Tommy, you have the correct idea. Yet we do not know it by the test."

"I begin to see what he's driving at, Jack. He knows he can't write because it's a known fact, but he doesn't know it by the scientifically known test known to him--and that's agraphia. If it isn't, it's near enough. Now, he knows he can talk because we all know he can, but no one knows it at present because he can't--and that's aphemia. Do I get you, Professor?"

"Yes, as you say, you get me. The motor area has suffered a concussion; perhaps a slight hemorrhage, perhaps not. It may pa.s.s in a few days, or longer. We will keep him quiet, with ice bags to the head and blood pressure low, and see what we shall see. A hundred years ago they would have bled him and made him well. But we shall see!"

"If he'd got well a hundred years ago by being bled, why not now?" I asked.

"He'd be too old now," Tommy whispered; but the professor, not hearing this, looked at me as though I had committed an unpardonable breach of etiquette, and again witheringly replied:

"We have more advanced methods."

Having thus been put in my place, he ordered his patient taken aboard the _Whim_ and ran ahead to superintend the construction of a bed.

Scientists are a curious lot, Tommy says, but I doubt if there is another like the professor. I hope not, for the sake of the sciences.

But let that pa.s.s. In half an hour the big black was resting easily in the midst of paraphernalia especially designed, and Bilkins had been a.s.signed the place as nurse.

I fancied, when this latter suggestion came up, that our old servant might not readily take to it. With twenty years of his life spent as major domo and general valet in my father's household, a sudden transformation into trained nurse for a dusky African must, peradventure, have been a shock.

But in this I was mistaken. The last forty hours of common peril, of a central interest, had lifted Bilkins from that pettiness usually burdensome in servants of his type. He was, as a matter of fact, cheerfully alert to take the job, accepting it with the same enthusiasm that Gates, and later the mate, had straddled the bowsprit. So I realized that Bilkins had doffed the uniform of servitude to put on one that fit a man. True, indeed, there is no such potent melting-pot as common peril! It had been the same in France--banker, lawyer, merchant, beggar-man, thief, perhaps--all one. Common peril, common necessity!--O thou molders of men!

When everything had been arranged, and a sailor put at our ice machine to supply packs for the wounded man's head, Tommy, the professor and I climbed back aboard the _Orchid_, this time to give her a thorough search. We held to the hope that there might be a note, or little clue, from the girl whose extremity had once led her to send the other message. Monsieur thought this most probable, and our hopes ran high.

Beginning with a writing desk in the cabin, we examined the book shelves and every nook and corner, then pa.s.sed to the staterooms. These gave the same impression of having been swept clean--cupboards, presses, all were empty. Only in one drawer, delicately scented, was there a single item--a hairpin. Here, then, must be Sylvia's room, but otherwise it was devoid of any article. Equally unproductive did we find the galley, the crew's quarters, and a small cuddy forward.