A Dream of the North Sea Part 12

"I'll be as game as I can, doctor."

"Then kneel here, and take this elastic bag in your hand; turn this rose right over my hands as I work, and keep the spray steadily spirting on the place. You understand? Now, Frank, my man, when I put this over your face, take a deep breath."

Ferrier was pale when Frank asked "Where am I?" He waved the skipper aside, and set himself to comfort the brave man who had returned from the death-in-life of chloroform.

"Bear down on our people and let my men take the boat back. I'm going to stop all night with you, skipper."

"Well, of all the----well, there sir, if you ain't. Lord! what me and Frank'll have to tell them if we gets home! Why, it's a story to last ten year, this 'ere. And on this here bank, in a smack!" "Never mind that, old fellow. Get my men out of danger."

The extraordinary--almost violent--hospitality of the skipper; his lavishness in the matter of the fisherman's second luxury--sugar; his laughing admiration, were very amusing. He would not sleep, but he watched fondly over doctor and patient.

Ferrier was fortified now against certain insect plagues which once afflicted him, and the brilliant professor laid his head on an old cork fender and slept like an infant. He did not return until next evening; he went without books, tobacco, alcohol, and conversation, and he never had an afterthought about his own privations.

Frank seemed so cool and easy when his saviour left him, that Ferrier determined to give him a last word of hope.

"Good-bye, my man. No liquor of any sort. You'll get well now. Bear up for four days more, because I must have you near me; then either you'll run home with me, or I'll order your skipper to take you."

Nothing that the Middle Ages ever devised could equal that suffering seaman's unavoidable tortures during the next few days. He should have been on a soft couch; he was on a malodorous plank. He should have been still; he was only kept from rolling over and over by pads of old netting stuffed under him on each side. Luxury was denied him; and the necessities of life were scarce indeed.

Poor Frank! his sternly-tender surgeon did not desert him, and he was at last sent away in his own smack. He lived to be an attendant in a certain inst.i.tution which I shall not yet name.

After much sleepless labour, which grew more and more intense as the stragglers found their way up, Ferrier summarized his work and his failures. He had treated frostbite--one case necessitating amputation; he had cases of sea-ulcers; cracks in the hand. Stop! The outsider may ask why a cracked hand should need to be treated by a skilled surgeon.

Well, it happens that the fishermen's cracked hands have gaps across the inside bends of the fingers which reach the bone. The man goes to sleep with hands clenched; as soon as he can open them the skin and flesh part, and then you see bone and tendon laid bare for salt, or grit, or any other irritant to act upon. I have seen good fellows drawing their breath with sharp, whistling sounds of pain, as they worked at the net with those gaping sores on their gnarled paws. One such crack would send me demented, I know; but our men bear it all with rude philosophy.

Ferrier learned how to dress these ugly sores with compresses surrounded by oiled silk. Men could then go about odd jobs without pain, and some of them told the surgeon that it was like heaven.

Well, there were half a score smashed fingers, a few severe bruises, several poisoned hands, a crushed foot, and many minor ailments caused by the incessant cold, hunger, and labour. Ten men should have been sent home; one died at sea; ten more might have saved their berths if they could have had a week of rest and proper treatment. My hero was downcast, but his depression only gave edge and vigour to his resolution in the end. He had learned the efficacy of prayer now--prayer to a loving and all-powerful Father; and he always had an a.s.sured sense of protection and comfort when he had told his plain tale and released his heart. I, the writer, should have smiled at him in those days, but I am not so sure that I could smile with confidence now.

Lennard stuck to his favourite with helpful gallantry, and became so skilled a nurse that Ferrier was always content to leave him in charge.

Both men tried to cheer each other; both were sick for home, and there is no use in disguising the fact. When Ferrier one day came across the simple lines--

"Perhaps the selfsame song has found a path To the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home, She stood in tears amid the alien corn,"

he came near to imitating Ruth. He knew his duty well enough, but the affections and the spirit are strong. Then the almost ceaseless bad weather, and the many squalid conditions of life, were wearing to body and soul.

An abominable day broke soon after Frank had sailed for home, and a sea got up which threatened to shake the spars out of our smack. Half a gale blew; then a whole gale; then a semi-hurricane, and at last all the s.h.i.+ps had to take in the fourth reef in the mainsail. The two Samaritans were squatting on the floor in the cabin (after they had nailed canvas strips across the sides of the berths to prevent the patients from falling out), for no muscular power on earth could have enabled its possessor to keep his place on a high seat in that maddening jump. It was enough to jerk the pipe from one's mouth. The deck was all the time in a smother of half-frozen slush, and the seas were so wall-sided that the said slush fell in great plumps from side to side with a force which plucked the men off their legs several times. Again and again it appeared as if the smack must fall off the sides of the steep seas, as the long screw colliers sometimes do in the Bay of Biscay when the three crossing drifts meet. It was a heartbreaking day, and, at the very worst, a smack bore down as if he meant to come right into the Mission vessel. Sweeping under the lee and stopping his vessel, the smack's skipper hailed. "Got the doctor on board?" Down went the newcomer into the trough, leaving just a glimpse of his truck. Up again with a rolling wave. "Yes. What's up?"

"We've got a man dying here, and not one of my white-livered hounds will go in the small boat."

"Can't you persuade them?"

"No. They'll forfeit their voyage first."

"Edge away from us, and I'll see."

By this time the two smacks were almost in collision, but they went clear. The skipper went below and stated the case. Ferrier listened grimly.

"What do you think, skipper?"

"Your life's precious, sir. You've come to be like the apple of my eye; I'd rather die myself than you should go."

"Are your men game enough?"

"I'm going myself if you go. If I die I shall be in my Master's service."

"Is it so very bad?"

"Very."

"What's our chance?"

"Ten to one against us ever coming back."

"It's long odds. Shove the boat out."

"Stop a bit, sir. Don't smile at an old man. Let's put it before the Lord. I never found that fail. Come, sir, and I'll pray for you."

"All cant," do you say, reader? Maybe, my friend, but I wish you and I could only have the heart that the words came from. The skipper bared his good grey head, and prayed aloud.

"Lord, Thou knowest we are asked to risk our lives. We are in Thine hands, and our lives are nothing. Say, shall we go? We shall know in our hearts directly if you tell us. Spare us, if it be Thy will; if not, still Thy will be done. We are all ready." After a pause the skipper said, "We'll do it, sir. Shove on your life-jacket. I'll take two life-buoys."

Lennard had kneeled with the others, and he said, "Shall I go?"

"You're too heavy, Tom. You'll over-drive the boat. I'll chance all."

Even to get into that boat was a terrible undertaking, for the smack was showing her keel, and the wall-siders made it likely that the boat would overbalance and fall backward like a rearing horse. Six times Ferrier had his foot on the rail ready to make his lithe, flying bound into the c.o.c.klesh.e.l.l; six times she was spun away like a foambell--returning to crash against the side as the smack hove up high. At last the doctor fairly fell over the rail, landed astride on the boat's gunwale, and from thence took a roll to the bottom and lay in the swas.h.i.+ng water.

Then delicately, cautiously, the skipper and his man picked their way with short, catchy strokes--mere dabs at the boiling foam.

"G.o.d bless you," Tom sang out, and the big fellow was touched when he heard the weak voices of the patients below, crying "G.o.d bless you!"

with a shrillness that pierced above the hollow rattle of the wind, "There goes the boat up, perpendicularly as it appears. Ah! that's over her. No; it's broken aside. What a long time she is in coming up. Here's a cross sea! Ferrier's baling. Oh! it's too much. Oh! my poor friend!

Here's a screamer! G.o.d be praised--she's topped it! Will the smack hit her? Go under his lee if you love me. They've got the rope now. In he goes, smash on his face! Just like him, the idiot--Lord bless his face and him!" Thomas hung on to the rigging and muttered thus, to his own great eas.e.m.e.nt.

When Ferrier got up, he said, "Skipper, only once more of that for me.

Once more, and no more after. If a raw hand had been there we should never have lived. Thank goodness you came! You deserve the Albert medal, and you shall have it too, if I can do anything."

The new patient was gasping heavily, and the whites of his eyes showed.

The skipper explained: "You see, sir, he's got cold through with snow-water, and he sleeps in his wet clothes same as most of us; but he's not a strong chap, and it's settled him. He's as hard as a stone all round, and sometimes he's hot and sometimes he's cold."

"Has he sweated?"

"No, sir; and he's got cramps that double him up."

"Has he spoken lately?"

"Not a word."

"Well now, give me every blanket you can rake up or steal, or get anyhow."