" What was he doing?
Mechanically he ran the rope under the sleeve of his life-jacket; a
mighty jerk seemed likely to pull him in halves as the smack sheered;
then a heavy, dragging pain came--he was being torn, torn, _torn_.
He woke in the cabin before the fire, and found Tom Lennard blubbering
hard over him. "Warm it seems, Thomas? Reckon I almost lost my number
that time."
"My good Lewis! No more. I had to strip you, and I've done everything.
The skipper's dead beat, and if Bob couldn't steer we should be in a
pickle. Let me put you in a hot blanket now, and you'll have some grog."
Then, with his own queer humour, Lewis Ferrier said, "Tom, all this is
only a lesson. If we'd had a proper boat, a proper lift for sick men,
and a proper vessel to lift them into, I should have been all right. We
won't come back to have these baths quite so often. We'll have a _ship_
when we come again, and not merely a thing to sail. And now give me just
a thimble-full of brandy, and then replace the bottle amongst the other
poisonous physic! I'm getting as lively as a grasshopper. A nautical--a
nautical taste, Thomas!"
And then Ferrier went off to sleep just where he was, after very nearly
giving a most convincing proof in his own person of the necessity for a
hospital vessel.
Lennard brooded long, and at last he went to the skipper and asked, "Old
man, shall Bob shove her head for home?"
The skipper nodded.
And now you may see why I purposely made this chapter so long.
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